preview

George W Bush 's Presidency Essay

Better Essays

George W Bush’s presidency can be associated with an infamous term that stood out from the State of the Union address, that term being ‘Axis of Evil’. In this context, Bush categorised the countries of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as being ‘evil’ states. This neoconservative comment left little doubt as to what Bush’s foreign policy towards these states was going be (Baxter and Akbarzadeh, 2008). This comment would then define George W Bush’s presidency, due to the controversy over this phrase and the results that it would have on US foreign policy as “rarely had such a rhetorical device had such devastating consequences” (Ansari, 2006:186). This paper will argue how the use of the word ‘evil’, and the categorisation of these ‘evil’ countries, had a large impact on US-Iran relations.
The hypothesis of this essay will focus on the use of metaphors in speech by state leaders to mobilise public opinion. In this instance, how does the metaphor and imagery of the word ‘evil’, used by George W. Bush, mobilised the public opinion of the American people towards policies for the ‘War on Terror’. Also, this essay will argue that that using this term improved the domestic opinion of President Bush, at the expense of relations between USA and Iran. This is not a new phenomenon; it can be argued that the idea of using such emotive terminology to categorise states together is one that has existed prior to Bush Jr. This essay will elaborate and analyse examples of this. The hypothesis will

Get Access