Dialectics of argument and rhetoric: Protesting the Iraq War in US–British opinion press

Abstract

In the US run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the pro-war US–British opinion press adopted a ‘subservient’ role by religiously endorsing the US official perspective about the ‘Saddam Peril’ and the Anglo-American ‘humanitarian’ mission in Iraq through the systematic muffling of the opposing views of anti-war protestors. The US–British pro-war arguers tried to cast doubt on both the motivations and identity of the anti-war demonstrators by categorising peaceful protest within the discourse of ‘deviance’, ‘ignorance’ and ‘incivility’. Therefore, anti-war protest was trivialised, disparaged and depoliticised. Anti-war political protest was relegated to the realm of ‘disorder’, ‘spectacle’ and ‘violence’, despite its global geopolitical reach. This article examines how ‘strategic manoeuvring’ functions in opinion press instrumentalised moral reasoning. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, I propose to demonstrate how the US–British mainstream media were closely wedded to elite interests and how opinion press argumentation was clearly structured in dominance.