The Submerged Virtual Constructs in the Narrative of Terrorism

Ana Ashraf*

This research article aims at examining the way political discourse is used in the situation of war to establish a hyper-real world by replacing the horror of the ‘actual’, to accomplish certain strategic, economic or political aims without the fear of rational ‘dissent’. The example, in this regard, is American virtual war in Afghanistan since 2001. Secondly, it is analyzed how language, which is primarily a tool of communication, is used in order to create Meta narratives with the help of virtual reality, the ultimate function of which is to strengthen the political discourse. The effect of these influential narratives is to create absolute institutional authority for those in power, irresponsible passivity in the minds of the people, and thus a continuation of war along with the clamor for peace. In this regard, the speeches of former and the current US Presidents since 9/11, particularly about War in Afghanistan, will be parsed through, to see what verbal constructs, abstracts ideas and other techniques have been used to create a virtual Meta narrative.
The invisible, atavistic ‘horror’ that surrounds one in today’s simulated world has been given a comprehensive expression in the death scene of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, where Marlowe contemplates about Kurtz:
He wanted no more than justice – no more than justice. I rang the bell before a mahogany door on the first floor, and while I waited he seemed to stare at me out of the glassy panel – stare with that wide and immense stare embracing, condemning, loathing all the universe. I seemed to hear the whispered cry, ‘The horror! The horror!’. (Conrad 125)

The darkness that the Western Imperialist system contained, its full horror was realized by the best mind of the Western civilization and that even at a point when he had lived that horror through out his life and now that he was dying, could do nothing about it. The same panoptical system has taken a new shape of Advanced-International-Capitalist-Order with only an increase in the eye-blinding darkness. At one level, it succeeds in creating a simulated world and at another level, it brutally tries to devour all other independent institutional authorities (politics, economy, media, language, literature all are controlled to create one single thing a hyper-real world) to make itself the strongest inhuman control system as yet, aiming to make the realization of its ‘horror’ impossible even in the worst situations of human catastrophe.
The horrific system of simulation is modifying the very modeling of war. War had always been considered an emergency situation that occurs when every other discipline fails to solve a problem. But postmodern age observes that war is no more an institute separate from politics, or economics or business or culture or religion or any other reality. Today, war has permeated and overlapped every other reality that is ‘not-war’.  From the international hegemonized trade policies to the way media maneuvers one’s thought-process, to how an individual thinks and reacts to the dominant political rhetoric of his age; each bit of our experience is put to violent and yet submissive assaults of virtual discourse of war. 
Hence one may say that contemporary war is waged through political discourse, cultural hierarchies, economic pressures, technological superiorities and eternal militarism. The success of such a war depends on everything that is ‘not’ war, which challenges the basic reality of wars in past, that was recognizable to common man. In this way, war looses its exclusivity, its urgency and its place as a separate discipline and becomes a part of a greater machine, a tool for the system, a means for total control. However, the fountainhead of the infinite flow of virtualities scattered around is centered in the dominant political rhetoric of this age. Politics can be defined as, “the way we organize our social life together, and the power-relations which this involves” (Eagleton 194). This kind of understanding where the political is kept away from the literary is deeply embedded in our recent past literary movements. The end of 19th century and the initial decades of 20th century observed movements such as Aesthetic Movement or Decadence Movement, which placed art on high pedestal. It was argued that art has the potential to exist in itself and for itself without bringing the mundane reality of life into the intellectual debate. Literary critics infinitely celebrated the ‘utter uselessness’ of literature as its prime quality. If one analyzes carefully, this ‘utter uselessness’ of literature appears anything but innocence or purity of art, rather it appears more as a deliberate function of an authoritative regime. Terry Eagleton registers the same sense of deliberate distancing of literary from the political by saying:
The impotence of liberal humanism is a symptom of its essentially contradictory relationship to modern capitalism. For although it forms part of the ‘official’ ideology of such a society, and the ‘humanities’ exist to reproduce it, the social order within which it exists has in one sense very little time for it at all. (Eagleton 199)
The distancing of the two disciplines (the political and the literary) in the past is not a natural, inevitable divide but a deliberately created breach, which indirectly strengthens the political hierarchy. This refrain from discussing the political in the literary discourse was discouraged emphatically by the postmodern critics. According to the postmodernists, literary criticism should involve an analysis of the living situation of men and women and as political discourse claims to do the same but in a more realistic and concrete manner therefore it is important to find the joining threads of apparently separate discourses. However, Postmodernism is sometimes strongly criticized simply because of its concern with the political, as is evident in Linda Hutcheon’s definition of Postmodernism, “fundamentally contradictory, resolutely historical, and inescapably political” (qtd in Gupta 98). Regardless of the severe criticism Postmodernism receives, the co-relational impact of the political and the literary cannot be avoided. In fact, the process of globalization cannot be elucidated without understanding the intricate relation between literary discourse and political rhetoric. Today the word ‘global’ does not imply the use of internet for connectivity between far off places, or the reliance and acceptance of media in human life, or the change in the international relations, or the rapid cultural exchanges, rather ‘global’ is an initiation of virtualization of human life ad infinitum. Global is an ‘event’– an ‘event’ that ultimately has its impact on the way one shapes one’s life. The term ‘global-ization’ itself contains the dual complexity of this age. At one level, the word globe refers to the concrete simulated form of the world and at another level the word ‘ization’ signifies the process; the applicability of this simulation in the whole world. Therefore it stands as a symbol of the merger of the concrete and abstract for the production of a greater abstraction (the hyper-real world). Postmodernism witnesses the process of making abstractions or hyper-realizing the world and its impact. It tries to account for the rapid and drastic changes in the contemporary age by rejecting the established norms on which the Western civilization stands, and by observing the over-arching hierarchy of political over every other discourse. Hence an ‘inescapably political’ bent in the literary discourse. Primarily, Postmodernism addresses the “loss of the real” from the real world as discussed in the previous chapter and the consequent callous passivity and indifference of ordinary people in situations where their right opinion and right action is most needed (Barry 89).
The second fundamental postulate of this theory is the complete rejection of all kinds of ‘meta’, ‘super’, or ‘grand’ narratives. In his seminal book for understanding Postmodernism, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge Jean Francois Lyotard out rightly rejects any hopes of human progress or betterment through Meta narratives. Ideally Grand narrative is a form of discourse that tries to explain human society and human life through some universalizable ideology – a discourse that purports to ‘explain everything’. It claims to be a complete code that is indefinitely applicable. History records man’s ceaseless efforts to find some universal ideological truth that could explain everything and, also at regular intervals, an utter failure in doing so. The Meta narratives of Enlightenment Project re-introduced during modernism is one such example. The Enlightenment Project can be described as:
[F]ostering of this belief that a break with a tradition, blind habit, and slavish obedience to religious precepts and prohibitions, coupled with the application of reason and logic by the disinterested individual, can bring about a solution to the problems of society. (qtd in Barry 85)

There are three key words that need special attention here i) fostering of this belief ii) disinterested individual iii) a solution to problems of society. Primarily, a Project that demands cultivation of reason and logic its own foundation is on fostering of a ‘belief’, which means that the only way to follow this project is to follow it blindly. Secondly, if one analyses human culture, it is evident that ‘individual’ is always ‘interested’ and that interest is formed through the cultural preferences, biases, prejudices etc. Therefore a society of disinterested individuals is humanly impossible. Thirdly, Enlightenment is shown in this definition as ‘a solution to problems of society, which indirectly means a singular solution to problems of society, these points clearly illustrate that the structure and the content of ‘Enlightenment Project’ is merely a Meta narrative. Here the point to be observed is that though these Meta narratives appear very promising yet they do not coincide with the concrete reality of human life and therefore become nothing but beautifully contrived useless tautology. This uselessness of the grand narratives is extremely useful for those in power. Lyotard criticizes such Meta narratives by saying: “These ‘metanarratives’ [super-narratives], which purport to explain and reassure, are really illusions, fostered in order to smother difference, opposition, and plurality” (qtd in Barry 86). That is one reason why he goes on defining Postmodernism as “incredulity towards metanarratives” (Barry 86). Enlightenment project, Marxism, western liberal humanism, religious fervor, all have been criticized as grand narratives in one way or the other.
The ironic binary effects of postmodern debate have been that though so many philosophers and cultural theorists criticized and censored the utility of past Meta narratives ever since 1980s to date yet the same age witnesses the re-emergence or re-incarnation of the meta-narratives through new structures. A contemporary example of such meta narration is the American Political Incantation in post 9/11 scenario that played a crucial role in justifying not only the American war in Afghanistan but also some very ‘inhuman ways’ in which it was fought.
It has become clichéd by now to say that the world changed forever after 9/11. Though the veracity of this statement can still be doubted yet undeniably the discursive practices illustrating this ‘change’, have taken a new turn. Slogans such as ‘War against Terrorism’, ‘War for Peace’, and ‘War on America’, ‘Islamic Fundamentalism’ have gained inevitable currency and authenticity in the modern awareness. In this scenario, one of the most effective discourses had been the political rhetoric about Afghanistan ever since 2001. Indeed, an in depth analysis of the grand narrative about War on Terror may annunciate how majority of people remain oblivious of the horrible historicity of an event and how in an age of infinite sources of information people become slaves to the powerful, propagandist stance. Rightly Lyotard defines these putrefying meta narratives as “simply one of the would-be authoritative, overarching, totalizing explanations of things” (qtd in Barry 86).
War against Terrorism claimed to bring ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ to the world, political stability to the failing regimes, economic and social relief to the decaying societies and thus emerged as a universal global strategy. This utopian vision is created by making present situation a completely a-historical event. The propagandist tools create a discourse that omits facts not corresponding with the ‘absolute truth’ of grand narratives. The success of any meta narrative lies in throwing the historical facts in the memory hole for good. Similar is the case with the rhetoric about ‘War against Terrorism’ and the necessity of military operation in Afghanistan just after 9/11.  It is a common belief now that ‘War against Terrorism’ was waged as a response to the catastrophe of 9/11 2001, where more than 3,000 people were killed brutally. As the former and the recent US Presidents; George W. Bush and Barack Obama assert this notion in their speeches respectively: “We did not choose this war. Yet, with the safety of the American people at stake, we will continue to wage this war with all our might” (“Progress in Afghanistan and Iraq”). Similarly, Obama, the great opponent of War in Iraq claims:
The war began only because our own cities and civilians were attacked by violent extremists who plotted from a distant place, and it continues only because that plotting persists to this day. (“Commencement Address at West Point Military Academy”)

Can ‘War in Afghanistan’ only be a response to the great catastrophe of 9/11? The historical background associated with it appears to contradict this simplistic assumption. It is imperative to analyze briefly some of the historical facts about US foreign policy towards Afghanistan prior to the so-called eternal change in history after 9/11. The Former National Security Adviser under the Carter Administration Zbigniew Brzezinski had admitted that an American operation to infiltrate Afghanistan was launched long before Russia sent in its troops on 27th December 1979. Agence France Press reported that:
Despite formal denials, the United States launched a covert operation to bolster anti-communist guerillas in Afghanistan at least six months before the 1979 soviet invasion of the country, according to a former US official. (Ahmad 22)

Secondly, it should be observed that today those who are called greatest threat to humanity i.e. Terrorists have been deliberately created and fed by US and certain other sources to gain some strategic aims. Central Asia expert Selig Harrison of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for scholars recalls: 
I warned them that we were creating a monster. They told me that these people were fanatical, and the more fierce they were the more fiercely they would fight the Soviets. (Ahmad 34)

As US journalist Ken Silverstein notes:
Though Reagan called the rebels ‘freedom fighters’, few within the government had any illusions about the forces that the United States was backing. The mujahidin fighters espoused a radical brand of Islam – some commanders were known to have thrown acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil – and committed horrific human rights violations in their war against the Red Army. (Ahmad 34)

There are numerous evidences which prove that US supported the Taliban consistently from 1994-1998 while trying to ensure its strategic and economic interests. Moreover, the fanaticism and fundamentalism that is focus of discussion and a cause of collective disgust from all over the world today, was deliberately infused in immature minds in the name of Islam in innumerable madrasas. These madrasas were primarily supported by US and its allies. In an interview broadcast by the BBC World Service on 4 October 1996, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto affirmed:
The madrasas had been set up by Britain, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan during the Jihad, the Islamic resistance against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. (qtd in ahmad 46)

It might be a political irony that the same people with the same ruthlessness are called ‘freedom fighters’ when fighting in the interests of US and against Russia and when they resist in accepting the oil and gas pipeline project of US they are called inhuman entity threatening to the whole world. As noted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Central Asia specialist Ahmed Rasheed has reported in his Yale University study, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, that;
Impressed by the ruthlessness and willingness of the then-emerging Taliban to cut a pipeline deal, the state Department and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war against the ethnically Tajik Northern Alliance. As recently as 1999, US taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official. (qtd in Ahmad 52)

In the rhetoric about 9/11, America’s role emerged strongly as the messiah or the savior of the whole world, a country that fights for justice and peace in the world and more specifically, a savior of Afghan people as it promises to fight for the rights of the nation bruised with war and fanaticism for more than twenty years. After 9/11, the world not only observed but rapidly consented with the US rhetoric for fighting with the ‘barbaric’ Taliban and the terrorist forces in Afghanistan to stop the terror from corroding the whole world but also to save the innocent Afghan people and establish democracy in the war-torn country. Yet the crucial fact is that many responsible human rights organizations had started to draw attention to the worst humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan in human history since 1990s. They asked for urgent intervention from the international community and the only result for these urgent calls was a cold impassivity towards the barbarities of the Taliban and the continuous misery of the Afghan natives.

Amnesty International (AI) notes:
For two decades, the international community has mostly averted its eyes from the human rights catastrophe in Afghanistan. The United States, its West European allies and the former Soviet Union have failed to bring to an end the very human rights crisis that they helped to create. (Ahmad 42)

Indeed, one of their major concerns had been to stop Soviet establishment and to assure the success of oil and gas pipeline project (Ahmad 46).
The US and its allies plied this country with Stinger missiles and cash to fuel the mujahideen’s opposition against Soviet occupation. They encouraged the growth of Islamic fundamentalism to frighten Moscow and of drugs to get Soviet soldiers hooked, The CIA even helped ‘Arab Afghans’ like Osama bin Laden, now ‘America’s most wanted, to fight here. (qtd in Ahmad 41)
US strategy towards the Taliban and terrorists took a great somersault when they realized that Taliban are not much willing to be ‘as friendly a government’ as they had expected. Therefore the Bush Administration started planning for a war on Afghanistan long before the event of 9/11. The Canadian journalist Eric Margolis, a specialist in Middle East and Central Asian affairs writes in a December 2000 edition of the Toronto Sun:
The United States and Russia may soon launch a joint military assault against Islamic militant, Osama bin Laden, and against the leadership of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s de facto ruling movement. (Ahmad 55)

Hence, the above points make it absolutely clear that War on Afghanistan cannot be regarded as a natural, immediate and spontaneous result of the atrocities of 9/11. Moreover, if Taliban were supported and indirectly fed by the US and its allies then the rhetorically established virtual division of the Taliban as ‘them’, ‘the enemy’, ‘the dirty goblin’, and the West as ‘the united force against the evil’, ‘the enlightened’ cannot be accepted vehemently. The neat division of US as a symbol of freedom, equality, democracy and all good, and the self-proclaimed Islamic forces as the barbaric, the subhuman is a simulated condition.
Ever since Taliban started their atrocious activities in Afghanistan, many of the re-known Islamic scholars and established Islamic institutes not only condemned their values but also explained that the values they portray as Islamic are a extreme form of rural, ethnic and tribal tradition yet in the political incantation about War in Afghanistan their extremist activities are portrayed as Islamic fundamentalism. Therefore, instead of being a response to the atrocity of 9/11, the attack on Afghanistan is a “pretext to justify, build upon and implement already extant plans for a military invasion” (Ahmad 68).
Though these points may not bring to surface the whole truth about War in Afghanistan, but it surely uncovers the complexity hidden under the rhetoric of simple motif of self-defense, justice and peace. There is a long list of facts that elaborate the fundamental difference in what was done in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion and specifically since 2001 and what is said on the international political forum. This disturbing disparity is maneuvered by turning a particular discourse into a grand narrative that promises an authentic universalizable solution. Indeed, the grand narrative about the necessity of war in Afghanistan contained certain potent constructs that demand specific attention because of the blind faith it infused in the majority of the people.
In case of this particular rhetoric, it functioned successfully because of the following factors:
i)    The use of traditional propaganda tools.
ii)   The use of virtual reality in making complex verbal constructs that function as an alternative to the real.
iii) A deliberate amalgamation of the two in a way that hinders clarity of thought, or rather makes clarity an insignificant entity.

The typical propaganda tools play an extremely important role in the whole structure of a grand narrative. Oxford English Dictionary defines the word ‘propaganda’ as “the systematic propagation of information or ideas by an interested party, especially in a tendentious way in order to encourage or instill a particular attitude and response” (Thorne 41). One very effective propaganda tool is the verbal distinction between the two fighting groups as ‘us’ and ‘them’. The primary function of these pronouns is to snatch away the individual, variant and ever-changing selves of the two groups and to coerce them psychologically into believing that the people stand for two opposite value systems. Rather than using a particular name that refers to a particular group of people or a nation, war propaganda generally incorporates the nominative (we, they), Accusative (us, them), Genitive (our, their) use of the third person pronoun. These pronouns may appear to be a simple replacement for some particular noun, but at a deeper level, the use of these pronouns is a deliberate attempt at obstructing language from communicating reality. The lingual distance between the pronouns; ‘us’ and ‘them’, provokes an essential difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ even if these pronouns do not refer to any other noun, they create, at unconscious level, a distinction: a sensibility that ‘they’ are unlike ‘us’. These two pronouns invoke an exclusive and inclusive principle in language. ‘We’, ‘us’, ‘our’ include a particular people, indicating certain unified elements that give them the status of ‘us’, whereas the pronoun ‘they’, ‘them’, ‘their’ exclude a particular group on the basis of some difference that clearly demarcates ‘them’ from ‘us’ (Thorne 31). At ideological level, ‘them’ is a symbol of exclusive values that cannot be contained by ‘us’. In this way, identity, self, or individuality of a person or a nation is created and strengthened through these lingual practices. E.g. the very concept of the European civilization as the rescuer or savior of the whole world is essentially a lingual construct which is based on the difference of the white man as one unified group and all the other colored groups as ‘they’. Edward Said elaborates how cultural identity itself is a construct that:
[I]nvolves establishing opposites and ‘others’ whose actuality is always subject to the continuous interpretation and re-interpretation of their differences from ‘us’. Each age and society creates its ‘others’. Far from a static thing then, identity of self or of ‘other’ is a much worked-over historical, social, intellectual, and political process that takes place as a contest involving individuals and institutions in all societies. (qtd in Thorne 30)

Tariq Ali, a well known historian and analyst, alludes to the similar bifurcation in War against Terror:
[P]sychologically, the American Empire has constructed a new enemy: Islamic terrorism. Its practitioners are evil, the threat is global and, for that reason, bombs have to be dropped wherever and whenever necessary. (Ali xi)

This lingual gap is widened by the use of opposite pronouns. In the first place, these pronouns give birth to the cultural, ideological difference that furthers the difference of human beings distanced geographically from each other. Moreover, this difference needs a continuous re-interpretative process by the dominant group. Although this difference should be taken as the positive aspect as it evokes the spirit of sheer multiplicity of cultures and human existence but in war propaganda this same difference is buried down under the garb of monotonous, rigidly crafted two-dimensional form of ‘us’ and ‘them’. These lingual constructs make war realizable and acceptable.
Secondly, these pronouns act as the bugle call in war time, always reminding ‘us’ whom are we fighting with, always drawing a line of difference at linguistic plane. In War against Terrorism, America used this terminology to its exhaustive limits. Here ‘us’ stands for United States and its allies and ‘they’ stands for the terrorists and all who support them. US political rhetoric not only invokes this binary division but also hides the virtuality beneath the apparent self-evident difference of the US and Terrorist forces. The former US president George Bush recurrently uses this binary structure in many of his speeches e.g. “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” (“Address to the Nation”). In the same speech, he further elaborates: “Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them”. “We value every life; our enemies value none – not even the innocent, not even their own” (“September 11 Anniversary Address”). “They want to shake the will of civilized world” (“Update in the War on Terror”). “We are fighting the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and across the world so we do not have to face them here at home” (“Progress Report in the War on Terror”).
The above quotes, though delivered at different time span and different events during the reign of George Bush, yet what unites them is the over-emphatic and super sensational use of the distinctive pronouns i.e. ‘us’ and ‘them’. He juxtaposes the two positions with words as contradictory as freedom, fear, justice cruelty and thus the eternal symbols of good and bad.
Similarly, Barack Obama who claimed to have different strategies for the success of War against Terror during his election campaign appears to be asserting the same rhetoric of necessity. “We did not ask for this fight…they struck at our military and economic nerve centres. They took the lives of innocent men, women and children” (“Speech at West Point on Troop Increase in Afghanistan”). “They have got no respect for human life...the United States of America will always stand up for the security of nations and the dignity of human beings. That’s who we are (“Address to the Troops in Afghanistan”). “Al-Qaeda and their extremist allies are a threat to the people of Afghanistan and a threat to the people of America, but they’re also a threat to people all around the world” (“Address to the Troops in Afghanistan”). Thus this political rhetoric is a ‘unified text’– a text that is rooted in the stereotypical and static division of good and bad which draws a line between the ideology and action of the terrorist and the US forces. ‘They’ are the enemies of freedom, the evil, the threat, the danger, the insecurity to the world, whereas ‘we’ are the lovers of freedom, the good, and the fighters for the security of the world. Whether this lingual bifurcation between the two groups is based on reality or not, it surely gives name and identity to those who are fighting and more significantly it creates a strong distinction of the two fighting groups in the minds of the ordinary people.
Like pronouns, adjectives strengthen the verbal distance and formulate a hyper-real version of war. Basically pronouns give a desired identity to the combating forces and adjectives provide a description of those pronouns in a detailed way making them ever more real for the ones influenced by the rhetoric. In the use of adjective for propaganda, one side is portrayed as all good or rather the ‘super human’ whereas the other already alienated side is portrayed as all evil, and ‘sub human’. Super human or super man is the symbol of human excellence in almost all the fields of life. It stands for extraordinary humanitarian spirit and morality, where every single action is to save humanity from any incidental dangers to the most alarming situations in history.
Whereas, the sub human is a symbol of someone less than human, a person who not only is nuisance to mankind in its demeanor but also is a continuous obstruction and threat to life and progress of humanity. This linguistic division further intensifies when the enemy, the sub human is deliberately described through animal imagery, particularly those animals that live in the dark such as rats, snakes, wolves, bats etc. Their nocturnal way of living, man’s instinctive fear of darkness, and his urge to find a safe haven to dwell in, creates a clear distinction from human race. The process of portraying one side as good/superior and the other side as bad/inferior is called Manichaeanism, a clear example of which occurred during the Anglo-Boer war (1899-1902). In fact, in Boer War, people who rebelled the super-power of that time – British Empire, were portrayed as dirty, rat like sub humans, illogical, inane and cowardly. Not only the popular literature but pamphlets and newspapers of those times show this trait vividly. But more recently the same methodology was used in the Iraq War, during which Saddam Hussein was described as living in the ‘spider hole’. And finally when he was captured, media announced ‘Saddam caught like a rat’ or ‘he was in the bottom of a hole with no way to fight back’ (qtd in Thorne 93). Similarly, during the war in Afghanistan, the terrorists are described as living in the ‘dark corners’ of the world (“The War We Need to Win”). “We will stay on the hunt until justice is served and America is safe from attack (“Defending the War, July 9, 2004”). ‘These kind of people who blow up subways and buses are not people you can negotiate with, or reason with, or appease’ (“Progress Report in the War on Terror”). “We’ve got to have intelligence, good intelligence, to help us locate the dark corners of the world where these people hide” (“The War on Terror: At Home and Abroad”) “We recognize our greatest security is found in the relentless pursuit of these cold-blooded killers” (“Homeland Security Act”).
‘Hunt’, ‘dark corners’, ‘cold-blooded’ evoke the imagery of nocturnal animals providing the terrorists a persona of less civilized and more dangerous human beings. However, it is not argued here that terrorists are innocent, gentle human beings rather the point of observation is to recognize the extreme disparity between the way the so-called terrorists were described in the past (the freedom fighters, the Mujahideen) and the way they are presented now. It is unlikely that this shift in representation is a neutral, unbiased need of the hour. One of the many political motives that it serves is resurrection of the guilt conscience of people some how involved in the decision making process. The common person in the democratic environment feels relieved, resurrected from the guilt about a particular war as they are informed that only the devilish, bad and less than humans are killed. Ideologically, man considers himself the best of creation, therefore killing another human being means that one has killed the very best of what God created. The Adjectives used for describing certain human beings as sub humans or humans as bad as the animals living in the dark, unconsciously takes that burden off one’s mind. In such a scenario, the linguistic jargon of the good and bad, the super and sub human dominates human mind and instant guilt is removed.
The above quotes are just a few examples of how this particular discourse is successful in casting ‘they’ (the terrorist) as a totally different, opposite, less than human, group of people from ‘us’ (US and its allies). But this division cannot be completely analyzed as a form of traditional propaganda rather it also contains a very cunning use of virtual reality. In the previous wars, these ‘us’ and ‘them’ referred to a group of people bound and limited to a geographical boundary, which helped in two ways; first it gave the concreteness to the existence of the enemy and as one could comprehend their existence so it strengthened the ideological difference of two conflictive forces. But in this particular war, the enemy is the terrorist, who might have a single ideology of imposing the fundamentalist version of Islam on the world, but does not have a regional limitation. The terrorist might be present anywhere and can attack any part of the world. As the former President George W. Bush says in one of his speeches: “the choices we will face are complex. We must uncover terror cells in 60 or more countries, using every tool of finance, intelligence and law enforcement” (“Commencement Address at the United States Military Academy”).
Similar views have been expressed by the succeeding president at many occasions: “Al-Qaeda and their extremist allies are a threat to the people of Afghanistan and a threat to the people of America, but they’re also a threat to people all around the world” (“Address to the Troops in Afghanistan”). Thus regional fixity of the enemy is no more possible. The word terrorist does not end at those Al-Qaeda members who were there in Afghanistan after the attack on the Twin Towers but it is applicable to everyone who appears a threat to the home security of United States, which actually means that the terrorist does not signify a specific person, a group of people in a particular region, a certain organization that lives in some particular country, thus the word looses its significance as it does not denote a concrete reality and is reduced to a virtual reality: a reality that signifies something so unreal, vague and uncertain that instead of making the terrorist a tangible reality, it increases the sense of danger from the unknown and unknowable.
This new dimension in the description of the enemy also gives a new form to the modeling of war. If the enemy is infinitely present anywhere or everywhere then the efforts to stop him should continue at infinite temporal and spatial scale. In past, war was a regionally bound event and therefore people could easily feel the distinction or separation of war from the rest of the world. But modern form of war does not allow this demarcation. As the enemy’s presence is omniscient therefore the authorities are paradoxically ‘justified’ in operating indiscriminately and equally omnisciently. Apparently it is for the safety of the world, but in reality it makes the world a place always filled with the immense possibilities of destruction. The tangible reality of battlefield has evaporated into hyper-reality – ironically termed as operations. Even the literal meaning of the two words i.e. war and operation can reveal the shift from the reality principle to the irreal discourse.
In past, war meant all the uproar and sheer confusion of the action in battlefield. All the economic and political consequences depended on what ‘really’ happened in the battlefield between the two fighting forces. Hence the literal meaning of the word ‘war’ i.e. ‘confusion’ or to confuse seems to convey the signified reality of war. However, the modern word used in abundance in place of battle or war is ‘operation’. This word brings an analogy of an action that needs to be done urgently to save something. It also invokes an image of disease that needs to be cured for the health of a person being operated. It means that this change in the diction represents the assertive commanding role of the powerful. As the surgeon gets absolute freedom to operate the sick body for its own benefit similarly the impression that is shrewdly created is of necessity to operate a weaker, sick nation for its own betterment which actually contradicts the ground realities of a conflict. Therefore, one may say that the word used in the general discourse of war i.e operation does not represent the reality of the war rather is a reality of a simulation that is forced on the general perception to minimize and disguise the ‘horror’ under it.
Hence, the so-called operation going on in Afghanistan is the need of the hour not simply for other’s benefit but essentially for the benefit and the normal health of the country itself. Here it would be interesting to observe that the US launched two different types of operations on this much contaminated land for its purification; first, US launched an operation called Operation Enduring Freedom (initially called Operation Infinite Justice) independently on 7th October 2001 without UN authorization and on the other hand, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) consisting of NATO forces (majority of which is U.S and U.K. military) is supplying all its aid in order to rebuilt the destroyed and affected areas of Afghanistan from Dec 2001. The first operation is supposed to ‘hunt’ the terrorist and to weaken the Taliban by using all the man and artillery force in the country. And the other operation’s aim is to heal the unintended wounds on the civilians and to provide them opportunity of better education, health and other facilities. US way of waging war has been described in Doug Stanton’s Horse Soldiers:
Special Forces trained to do something different from everyone else. They fought guerrilla wars. This fighting was divided into phases: combat, diplomacy, and nation-building. They were trained to make war and provide humanitarian aid after the body count. They were both soldier and diplomat. (Stanton 29)

A rational analysis of this ‘combat’ and then ‘nation-building’ reveals no good will for the country operated rather a strong urge for absolute totalitarian control. This duality of the operations is the best example of the totalitarian aims of the virtual system. In order to understand it, one needs to observe the structure and the function of Twin Towers. The two towers are a symbol of power that the capitalist system holds over every other reality of the world. As was evident in New York, the two towers were the highest buildings over-shadowing all the other buildings in the city. The structure of Twin Towers signifies that monopoly is complete when it is binary like the structure of DNA, every chromosome has a double of its own and therefore it becomes complete, needless of any intruder. The two towers facing each other, standing in opposite direction, exacting alike removes the sense of reality in the real world as no one can tell which one was made first and which is the copy of the original. The obvious difference of the other buildings create an impact that none of the other can compete with the two. The competition is not only impossible but also needless (Hegarty 106-109).
Similarly, the two operations on a single land involve the same structure and function. It symbolizes the complete monopoly of power, which means that ‘we’ have a double role to play; to kill or rather operate the evil in the land and to save and reform life. Apparently, it brings out the good will of the army that wants to re-construct the area they unwillingly destroyed, but underneath it, it actually means that no intruder is welcome because ‘we’ are doing everything, and nobody can come and proclaim to have a better plan than ‘ours’. The only consequence of such a duality is total, unquestioned control and destruction. Philip Knightley points out:
The way wars are reported in the Western media follows a depressingly predictable pattern: stage one, the crisis; stage two, the demonisation of the enemy’s leader […]; stage three, the demonization of enemy as individuals; and stage four, atrocities. (qtd in Thorne 93)

Moreover, Stephen Blank, the principal expert on Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Eastern Europe at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute suggests:
[A]n ingenious method of imposing U.S. hegemony is now being pursued in the form of peacekeeping missions. Because an open military-backed diplomatic confrontation with U.S. rivals, such as Russia, China and others, remains dangerous and therefore inappropriate, U.S. policy is to find ways of implementing the “functional equivalent… i.e. peace operations.” (Ahmad 71)

Hence war is replaced by its ‘functional equivalent’ i.e. peace operation. However, this functional equivalent controls absolutely by making its realization through discourse an impossible endeavour. It would not be wrong to call this functional equivalent ‘pure war’. Even the basic definition of Terrorism helps in elaborating this ‘pure war’. Terrorism is defined in US code and army manuals as “the calculated use of violence, or the threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature…through intimidation, coercion or instilling fear” (qtd in Chomsky, “The Journalist from Mars”).
Observed objectively, this definition might entitle US itself as the terrorist force for its interferences with other countries. As Tariq Ali says, “there is a US military presence in 120 of the 189 member states of the United Nations” (Ali xi). Then what can be a more accurate way of looking at the concept of ‘Terrorism’. Looking at the present and the past strategies and actions of US foreign policy, Noam Chomsky attempts at providing a more appropriate definition, “Terrorism [is] that they carry against us, whoever we happen to be” (“The Journalist from Mars”).
If one forgets for a moment, the utter vagueness found otherwise in the basic definition of terrorism and looks at the political incantation about the dangers of terrorism then surely terrorist and the activities of terrorism are a clear opposite of what US and its aims stands for. According to George W. Bush in a speech of 20th Sep 2001:
They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions—by abandoning every value except the will to power—they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism…This group and its leader – a person named Osama bin Laden – are linked to many other organizations in different countries, including the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries. They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan, where they are trained in the tactics of terror. They are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction.’(“Address to the Nation”)

“We understand the nature of the enemy. We understand they hate us because of what we love” (“Homeland Security Act”). “Our wider goal is to promote hope and progress as the alternatives to hatred and violence.” (“Address to the United Nations”)
The projection of Terrorism as opposite of the strategies and actions of US hides this essential reality that what the self-proclaimed righteous side is doing might also be as bad as terrorism itself. It distinguishes ‘our’ activity as not-terrorism, thereby defining our normality of life. It conceals the fact that, whether there is any war or not, the Advanced Capitalist system would, in any case make man its inevitable victim. One such example is Willy Loman, the protagonist of The Death of a Salesman, who appears less a failure of unaccomplished individual desires but more of a ruthless, cold, inhuman system of control. The insanity from which Willy Loman suffers, is not an individual’s insanity, it is the product of society of which he is an insignificant part. Thus Virtual War hides the insanity and schizophrenic character of that society and bestows it with the attire of false sanity. Moreover, the meta narrative of Terrorism is influential as it hides a basic reality; the reality that the violent situation and instability present in different parts of the world might be actually solved by looking at the scenario from a new, a different perspective. The root cause of the problem faced might be multiple, regional, relative and temporary rather than universal, absolute, permanent. E.g. the initial aims of Al-Qaeda organization was to attain political control and take away the power that autocracy exercises in Saudi Arabia. Lyotard, while rejecting the meta narratives, emphasizes:
The best we can hope for is a series of ‘mininarratives’, which are provisional, contingent, temporary, and relative and which provide a basis for the actions of specific groups in particular local circumstances. (Barry 87) 
The above described lingual constructs make the political rhetoric about War in Afghanistan one of the most influential grand narratives of 21st Century. The primary effect of this grand narrative in the course of war is ‘loss of resistance’ from the people. The grand narrative influences in two ways at global level. At one level, the traditional tools of propaganda bring an apparent clarity to the minds affected by the rhetoric, while they listen to the rhetoric they believe what they hear or read or see, and thus any sense of responsibility for what ever happens in the operated areas diminishes. At another level, virtual reality mingled with the traditional rhetoric, replaces the version of truth. What is actually happening in Afghanistan since 2001 is not signified in the political rhetoric and therefore the actuality becomes insignificant, the world perceives the ‘change’ through media; what they read in newspaper, or what they see on Television, or what they hear from those elected people who rule and govern this ‘change’.
Thus the result is that all that is signified through language becomes the actual for human mind. At this point another question that might rise is that if human society depends on and is dominated by the hyper-real then where stands the reality of those who claim to have the first hand experience of war and are considered liable to bring into discourse their personal records? Or in other words what the people generally believe or see might be a formulated version, a hyper-real truth but those killed or injured in a suicide bombing, or soldiers killed in an operation, or the civilians killed by some mistake, these people might say that what they experienced was the truth or reality of war. The whimsical pleasure that a White man may feel at being the savior of the world might be a hyper-real construct but the pain one feels at being shot in an operation can be the most real thing. The answer to this ambivalent question lies not in the rhetoric or the over-loaded claims of righteousness of the mission but in the structure of modern war. The globalization and the inter-dependence of one country over another in many ways make the actual confrontation of two countries in battlefield impossible. In place of actual war, the structure that has replaced war is ‘symbolic violence. One does not wage war; one indulges in ‘dialogue’, ‘discussions’ or ‘peace operations’. Similarly the force one rebukes will not respond according to the old war principles rather it will respond through hi-jacking, hostages, suicide bombing in short Terrorism. Hence, terrorism can be studied as a response and a result of the new political sensibility. Therefore during the fight between two giant sized elephants of modern war and terrorism, individual testimony stands as small ants – always crushed down to the bottom but still remains unnoticed. On the other hand, the symbolic power exercised in modern conflicts and terrorist attacks, is actually more dangerous than any war in the past because it always moves in unilateral direction; which means it always benefits the Advanced Capitalist system, as it confers infinite power (Hegarty 74-95). The symbolic violence is more dangerous exactly because previous wars were finite in their structure and aims whereas in this kind of war, the structure of war and the aims are infinite. This infinity not only helps in justifying bloodshed at gigantic level but also always contains the possibility of expanding the destruction level. After the invasion of Afghanistan since 2001, the former and the current US presidents emphasized that US intervention in Afghanistan helped in establishing the first successful and functional democracy in the country yet a 31 year old activist and politician named Malalai Joya who fought the Taliban forces bravely and with full courage has something else to say about the kind of democracy US helped in establishing.

“My message on behalf of my people to [the] great American people is that democracy never comes by barrel of gun, by cluster bomb, by war…They say war of Iraq is bad war, war of Afghanistan is good war, while both are war” (“Afghanistan: Women of Influence”)… “The Western media talks about democracy and the liberation of Afghanistan, but the US and its allies are engaged in the warlordization, criminalization and drug-lordization of our wounded land” (“U.S. Has Returned Fundamentalism to Afghanistan”).

Thus symbolic violence or the new form of warfare is a cold, inhuman way of transforming a particular region into an eternal inferno. Apparently US claims to be involved in the reconstruction of Afghanistan but underneath this futile rhetoric, there is extreme naivety of imposition and hegemony. The damage done in this war might be ever more than any other war but the hyper reality created through the political narrative about it hinders a better understanding and greater plan of action.
“Nonetheless, no matter how virtual or insignificant this war is shown on the whole, the sheer physical damage to the infra structure, economic upheaval, political instability and cultural hegemony is no less than any actual war in the past rather it is worse than ever before. The dual function of virtual war is that in the name of some harmless operation it causes more harm in every possible manner and simultaneously with the use of other institutions it creates a hyper-reality about the ‘operation’ to create a passive, receptive and conforming attitude in the people of his so-called civilized world.” (Ashraf 102)

Works Cited

Ahmad, Nafeez Mosaddeq. The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11th, 2001. California: Media Messenger Books, 2002.
Ali, Tariq. The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity. London: Verso, 2002.
Ashraf, Ana. Preponderance of Simulacra in Modern Times: An Analysis of American Virtual War in Afghanistan. Diss. Lap Lambert Academic Publishing House, Saarbrucken, 2012. Print
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. New York: Manchester University Press, 1995.
Bush, W. George. “Progress in Afghanistan and Iraq”, Washington DC, July 1, 2003. Presidentialrhetoric. Web. 2010.
---. “September 11 Anniversary Address”, New York, Sep 11, 2002. Presidentialrhetoric. Web. 2010.
---. “Update in the War on Terror”, Washington DC, Sep 7, 2003. Presidentialrhetoric. Web. 2010.
---. “Progress Report in the War on Terror: Address at the FBI Academy”, Quantico, Virginia, July 11, 2005. Presidentialrhetoric. Web. 2010.
---. “Defending the War”, Kuztown, PA, July 9, 2004. Presidentialrhetoric. Web. 2010.
---.“The War on Terror: At Home and Abroad”, Kansas State University: Manhattan, Kansas, January 23, 2006. Presidentialrhetoric. Web. 2010.
---. “Homeland Security Act”, Washington DC, November 25, 2002. Presidentialrhetoric. Web. 2010.
---. “Address to the Nation”, Washington DC, Sep 20, 2001. Presidentialrhetoric. Web. 2010.
---. “Address to the United Nations”, New York, September 21, 2004. Presidentialrhetoric. Web. 2010.
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Hegarty, Paul. Jean Baudrillard: Live Theory. London: Continuum, 2004.
Joya, Malalai, “U.S. Has Returned Fundamentalism to Afghanistan”, University of Los Angeles, April 10, 2007. Thirdworldtraveler. Web. 2010.
Obama, Barack. “Commencement Address at West Point Military Academy”, Michie Stadium, West Point, New York, May 22, 2010. Americanrhetoric, Web. 2010.
…, “The War We Need to Win”, The Woodrow Wilson Centre for Scholars, Washington DC, 1 august, 2006. Americanrhetoric. Web. 2010.
…, “Speech at West Point on Troop Increase in Afghanistan”, Eisenhower Hall, West Point Military Academy, New York, I Dec, 2009. Americanrhetoric. Web. 2010.
…, “Address to the Troops in Afghanistan”, Clamshell, Bagram Air Field, 28 March 2010. Americanrhetoric. Web. 2010.
…, “Presidential Inaugural Address”, 20 Jan 2009. Americanrhetoric. Web. 2010.
Stanton, Doug. Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan. London: Simon & Schuster, 2009.
Thorne, Steve. Language of War.  London: Routledge, 2006.

*    All the texts of the given speeches have been taken from the following websites:
www.americanrhetoric.com
www.PresidentialRhetoric.com