Mission Accomplished

Bush’s Mission Accomplished banner created the sort of narrative that Hayden White theorized in The Value of Narrativity. The narrative that the banner creates is challenged though, when the War in Iraq presents a reality that is in direct contradiction to the narrative presented.

On May 1st, 2003 President Bush appeared on the aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln to give a speech that delivered the message that, “major combat operations in Iraq have ended" (Bush). During his speech, there was a banner that hung behind him with the words “Mission Accomplished,” printed on an American flag background that later became an ironic depiction of the Iraq War and the War on Terror. At the time of the speech, the banner represented the violence of the War on Terror and through this representation, created a narrative that attempted to control the American public’s perception of this war. The Mission Accomplished banner implicated a plot to the War on Terror; it focused on the end of this chronology and then defined that end as successful. This narrative was upturned, though, when after the banner was hung, thousands of people died because of the war in the Middle East, offering an undeniable reality that was in direct contradiction to the narrative presented. These deaths, although bringing attention to the contrast, only contributed to the conflict between the narrative created and the reality that challenged it that had begun before these lives were lost.

The implication of a plot presented is the first narrative aspect that does not coincide with the reality of a War on Terror. The banner creates a narrative with an implied beginning and middle that occurred prior to when the “Mission Accomplished” speech. In his paper, The Value of Narrativity and its Representation, Hayden White asks, “Does the world really present itself to perception in the form of the well-made stories, with central subjects, proper beginnings, middles and ends..?” (White). In attempt to act as reality, the banner creates a story that possess a beginning, middle and end. Although this chronology is questioned by White, the narrative as a “well-made” story offers logic to a war that does not make sense. In Bush’s speech under the Mission Accomplished banner, he reaffirms the presentation of a plot by recounting events from 9/11, discussing the actions that the United States military took to fight terrorism, and then expressing the success that warranted his appearance on the USS Abraham Lincoln (Bush). He emphasized “in these last 19 months” which offered a time frame to the plot presented of the War on Terror with 9/11 acting as the beginning, military action as the middle and “Mission Accomplished” at the end of this story (Bush).

The construction of a narrative for a war on a conceptual idea is problematic first in the fact that, grammatically speaking, one cannot declare war on an abstract noun. “Terrorism [...] is an epistemological object in modern society" (Asad). This war, then, does not adhere to logic and cannot be marked with beginnings and ends. The declaration of the War on Terror was grammatically incorrect, but the mark of a beginning and the display of an end is also impossible to accurately convey due to the fact that terror cannot be grounded or conquered. This logic is often left unanalyzed and ignored, especially when a story can appear to offer alternate, chronological logic. The banner is able to create a narrative that controls the War on Terror by forcing it into a plotted story where plots should not exist. Negation continues when focus is concentrated on specific aspects of a narrative. The banner attempts to, “present itself to the perception in the form of a well-made story,” and although this attempt should be in idle, the narrative that this banner creates offers a “...coherence that permits us to see ‘the end’ in every beginning" (White).

The logic that with every beginning, there will be an end, causes importance and focus to be concentrated on endings rather than anything prior. The emphasis that the banner puts on the end of its story and on the patriotism of the mission controls perceptions by disallowing for contrasting events in the narrative. This focus works inside of the narrative to “distinguish between those real events worthy of being recorded and those unworthy of it…” (White) In the presentation of the two words “Mission Accomplished,” the banner is able to communicate that the end is what is of utmost importance to the narrative that it has created. This focus on the end omits anything else that has happened, making the only existent aspects of the story to be what the narrative mentions or implies making them “real” by default. The word “accomplished,” used in the past tense offers little room for the story presented to be rewritten. The use of the past tense of this word suggests that this entire narrative took place at another time, a place in the past that cannot be changed and is justified under the logic of natural law (Benjamin). Whatever the mission was, its means were presented as moral because its ends included patriotically fighting an enemy that caused terror. The banner also coincides with Westernized logic when addressing the mission: “The only difference is that today liberals who engage in this justification think they are different because they are morally advanced" (Asad). The background of the banner is an American Flag, illuminating patriotism, thus adhering to the logic of the American public that the mission must be justified if America is involved. This assists in the negation of the events that were deemed “unworthy” to be included in this narrative because it does not allow for American fault to exist in its story. The narrative of the banner, in its focus on a patriotic end against terrorism, allows for the exclusion of aspects that are too easily dismissed when considering the history and events that took place outside of the “Mission Accomplished” narrative.

The banner omits anything that occurred before the ending of its narrative, including U.S. involvement and the lives lost in relation to the “mission.” Although the banner ignores many things, one event that addresses extreme conflict between the narrative and the “unworthy” reality is America's aid to Saddam Hussein in 1988. “Saddam’s cruelties were certainly his own, but the fact that the United States supplied him with vital military intelligence in his aggressive war [...] complicates the question of culpability-if culpability is to be assigned"(Asad). The construction of this narrative completely ignores any event that may have led up to the mission while the patriotism that it presents negates any kind of American culpability. The narrative of the banner does assign culpability, but it is assigned to “an enemy of this country" (Bush). The negation of U.S. responsibility in relation to the initial cause of a mission is echoed in Bush’s speech when he says, “Any person, organization or government that supports, protects or harbors terrorists is complicit to the murder of the innocent and is equally guilty of terrorist crimes" (Bush). This denunciation is made under the pretense that the U.S. was never involved in the support of terrorists while condemning any other group that is. The banner written in past tense allows for whatever was committed before to be excused, while the speech made in the present, communicates that it is now a sin. The narrative works hard to omit American responsibility while passing it off to others. The focus on the end of its story also allows for the exclusion of lives lost in the accomplishment of the mission. Since the focus of the banner is on the accomplished mission rather than the mission itself, it does not address the people who died. “The reality of these events does not consist with the fact that they occurred but that, first of all, they were remembered and second, that they are capable of finding a place in a chronologically ordered sequence" (Hayden). Although there were people from multiple countries that died during this mission, the narrative presented does not allow death to find a place in the chronology. With the banner presenting a simplified plot that focuses only on an accomplished end of the War on Terror, there is no room for the lost lives. There is no room in the picture of this event either. The picture of Bush giving his speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln with the banner behind him also includes soldiers that were deployed in Iraq, but not much else (Applewhite) This image literally has no room to depict anything but success in the frame; there is no shot of the families whose loved ones have died, but instead only the President who never actually fought in a war and the soldiers who were still able to stand in the background. The photograph helps to depict the atmosphere that the banner intended to create and allows for the narration of U.S. success to continue for the time being.

In the narrative created, the banner was able to define its concentrated end as successful. The statement, “Mission Accomplished” leaves little room for anything but success to be communicated and the accomplishment is reiterated by Bush, when in his speech, he says that the U.S. is, “proud of this accomplishment...it is you, the members of the United States military, who achieved it" (Bush). The end of this narrative being defined as successful controls the general public’s perception of the War on Terror by acting as if defeating terror is something that can be accomplished and that the United States achieved this. This aspect of the narrative created is one that has already been discussed but is illuminated in the banner’s communication of a successful end. With any story, a definitive ending allows the audience to proceed to another narrative, offering the chance to move on. This ending, with the narrative’s focus on terrorism starting with 9/11 and ending with success over the terrorist enemies, seemed to allow the audience space to finally think about things other than terrorism now that the United States has succeed. Other things could be talked about, new stories could unfold. Although this may have seemed beneficial to the state at the time the banner was hung, the reality that followed destroyed the narrative that the banner had created.

An ending to a narrative that was attempting to present itself as reality is problematic “...for we cannot say, surely, that any sequence of real events actually comes to an end, that reality itself disappears…” (White). There were many problems with the narrative created, but the definitive end as successful allowed for it to be destroyed. After the banner was hung, over 4,000 of United States soldiers died in combat in Iraq and 149,053 Iraqi civilians, as of 2015 (Rifkin). This massive loss directly contradicted with the narrative that the banner created by demonstrating the endlessness of the war. The “Mission Accomplished” narrative’s attempt at reality fell apart when the contradictory facts could no longer be ignored. Unlike the other aspects of the narrative, like the grammar of the War on Terror, that were illogical but ignorable, the extreme loss of life due to the war had to be acknowledged. The public recognition of the loss upturned the narrative of the banner and brought into question the aspects of the War on Terror that the narrative was attempting to control. This new reality forced the banner to only be perceived as ironic because it could no longer account or attempt to explain the violence of the War on Terror. In his speech, Bush ended by saying, “May God continue to Bless America" (Bush). While the Iraq War continued until 2011 and soldiers were sent to die in a mission that was already deemed accomplished, this blessing seemed ironic as well. “Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected" (Fussell). The War on Terror should have been anticipated to be as terrible as it is when considering it is a war on a undefeatable concept. But in attempt to control the perception of the war, the narrative distracted from this actual reality and acted as a way to emphasize the irony in representing incomprehensible violence. The War on Terror, although presented as accomplished in 2001, continues because despite the efforts of narratives and war, terror cannot be controlled.

The reality that this narrative attempted to create was destroyed when events occurred in actual reality. This brings up the question of what “actual reality” is when there are so many narratives in circulation. This is not to say that the lives lost were simply a story, but the narrative of the banner was not upturned until there were events that were more realistic that could not be ignored. The narrative that the banner created was a tool used by the state as a way to control the American public’s perception of the War on Terror and although this story was clearly contradicted, there are many that are not. Until the deaths of thousands of people, this narrative was a powerful tool to communicate. Since the banner was hung, communication has become easier to access, and presidents have used it as a tool to talk to the public in order to create a reality that corresponds to their agenda. “In every society various techniques are developed [that are] intended to fix floating chains of signifiers in such a way as to counter the terror of uncertain signs. But [...] that authority seeks sometimes to eliminate uncertainty in signs at the other times to create it" (Asad). In Trump's recent tweet, of the celebration of the strike on Syria, he seriously said "A perfectly executed strike last night… Mission Accomplished!” (Trump). This is one of many ridiculous ways he, as the president, chooses to create stories. With his narratives like his label on liberal news as “Fake News” or investigation of colluding with Russia as a “Witch Hunt,” he is able to use his platform to create stories that reach millions of people, and although many are clearly contradicted by logic and realistic events, some of his narratives are in circulation that have the power to present a kind of reality to millions of people. Narratives, in general, are effective tools that can be utilized in many different ways, but as seen in the “Mission Accomplished” banner, they can be used as a way to defy logic, ignore responsibility and lost lives, and lie to the people who rely on them.

References

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Applewhite, J. Scott. “US News.” US News, 1 May 2013, www.usnews.com/news/blogs/press-past/203/05/01/the-other-symbol-of-george-w-bushs-legacy.

Asad, Talal. “Terrorism.” On Suicide Bombing, Columbia University Press, 2007.

Benjamin, Walter. “Critique of Violence.” Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, Schocken Books, 2007.

Bush, George W. “Mission Accomplished.” 1 May 2003, San Diego, USS Abraham Lincoln.

Fussell, Paul. “A Satire of Circumstance.” The Great War and Modern Memory , The Folio Society, 2014.

Rifkin, Jesse. “ ‘Mission Accomplished' Was 12 Years Ago Today. What's Been The Cost Since Then?” The  Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 2 May 2015, huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/01/iraq-war-mission-accomplished_n_7191382.html.

White, Hayden. The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.