Rationalizing Success in the U.S. War in Afghanistan

Abstract

The US war in Afghanistan Continued for two decades. For twenty years, four American presidents presided over the US intervention in Afghanistan, and everyone had his definition of success. Donald Trump was the one on whose watch the US-Taliban peace accord was signed which sparked the chain of events that ultimately led to the status quo in Afghanistan. This current research aims to identify how Donald Trump justified/rationalized success in Afghanistan. Towards that goal, a Critical Discourse Analysis of Trump’s speeches is conducted to analyze the type of language that is used to construct the notion of success in the war of Afghanistan. A critical analysis of the discourse of the 45th US president shows that Donald Trump in two distinct phases employs two types of languages to justify the success of his course of actions in Afghanistan. In the first phase, he persists on the continuation of US commitment to Afghanistan and its government in the fight against terrorists which include the Taliban and rationalizes success as eliminating terrorism in the country. In the second period, the American president silence the fact of Taliban being a terrorist group portrays them as nonterrorist, silences the Afghanistan government and its people in his discourse, hence justifying success as reaching a political agreement with the Taliban which result in the withdrawal of US military from the country.