Rhetoric and literary criticism

The rhetoric of American foreign policy contains commonplaces which both justify and obscure policy. An adequate critical response to such discourse requires an understanding of two prevailing argumentative forms. The arguments are examined in relation to Vietnam, but their use in a variety of interventions, incursions, and wars since then makes them more than an historical curiosity. This essay seeks the ground of foreign policy rhetoric as well as the ideological context wherein this ground is defined and made to appear natural.