Moral muting in US newspaper op-eds debating the attack on Iraq

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Moral muting in US newspaper op-eds debating the attack on Iraq Douglas V. Porpora and Alexander Nikolaev DISCOURSE & COMMUNICATION 2008 2: 165 DOI: 10.1177/1750481307088482 The online version of this article can be found at: http://dcm.sagepub.com/content/2/2/165

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ARTICLE

Porpora and Nikolaev: Moral muting in US newspaper op-eds 165

Moral muting in US newspaper op-eds debating the attack on Iraq

DOUGLAS V. PORPORA AND ALEXANDER NIKOLAEV

Discourse & Communication Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications. (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) www.sagepublications.com Vol 2(2): 165–184 10.1177/1750481307088482

DREXEL UNIVERSITY, USA

A B S T R A C T This article examines a distinct form of moral argumentation found to be common in a corpus of 500 editorials and opinion pieces written in 23 US newspapers and news magazines between August and October 2002 debating whether or not the US should attack Iraq. The purpose of the article is to delineate this communicative phenomenon, which we call moral muting. Moral muting occurs when a message either blunts the moral considerations involved in a case or presents an equivocal moral meaning. Moral muting overlaps with but is distinct from mitigation, and even when it involves mitigation, moral muting depends on devices that go beyond those generally associated with conversational mitigation. The examination of moral muting offered here contributes to a better understanding of moral communication in general and of the conduct of the American public sphere. KEY WORDS:

editorials, ethics, Iraq, mitigation, moral discourse, morality

This article examines newspaper editorials and opinion pieces (hereafter op-eds) written in 2002 debating the US decision to attack Iraq. The purpose of this article is to describe an important communicative phenomenon observable in this corpus that has heretofore gone without scholarly attention. We call this phenomenon moral muting. A muted communication is one that is subdued, not loud or distinct enough to be received clearly. Moral muting occurs when a communication blunts the moral considerations involved in a case, sometimes even subverting or disguising the communication’s own moral message. Moral muting is related to mitigation (see Caffi, 1999; Fraser, 1980; Martinowski et al., 2005), particularly the ideological mitigation described by Van Dijk (1997, 2000), and to indirect moralizing (Luckmann, 1997), but moral muting is distinct from both. Clearly,

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too, the very concept of moral muting owes something to muted speaker theory (see, for example, Ardener, 1975). In the case of moral muting, however, what is muted is not the voice of a specific social position but an entire register. Whether or not the moral register is invoked has to do with how an argument is framed. Moral muting often produces a blurred frame that dampens or distances moral reasoning. Intentionally or unintentionally, in the corpus examined here, moral muting functions largely as what Van Dijk (2000) terms an ‘ideological discourse structure’. Discussion of moral muting opens up for study an area of communication that has been seriously neglected: moral communication. Moral communication is not the same as communication ethics, which does receive considerable attention. Communication ethics concerns the ethics of a communicative process, whether or not the content communicated relates to ethics. In contrast, moral communication refers to the communication of specifically moral content, that is, moral judgments. Thus, in studying moral communication, we are studying distinctly moral discourse. Moral muting is particularly consequential when, as here, it shows up in the public sphere. The public sphere can be understood as an institutionalized site – or sites – of public, citizen discourse operating between the state and market. Ideally, in the public sphere, citizens from all levels of the social hierarchy abandon their official ranks to come together as equals to discuss and debate the national interest. According to Habermas (1989), whereas public opinion polls register only passive, pre-reflective distributions of attitudes, the very practice of argument in the public sphere is a process of collective will formation. Thus, according to Habermas, in the process of rational public argument, a citizenry develops what Rousseau called a ‘general will’, making the public sphere an important steering mechanism for democracy. If something like the public sphere is critical to the democratic process – as even critics of the concept concede (see Fraser, 1980) – then it is equally critical to understand how the public sphere deliberates. Op-eds are one of the central forums that constitute the public sphere. As Gamson and Modigliani (1989) say of the media generally, op-eds both reflect public opinion and help shape it. The op-eds examined here were all written between 15 August and 15 October 2002. August 2002 was when the administration of President George W. Bush first announced publicly that it was contemplating war with Iraq. The 10 October was when Congress authorized the president to use force against Iraq. The study thus covers the important period of public debate preceding the Congressional vote. To be selected for inclusion, an op-ed had to contain somewhere in the full text the words ‘Iraq’ and ‘war’ and contain as well some commentary on the war. With these criteria, 500 op-eds were drawn from 23 newspapers and news magazines, spanning the political spectrum from conservative to liberal and including both secular and religious publications. The elite publications included New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, WSJ, Time, and Newsweek. Prominent

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regional papers included Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Denver Post, Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, Tampa Tribune and Times Picayune. Well-known conservative publications included Christianity Today, Weekly Standard, and National Review. Two secular left publications included were Nation and American Prospect. Religious left publications included the Jewish Tikkun, the Catholic Commonweal, and Protestant Christian Century. Outside the religious press within this corpus, moral discourse was avoided both quantitatively and qualitatively. In quantitative terms, the elite press in particular tended to avoid moral discourse at what might be considered both the macro- and micro-levels of text (see Van Dijk, 1985). At the macro-level, only 15 percent of pieces in the elite press made arguments that overall could be considered clearly and exclusively moral – in contrast with 45 percent clearly and exclusively prudential; 20 percent morally and prudentially mixed; and 20 percent morally indistinct (see Nikolaev and Porpora, 2007). At the microlevel as well, individual points of a moral or legal nature – such as references to international law, civilian casualties, and just war theory – were sparse in the elite press and found frequently only in the religious press. The avoidance of morality within this corpus was not, however, just quantitative in nature; not limited, that is, to the comparative infrequency of moral argument in the mainstream and particularly elite press. The avoidance was also qualitative in nature, affecting even how arguments were constructed. This qualitative aspect of moral avoidance, which forms the subject of this article, is what we are specifically calling moral muting. The major task of this paper then is twofold: i) to document the occurrence of moral muting; and ii) to delineate the discursive devices through which it is produced.

Moral versus prudential discourse Before we can understand how the voice of morality becomes muted, it is necessary to understand what the moral voice is like when fully expressed. Unfortunately, in the pursuit of this question, we are largely on our own. Aside from a few isolated studies (Funk, 2003; Gauthier, 1963; Habermas, 1989; Hart, 2001; Lakoff, 2002; Luckmann, 1997; Wallis, 2005), attention to moral discourse has been sparse (Craig, 2000). We know how moral argumentation proceeds among professional philosophers and theologians. As yet, we know little about how moral argument proceeds in popular discourse. Still, although space does not permit us to develop fully the distinction between moral and prudential discourse, enough can be said for the purposes at hand. Prudential discourse involves reasoning oriented toward actors’ own well-being. As such, prudential discourse is i) egocentric; ii) instrumental; and iii) oriented toward contingencies. The egocentricity of prudential discourse does not necessarily imply anything untoward, only that it is to actors’ own selfinterest that prudential argument appeals. Where the actor in question is the nation, it is to national self-interest that argument appeals. The instrumental aspect of prudential discourse refers to what Weber (1997) called Zweck rationality,

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which concerns means and ends. Specifically, instrumental discourse evaluates the effectiveness of different means to accomplish some end that is not itself in question. Among other things, such evaluation involves comparing what each action will cost the actor against its likely benefits. It is this weighing of costs against benefits that orients prudential discourse around contingencies. Actions advised in prudential discourse are contingent upon favorable ratios of benefits to costs. In short, prudential discourse addresses means and ends, couched in the language of contingent costs and benefits to some specific actor, possibly an entire nation. In illocutionary terms, prudential discourse takes such characteristic forms as instruction – in cases where there is a codified procedure – or advice, where there is not (Gauthier, 1963). The tone of such speech acts is normally dispassionate, although it can become shrill in the face of looming catastrophe, when prudential discourse becomes exhortation. In cases of exhortation, however, especially when there is an implication of irrationality or dereliction of duty, prudential discourse merges with the normative (Gauthier, 1963). An example is the way liberal critics of the Bush administration often wield the word ‘incompetence’ as if it carried moral weight. Moral discourse adopts what philosophers sometimes call the ‘moral point of view’ (Baier, 1965; Frankena, 1973), which, as here in the case of war, may also encompass legal considerations of a moral nature (Frankena, 1973; Habermas, 1998). In contrast with prudential discourse, discourse taking a moral (or legal) point of view is normative. Normative thinking, a form of what Weber (1997) called Wert or values rationality, is not calculative, not concerned with means and ends but, rather, with affirmation of or conformity to certain values or principles. For example, one does not typically refrain from murder or adultery in order to accomplish some further end. Rather, conformity to such moral norms is an end in itself. Within moral discourse, an important distinction inheres between utilitarian and deontological forms of argument. Moral utilitarianism frames arguments in terms of what serves the ‘greater good’. Bush’s claim that ‘the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein’ is of this type. In contrast, deontological considerations stipulate moral requirements, that is, what morally (or legally) must or must not be done. The legality of a unilateral attack on Iraq is a deontological consideration. Where deontological considerations are thought to hold, which may be a matter of dispute, they are independent of consequences. Thus, from a deontological perspective, there are some means – in the modern period until recently, torture indisputably would have been one – that no ends can morally justify. Because they present what are moral requirements or constraints, in the hierarchy of moral discourse, deontological judgments enjoy a prima facie precedence over considerations of moral utility. Certainly, considerations of moral utility can sometimes override normal deontological requirements like legality, but, even then, such cases require a moral argument to that effect. Without further argument, for example, an illegal means is not justified by the mere worthiness

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of the end. Thus, even when overridden, discursive deference must be paid to deontological considerations; they cannot simply be ignored. Whether utilitarian or deontological, moral discourse further differs from prudential discourse in being impersonal or non-egoistic. Actors discussing the morally right thing to do are no longer asking how costly or beneficial alternative actions are to themselves. Thus, when as above, Bush claims the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, he is citing the interests of the world as a whole rather than the specific interests of the USA. Because conformity to moral norms is an end in itself, moral reasoning, as Kant (1998) observed, is categorical rather than contingent on personal costs and benefits. If actors are observant of certain moral norms, then they consider those moral norms binding on them regardless of personal cost. Where the stakes in some prudential interest far exceed the import of some minor moral norm, prudence may outweigh moral considerations. Again, however, absent argument to that effect, the binding nature of moral norms or values means that, prima facie, moral considerations override or trump considerations of a purely prudential nature. Were prudence not so subordinate to moral principles, moral principles could hardly be considered binding, could hardly be considered principles at all. Indeed, charges of hypocrisy adduce just that. The overriding nature of morality – and this is crucial to the analysis here – means that the pertinence of moral considerations ought to change the register of discussion from the merely prudential to the moral. Where moral considerations apply, an issue can no longer properly be debated purely in terms of self-interest. It must also be shown that any action contemplated is also morally justifiable – or at least not morally impermissible. Properly, therefore, where moral considerations apply, prudential discourse becomes subordinate to moral discourse. Where such subordination fails to occur, some form of moral muting is in operation. Whereas the characteristic illocutionary act of prudential discourse is advice, the characteristic illocutionary act of moral discourse is counsel or – when stronger – commendation and remonstration. Counsel is not the same as advice. We counsel rather than advise someone to tell the truth – unless we specifically mean to imply some prudential consequence such as the avoidance of perjury (Gauthier, 1963). To counsel is to acquaint or instruct actors on the moral considerations and especially the moral requirements pertaining to their case independent of those actors’ interests (Gauthier, 1963). Among such considerations are what might be called ‘moral facts’. Merely to categorize an action as cruel, dishonest, or illegal, for example, is to make a forceful moral case against that action as ‘factually’ wrong (Gauthier, 1963). The mere invocation of such labels, moreover, can alter the tone of discussion, giving it a characteristic exhortatory nature as in moral remonstration. In contrast with prudential discourse then, moral discourse is i) normative; ii) impersonal or non-egoistic; and iii) categorical rather than contingent on personal costs and benefits. Moral discourse is more characteristically exhortatory than prudential discourse and, even when not, takes the form of counsel rather than advice. Given the binding nature of moral considerations, prima facie,

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moral discourse takes precedence over prudential discourse. Within the corpus under examination here, a few pieces had such characteristics and can serve as examples. So without proof of the seriousness or the imminence of an Iraqi attack and . . . The United States may still stumble into a war that is evil and unjust and in which thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of people will die horrible deaths. (Greeley, 2002: 41) The Bush administration’s plan for preemptive war against Iraq so flagrantly violates both international law and common morality that we need a real national debate. (Zinn, 2002: A11) Our nation now finds itself on the verge of initiating war against another sovereign nation. We have not been attacked by Iraq, and we have thus far failed to produce convincing evidence that Iraq has aided, or plans to aid, those who have attacked us. If we go to war, we will be the initiators of aggression. (Brewer, 2002: A15)

Several features make it unmistakable that all three of these extracts are expressing a moral point of view. First, at a lexical level, there is an appeal to moral facts, the description of Americans as would-be ‘initiators of aggression’ and of the proposed war as ‘evil’ or ‘unjust’, one that not only ‘violates’ both ‘international law’ and ‘common morality’, but does so ‘flagrantly’. Flagrant is a strong, lexical reinforcer of moral opprobrium that in itself emotionally elevates the tone to remonstration. The word ‘sovereign’ in ‘sovereign nation’ is likewise a reinforcer of the sanctity of what the proposed action will violate. The word ‘horrible’ functions similarly. Second, the logic of argument in all three cases is impersonal rather than egoistic and normative rather than calculative. True, Greeley does speak in utilitarian terms of the war’s consequences, but they are not egoistic consequences specific to US interests but, rather, moral consequences, most suggestive, given the numbers, of Iraqi lives. For their part, Zinn and Brewer do not mention any consequences at all. Their argument is entirely deontological. Zinn speaks entirely in terms of moral facts, that is, the factual violation of the proposed action of international law and common morality; Brewer presents a mini-moral argument showing why the planned action would be factually subsumable under the moral category of aggression. Finally, in all three cases, moral discourse not only subordinates but completely displaces prudential discourse. None of the pronouncements above is accompanied by a secondary, prudential argument that kicks in should the moral argument fail. Instead, in all three cases, the moral position is presented starkly as categorically imperative, unqualified by any contingencies of cost and benefit. What is being offered here is not advice but moral counsel, even remonstration of an exhortatory nature. Within the corpus under examination here, very few pronouncements like the three above appeared in the mainstream press. It is thus perhaps noteworthy that of the above one was written by a Roman Catholic priest, one by a Marxist historian, and one by a professor of philosophy. None reflects a voice prominent in the American public sphere.

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The instrumentalization and privatization of morality Before examining the mechanisms through which moral muting is produced, it is helpful to examine why it may be produced. The reason is that although the effect of moral muting is generally to mitigate or downplay moral considerations, such mitigation is not always the intent. On the contrary, what appears as a morally muted argument may actually result from what we might consider moral reaching – the attempt to introduce moral considerations to a discourse (or discursive situation) that normatively excludes morality. Why would a discourse normatively exclude morality? The point of this section is to explain. Certainly, moral muting may arise simply from rhetorical failure, a moral argument having perhaps a fragile structure. There are reasons, however, also to suspect that the moral fuzziness, blurriness, or muting of argumentative frames is also an intentional response to larger social forces. For Habermas (1989, 1998), as well as for the entire Frankfurt School (see, for example, Horkheimer, 1983; Marcuse, 1964), one of the problems of modernity is that moral and values rationality is increasingly eroded. In part, so it is argued, values rationality is increasingly displaced by the ever growing hegemony of instrumental or technical rationality, which tends finally to instrumentalize even morality itself. In part, the problem is that with modernity’s increasing pluralism, lost is a common metaphysic (Habermas, 1998) or what Taylor (1989) speaks of as a moral ontology. The result is the fragmentation of moral perspectives described by MacIntyre (1984). Consequently, to communicate effectively across moral divides, the tendency is to dispense with moral reasoning altogether in favor of instrumental considerations common to all. Habermas speaks of this tendency as the colonization of the lifeworld by technical rationality, and Hart (2001) notices it in the discourse of secular social movement organizations. One response to the increased difficulty of moral assertion is what Luckmann (1997) describes as a new diffidence about morality – or at least about moral communication. In at least private, face-to-face interaction, Luckmann specifically notices a communicative style he terms indirect moralizing. Direct moral communication, Luckmann says, consists of explicit praise, complaint, or accusation. Indirect moralizing, according to Luckmann, takes place through such mechanisms as euphemism, litotes, questions, and teasing. For example, one might indirectly moralize to another by asking, ‘Why must you always . . .’. In such a case, the form of a question allows a moral posture to be communicated without explicitly asserting it. Luckmann speculates that the erosion of moral reasoning might be even more pronounced in the public sphere. Although he presents no data, Luckmann hypothesizes that morality, like religion, is becoming privatized. The privatization of religion refers to the contraction of religion from the public sphere to the private sphere, where it becomes exclusively a personal lifestyle with no broader social consequences (Bellah et al., 1985; Luckmann, 1997). The privatization of morality means that with modernity, morality, too, like religion, retreats from the public sphere, maintaining residence solely in the private sphere. In a sense, morality comes to be regarded as the province of individual rather than social relations.

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International relations (IR) certainly is one macro-social domain from which morality has been explicitly banished. According to the political realism that has held sway in political science and IR since the 1940s, morality has no proper place in foreign policy, especially war. Instead, foreign policy is considered exclusively in terms of national interest (Hollis and Smith, 1990). Under realism, it becomes almost a moral principle to exclude moral principles from the conduct or analysis of foreign affairs. Since many US political advisors, most notably Henry Kissinger, have been reared under realism, it is unsurprising to find realism strongly represented in the US government. Although political realism has recently been challenged, not just in the academy (see, for example, Beer and Hariman, 1996) but also by the overt moralism of the Bush administration, it would nevertheless also be unsurprising to find the continuing legacy of political realism in the American public sphere, particularly in that part of it represented by the elite press, which sees itself in direct dialogue with American political elites. If so, a norm against moral expression is likely operative. That in turn suggests that expressions of morality will tend to surface only in disguised, veiled, or muted form.

Moral muting and mitigation MORAL MUTING

Like mitigation (see Caffi, 1999), moral muting is a kind of what Haley (1959) called an incongruent communication, a communication divided against itself or its context. Like mitigation (again, see Caffi, 1999), moral muting refers simultaneously both to an effect and to the act of producing it. A communication can be morally muted in several different ways. It may simply use moral language that understates the moral considerations involved in a case. Alternately, in various ways, a communication may avoid pertinent moral issues entirely or introduce moral considerations in a veiled way that results in a fuzzy frame, a frame that blurs the distinction between moral and prudential argument. Because it is largely the framing of an issue that moral muting affects, moral muting is a property of what can be considered (see Van Dijk, 1985) an argument’s macrostructure. MITIGATION

Moral muting at least overlaps with mitigation. As an effect, mitigation is a downgrading (Fraser, 1980). What can be downgraded or softened is either or both the deontic (i.e. moral) or epistemic features of a directive or substantive communication (Caffi, 1999). Parenthetical verbs such as ‘presumably’, ‘probably’, or ‘I think’, downgrade the certainty of a proposition in which they are embedded (Fraser, 1980). The word ‘please’ downgrades from the imperative any directive to which it is attached as does a shift to the conditional or subjunctive (Caffi, 1999). In doing so, such deontic mitigation lowers the obligation a directive imposes on the one addressed (Martinowski et al., 2005). Mitigation actually can operate at three different levels (Caffi, 1999). It can downgrade propositional form as in the deontic mitigation above or propositional content as when something is referred to by way of diminutives, understatement,

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or euphemism. Second, mitigation can downgrade speaker-endorsement of a proposition as in the case of disclaimers (see Hewitt and Stokes, 1975) or the epistemic mitigators cited above. Finally, mitigation can operate at a more macro-, topical level, by reducing the salience of a topic through such devices as lateralization (e.g. ‘By the way’). In contexts of excuse or justification, mitigation reduces the parameters associated with agent responsibility (Martinowski et al., 2005; Sykes and Matza, 1957). Such downgrading can be accomplished in various ways. Use of the passive voice, for example, deemphasizes agency altogether. Alternately, as with accounts (see Scott and Lyman, 1968), there may be moves to diffuse or shift blame or to emphasize the attenuation of agency that results from an absence of knowledge, coercion, or unintended consequences (Martinowski et al., 2005; Sykes and Matza, 1957). In the context of ideology, mitigation functions as part of what Van Dijk (1997: 30; 2000: 267) calls the ‘ideological square’, the emphasis ‘on our good things and their bad things, and conversely the denial or mitigation of our bad things and their good things’. Ideologically mitigated in other words are both an in-group’s bad things and an out-group’s good things. MORAL MUTING AS DISTINCT FROM MITIGATION

Moral muting and mitigation are perhaps best considered overlapping but distinct concepts. Relative to the clearest and most explicit address to the moral issues involved in a case, a morally muted communication is definitely mitigated, and often such mitigation is intentional. On the other hand, even a morally muted communication enjoys some of the moral force absent from a purely prudential argument, in comparison with which it may be a rhetorical upgrade. Moral muting thus can result from upgrading (or moral reaching) as well as downgrading so that, as an effect, moral muting is not entirely encompassed by mitigation. In terms of the specific devices operative as well, those productive of moral muting overlap with but also go beyond those characteristically associated with mitigation. Consider, for example, the lexical level. Certainly, one way to produce a morally muted communication is through the kind of euphemism or understatement associated with straightforward mitigation. On the other hand, even at the lexical level, moral muting draws on devices beyond characteristic mitigation such as ambiguity. Consider the fuzziness of the frame that results from the use of such censorious words as ‘unacceptable’ or ‘unjustified’ that are nevertheless ambiguous in moral valence. One familiar example comes from US presidential candidate John Kerry’s oft-repeated campaign slogan: ‘Wrong war, wrong time, wrong place’. How, one wants to ask, was the war wrong? Wrong morally, wrong prudentially, or both? The English language is evidently distinct in the range to which it puts the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (see Wierzbicka, 2006), and that range permits what in Kerry’s slogan appears to be an almost deliberate ambiguity. Such ambiguity lends a degree of moral force without invoking any specific moral norm. As a kind of veiled or disguised moral discourse, it represents the kind of upgrade from the purely prudential we term moral reaching. The resulting frame has the fuzziness (see Lakoff, 1973) often associated with moral muting.

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Most work on mitigation concerns illocutionary acts that are propositional in length. In contrast, moral muting tends to operate on a larger scale, namely, entire arguments or argument segments. At this level, multiple mechanisms can operate. In ideological contexts, however, as here, the mechanisms productive of moral muting overlap with those – such as suppression of information – associated with the production of ideology (see Fairclough, 1995; Van Dijk, 2000). One way in which suppressed information can morally mute a message – not necessarily for ideological reasons – is when the moral logic of an argument is enthymemic, making it unclear whether or not an overall argument is moral rather than prudential in nature. A more clearly ideological use of suppressed information is when moral considerations are relevant to an issue but when an argument – even a critical argument – is presented in such a way that it appears by implicature that no moral matters are entailed; that, instead, the issues are entirely prudential. The effect of such an implicature can be very ideological, for excluded from discourse – and, thereby, perhaps even from thought – is the entire register in which the strongest objections might be entertained. Criticism of this nature virtually functions as a defensive maneuver. Because moral muting operates at a more macro-level than is typical of mitigation, it can also be produced, like ideology, through relations among individual propositions (again, see Van Dijk, 2000). When, for example, moral and prudential considerations are both adduced, the priority of the moral ought to be somehow marked. Without such priority marking, the prudential assumes equal status with the moral so that the weight of the moral is implicitly diminished. In general, moral muting can be effected when by incompleteness or other means, whatever should appear morally subordinate – the prudential to the moral or the utilitarian to the deontological – does not. In general as well, moral muting is in operation whenever morality is instrumentalized, whenever, that is, observation of a moral norm is commended not as an end in itself but as a means to some ulterior end that is in the actor’s interest. Framed so, morality is converted to prudence and counsel converted to advice.

Moral muting in US op-eds debating the attack on Iraq ENTHYMEMIC MORAL GROUNDS

One way in which morality may be muted is when an argument is morally indistinct, that is, neither distinctly moral nor distinctly prudential but, rather, fuzzy in this respect. Such indistinctness can result when an argument adopts a moralistic, remonstrating stance while leaving enthymemic or implicit the specifically moral basis grounding that stance. In such cases, a moral tone hovers like the smile of the Cheshire cat without any clear moral argument to give it body. Conservative, pro-war pieces were frequently of this nature. One example is a piece by Richard Lessner in the Weekly Standard. The war skeptics who allege that Iraq is contained, that Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat to the United States, and that there is no evidence the butcher of

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Porpora and Nikolaev: Moral muting in US newspaper op-eds 175 Baghdad is willing to share his weapons of mass destruction with such terrorists as al Qaeda, should be obliged to tell us something. Exactly which American city are they willing to bet that they’re right? . . . Reasons can always be found to justify inaction . . . The cost is simply too great if it turns out the appeasers are wrong. (Lessner, 2002)

There is a kind of incongruence here between tone and content that makes it difficult to determine which kind of argument – that is, moral or prudential – Lessner is making overall. In terms of overall logic, Lessner’s argument is prudential, citing explicitly the costs to America of inaction. In tone, however, Lessner is presenting a moralistic remonstration. At the lexical level, ‘skeptics’ in ‘war skeptics’ conjures up atheists, cynics, and others whom a conservative readership would regard as abstaining from what one ought to believe. The war skeptics are further labeled ‘appeasers’, who, Lessner implies, willfully refuse to see the blatant evil before them and, rather, look for reasons to evade action. That the skeptics ‘should be obliged’ to tell us something they have not likewise suggests an evasion of responsibility. If Lessner’s argument has the characteristics of a moral remonstration, the moral grounds for that remonstration are enthymemic. Lakoff (2002), however, helps us unearth them. As Lakoff explains, conservative political morality is modeled on strict parental authority that does not shrink from employing the rod against wrong and wrong-doers. From the conservative perspective, it is a binding moral responsibility to use force in such circumstances, a responsibility that liberals, following a more permissive parental style, typically forsake. It is precisely liberals’ irresponsible reluctance to deploy force against evil that Lessner is remonstrating against. With this background enthymemic, however, the specifically moral nature of the frame fades. AMBIGUITY AND INSTRUMENTALIZATION

A morally indistinct or fuzzy frame can also result from either or both ambiguity and the instrumentalization of morality. In a Washington Post op-ed written by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, the ambiguity appears almost studied. Brzezinski begins by telling us, ‘There is a right way and a wrong way for America to wage war’. As in the case of Kerry’s campaign slogan, it is unclear here, lexically, whether Brzezinski means right and wrong in a moral sense, a prudential sense, or both. Brzezinski does, however, elaborate. Obviously, if it is attacked, America must respond with all its might . . . But if a threat not an attack is involved . . . America must then consider carefully the consequences of its actions, both for itself as the world’s preeminent power and for the longer-term evolution of the international system as a whole. (Brzezinski, 2002: 9)

Unfortunately, this elaboration is as morally ambiguous as the original remark. On the one hand, Brzezinski may be providing moral counsel: the US has certain responsibilities as the world’s preeminent power, among them to concern itself with the nature of the international system. Conversely, Brzezinski may be offering what amounts to prudential advice: the US is the preeminent power in an

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international system and so must consider how its actions on the system affect its interests in this role in that system. The moral ambiguity is hardly resolved by Brzezinki’s conclusion to this line of argument. If it is to be war, it should be conducted in a manner that legitimizes U.S. global hegemony and, at the same time contributes to a more responsible system of international security. (Brzezinski, 2002: 9)

Brzezinski maintains the moral ambiguity to the end. Seeking to legitimate US global hegemony sounds like national self-interest (of an actually sinister sort) – unless US global hegemony is also objectively legitimate, an argument to which effect remains here enthymemic. The subsequent admonition to promote a more responsible international system could likewise imply a consideration of prudence, morality or both. Here and in other op-eds like it, a consistent moral ambiguity seems deliberately maintained, as if sidling up to without actually crossing a normative line against overt ‘moralizing’, the negative connotation of which term itself suggests the norm against it. There is a yet even more sophisticated way of suggesting a moral argument without actually making one. That way is to instrumentalize morality. With the instrumentalization of morality, the observation of moral principles is commended, except not as an end in itself but rather as a means to or an instrument of some ulterior, self-interested purpose. Thus, whereas the use of moral designators suggests moral force, the overall logic actually subordinates morality to prudence. As illustrated below, John Kerry demonstrates a mastery of this technique. For the American people to accept the legitimacy of this conflict and give their consent to it, the Bush administration must first present detailed evidence of the threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and then prove that all other avenues of protecting our nation’s security interests have been exhausted. Exhaustion of remedies is critical to winning the consent of a civilized people in the decision to go to war. And consent, as we have learned before, is essential to carrying out the mission . . . Legitimacy in the conduct of war, among our people, and our allies, is not a waste of time, but an essential foundation of success. (Kerry, 2002)

On one, perhaps the most natural, reading Kerry is offering moral counsel; he is detailing the moral criteria that would make for a legitimate war. He speaks in moralistic language of ‘legitimacy’ and the demands of ‘civilization’ and of ‘a civilized people’. Even the notion of ‘consent’ has moral weight. Kerry’s logic, however, is actually prudential, for he instrumentalizes the moral criteria he cites. What Kerry technically argues is that the administration should observe moral standards not for the sake of what is right or good but in order to gain the consent of the American people. It is significant perhaps that Kerry speaks twice of what has ‘legitimacy’ as opposed to what is ‘legitimate’, lexically suggesting almost that for the purposes of ‘winning . . . consent’, appearance matters more than reality. Consent then itself also is instrumentalized. It, too, is not to be pursued as a moral end in itself but, rather, because it is the means to an end, mission success. Logically, mission success is the ultimate goal with legitimacy and consent demoted to instrumental goals. Although a strong aura of moral counsel remains, through instrumentalization, morality has actually been subordinated to prudence.

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Porpora and Nikolaev: Moral muting in US newspaper op-eds 177 ARGUMENTS THAT ARE BOTH MORAL AND PRUDENTIAL

Any one argument of course can invoke both moral and prudential reasons for or against a position. Quite a few in our corpus did so. In such cases, however, the relation among propositions is key (Van Dijk, 2000). Morality will be muted unless its precedence is clearly marked. Outside our corpus, writing on the subject of a world ethic, Dower exemplifies one way to mark out the priority of the moral when moral and prudential considerations are combined. A ‘world ethic’ then involves a re-evaluation of what individuals and states ought to do. That would be the case even if collectively it were not in our interest to do these things. But the world situation is such that not only is it right or one’s duty to do these things, but also if we do not generally do these things, then we are storing up trouble on a global scale. (Dower, 1998: 7)

The second sentence above clearly marks the priority of the moral as does the clause in the culminating sentence following ‘not only’. Within our corpus, such marking was generally absent when both moral and prudential considerations were adduced. Paul Starr’s (2002) op-ed in The American Prospect is a good example. In it, he explains why, although he supported the first Gulf War, he opposes the one now in the offing. Then Iraq violated the sovereignty of another state, and our response affirmed the framework of international law and security. Now, we would be violating Iraq’s sovereignty without clear provocation, undertaking a preemptive war that is itself a destabilizing threat to international security . . . Then, we had overwhelming international support; now, we face overwhelming opposition. Then, the Iraqi army was exposed and vulnerable . . . and, after the air phases of the war, could offer no effective resistance. Now, the Iraqi army has had plenty of advance warning. (Starr, 2002: 3)

The problem with such a list of moral and prudential considerations as Starr presents is that in according equal weight to the prudential, it undermines the moral. The reason is that since moral and especially deontological obligations are categorical in nature, if it is claimed that our behavior falls under some compelling moral stricture, then all else – specifically considerations of prudence – is beside the point. We must act in accord with what is morally demanded. Thus, without any marked subordination, the addition of prudence to a moral argument is to suggest that for either the writer or the reader or both, the moral imperative is less than absolute or somehow uncompelling by itself. The force of the moral is thereby muted. So it is in this case. In the passage above, Starr starts out by saying in effect that in contrast with the first Gulf War, this new one would violate international law. There, the strongest argument would end. The legal/moral obligation ought to be decisive. The moral case only weakens with the addition of unsubordinated prudential considerations. What, after all, is Starr suggesting? That if the planned attack did not reduce international security, that had we more international support, and that were the Iraqi army weaker, then maybe it would not be so bad if we violated international law? Unlike prudential considerations, moral considerations lose strength from inclusion in a list. They realize their full force when presented alone.

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Certainly, in offering both moral and prudential reasons against war, Starr may well have been trying to reach both those persuadable by moral argument and those not. Still, he could have done so without equating the two sorts of considerations in one undifferentiated list. He could, for example, have listed the prudential considerations first and then said something to the effect that prudential concerns aside, the proposed action would be immoral. Such a culminating rhetorical construction would have accorded the moral considerations their proper weight. Instead, Starr’s formulation mutes the force of the moral considerations he himself presents. INCOMPLETENESS AND IMPLICATURE

Morality is also muted when through incomplete information (see Van Dijk, 2000) pertinent moral considerations are discursively evaded, especially in a way that creates an implicature that no such moral considerations obtain. Even when opposed to US foreign policy, NY Times editorials tend historically to avoid moral or legal criticism (Friel and Falk, 2004). The passages below exemplify how that posture morally muted Times’s criticisms of the Bush administration’s approach to Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney grabbed the microphone this week to make the case for war. We’re glad the White House is talking at greater length and more specifically about Iraq, but Mr. Cheney failed to offer convincing answers to questions that give many Americans pause about using military force to oust Saddam Hussein . . . Mr. Cheney’s stern speech suggests that the Bush administration has set a course for military action against Iraq. It still has to persuade the country that war is warranted. (Times Editors, 2002a: 18) We were heartened by President Bush’s promise yesterday to seek Congressional approval for any American action against Iraq, and that he plans to make his case to the world at a speech at the United Nations next Thursday . . . These new steps toward consultation are welcome, but they do not substitute for a comprehensible Iraq policy, much less make the case for war. (Times Editors, 2002b: 22)

There actually is a double implicature in these pieces. First is the nicety, always observed by the Times, of allowing that the administration might actually have a case that it just has not yet managed to make persuasively. Such implication is already a downgrade from an outright assertion that the administration has no case, or even from what would be weaker, a mere inquiry as to whether it has a case. The second, morally muting implicature is more subtle and dependent on what the pieces leave out. The editorials are neutral about the kind of case sought from the administration, the implication being that a purely prudential case would serve as well as a moral one. This neutrality is reinforced by the ambiguous word ‘warranted’, which can refer as much to prudential as to moral standards, and by the call for a policy that is merely ‘comprehensible’ – as opposed to anything more stringent morally. Were moral or legal constraints present, moreover, they would presumably do more than just give pause.

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It is the very neutrality toward the kind of case sought that actually implies the absence of moral considerations. Since moral considerations override prudential considerations, where moral considerations apply, a purely prudential argument no longer does suffice; even if moral considerations are to be overridden, they nevertheless require address. Thus, total silence on moral considerations suggests their absence. In this case, the absence of specifically moral or legal constraints on US actions is an implicature the Times editorials foster. Here, we may note the particular effect of what is left out. It would, for example, alter the register of the first piece dramatically and considerably upgrade the burden on the administration had the Times merely added at the end, ‘At least, it must be shown that war would not be a violation of international law or an act of aggression.’ It conversely conditions dramatically the message actually sent that no such commentary is included. Ideologically, the effect is an extreme case of Van Dijk’s (1997, 2000) ideological square, going beyond the mere use of mitigating language within moral discourse. Here, stronger incriminations are avoided by eliminating moral discourse entirely. STRAIGHTFORWARD MITIGATION

Finally, moral concerns may be muted by straightforward mitigation. The most consequential instance of such mitigation in our corpus conformed to Van Dijk’s ideological square with an out-group’s (Iraq) moral transgressions amplified and an in-group’s (US) downgraded. The moral muting in other words was asymmetrical. In the case under consideration, however, in contrast with those typically associated with the ideological square, the action mitigated was prospective rather than retrospective, and the mitigation itself did not just reduce a moral value but changed the register completely from the moral to the prudential. The issue as framed concerned whether the US should act unilaterally as opposed to multilaterally, that is, with or without a coalition of nations. Quite simply, this almost universal framing instrumentalized the moral issue at stake. Although some on the right, like Charles Krauthammer (2002), rejected altogether the authority of the United Nations (UN), a wide consensus viewed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a ‘rogue’ or ‘outlaw’ nation (see Baker, 2002; Times Editors, 2002c) in large part because of its violation or ‘defiance’ of UN strictures. As the Times Editors (2002a) put it, ‘Any justification for attacking Iraq would have to rest in large part on Baghdad’s flagrant violations of the U.N. Security Council.’ The editors of the Washington Post (2002a) likewise invoked Iraq’s ‘long-standing defiance of United Nations demands’, and even the conservative George Will (2002) said, ‘Iraq is flagrantly violating agreements it made with the United Nations’ (p. B07). Yet the US, too, made agreements with the UN. Specifically, it signed onto the UN charter. That charter, as Yale University law professor Bruce Ackerman (2002) explained, ‘restricts the unilateral use of force to self-defense against ‘‘armed attack”’, which does not include ‘unilateral preventive strikes’ (p. 15).

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In the absence of armed attack, the only other internationally legal use of force comes with specific authorization of the UN Security Council. Such authorization was obtained prior to the first Gulf War. Ackerman (2002) went on to say that the ‘Bush administration would have us believe that international law contains only ambiguous or advisory requirements’ (p. 15). If that is what the Bush administration would have had Americans believe, it largely succeeded – at least with both Congress and the press. In the first place, neither Congress nor the press seemed to think it necessary that US armed force against Iraq actually be approved by the UN. Necessary only was the mitigated requirement that, as the Times Editors (2002b) put it, Bush ‘make his case to the world at a speech at the United Nations’ (p. 22). The editors at the Washington Post (2002b) were similarly satisfied with Bush’s UN speech: ‘Mr. Bush has now done what Germany has asked, eschewing unilateral action and laying his case against Saddam Hussein before the United Nations’ (p. A20). Congress as well, in its vote soon after to authorize force against Iraq, considered Bush’s speech – essentially an ultimatum to the UN – to satisfy US obligations to that body. In other words, for both the press and for Congress as a whole, Bush did not need actually to persuade the UN or win its approval; he only had to make a case. In this connection, Times editorials (2002d), for example, eschewed the word ‘approval’; instead, the operative words are ‘backing’ or ‘support’: ‘Bush will be in a much stronger position if he has the support of the Security Council’ (Times Editors, 2002e: 16); ‘Mr. Bush’s immediate challenge is using the leverage Congress has now provided to win Security Council support’ (Times Editors, 2002f: 32). Approval versus support – what is in a word? A great deal. ‘Support’ is a substantial mitigation of ‘approval’, one that totally converts the register from the normative to the prudential, from what is legally permissible to what is merely wise. In such a way was the issue more largely reframed. In general, no longer was the question whether the US would act legally but whether it would act in the company of others. The Washington Post editors urged Bush not necessarily to get UN approval but just to build ‘broad . . . support’ from ‘foreign allies’ (Washington Post Editors, 2002c: A24) or ‘an international coalition for action in Iraq’ (Washington Post Editors, 2002a: B06; 2002d: B06). The Times Editors (2002d, 2002g), similarly, cited ‘the need for the broadest possible international unity’ (p. 26) or to act ‘in concert with other nations’, actual Security Council ‘approval’ being described as merely ‘preferable’ (p. 26). E.J. Dionne (2002) described the framing that quickly achieved consensus. The argument over what to do about Saddam Hussein has crystallized into two camps. One side sees no alternative to war and believes that going it alone is better than coalition-building, more weapons inspections and delay . . . the other side is not averse to military action but insists that the United States would be better off building a broad international alliance against Hussein. (Dionne, 2002: 23)

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We see here the triumph of the ideological square. An attack on Iraq is justified by Iraq’s legal transgressions of UN statutes. At the same time, for the USA, observation of UN statutes is downgraded from legally binding to merely prudent. Totally ceded with that framing is the distinction that in domestic circumstances would separate a lynch mob from properly deputized representatives of the law. Thus, American public discourse here completely prepared the way for the Bush administration to act not in the name of the UN – the only body that could legitimately authorize war in this case – but at the head of a gang of vigilantes, euphemistically dubbed the ‘coalition of the willing’.

Conclusion: moral muting as ideological discourse structure The purpose of this article has been to document the existence of moral muting in the public sphere and to describe some of the devices through which it is produced. Because that which moral muting affects, the frame, is a macrofeature of an argument, moral muting tends to encompass an entire structure of argument. The reasons for moral muting may vary, ranging from the moral diffidence or privatization of morality cited by Luckmann (1997) to a political realist taboo against moralizing about international affairs. In a very pluralistic society like the USA, where there is no moral consensus, the mainstream press might even consider it safer not have controversial positions stated too strongly – a caution not practiced by the more conservative organs like ‘talk radio’. Regardless of the reasons for its occurrence, in the corpus under study here, moral muting tended to be highly ideological. It was ideological not just in the broad sense that all communications are – that is, conveying implicit values and theories – but also in the narrow, critical sense of the term (see Van Dijk, 2000 for the distinction) that implies what Habermas calls ‘systematically distorted communication’. Here, the systematic distortion operated on two levels. On one level, we observe the straightforward, in-group-justifying unfairness of the ideological square: Iraq held to the strictures of a legal code that seemed not to apply at all to the USA. At least the binding nature of that code on US action was mitigated or completely disregarded. When, however, moral reasoning about international affairs is so systematically muted, the ideological effect – in the narrow sense – is even deeper. Each instance of such moral muting reinforces the cultural privatization of morality and the hegemony of instrumental reason that Marcuse (1964) called ‘onedimensional’ thought. The register in which to formulate the most critical objections to foreign policy is barred from discourse and survives only in muted form. A cultural deadening of macro-moral thought ensues. It is true that the Iraq war debate in the US occurred in a post-9/11 context of heightened public fear. Fear explains but does not excuse the public suppression of moral deliberation. Is it important that in their conduct of foreign affairs, nations – or, at least, democracies – behave in a legal and moral way? How will

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that happen without clear, collective moral and legal deliberation of national conduct by the public sphere? The kind of discursive suppression of morality observed here disappoints enlightenment hope in popular sovereignty. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For their helpful comments, we would like to thank: Ronald Bishop, the outside reviewers, and the editor, Teun Van Dijk.

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D O U G L A S V . P O R P O R A is Professor of Sociology at Drexel University. His interests include social theory, morality, and war. In addition to other work, he is the author of How Holocausts Happen: The United States in Central America (Temple University, 1987) and Landscapes of the Soul: The Loss of Moral Meaning in American Life (Oxford University Press, 2001). A D D R E S S : Department of Culture and Communication, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. [email: [email protected]]

is an Associate Professor of Communication at Drexel University. His interests include public relations and political communication. His recent work includes with (Ernest Hakanen) Leading to the 2003 Iraq War: The Global Media Debate (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and International Negotiations: Theory, Practice, and the Connection with Domestic Politics (Lexington Books, 2007). A D D R E S S : Department of Culture and Communication, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. [email: [email protected]] ALEXAN DER N I KOL AEV

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