The U.S. War on Terror Discourse: Mapping De-politicization and the Politics of Confinement in Afghanistan

This article argues that today, 17 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, it is even more important to look at the beginnings of, and to reinterpret, the U.S. “War on Terror” discourse. To do so, this article employs a poststructuralist Critical Discourse Analysis and it advances the debate around the notion of “evilization.” Drawing upon Foucault’s work on the history of madness, it develops the notion of the politics of confinement and situates it in the context of Afghanistan. The article notes that the politics of confinement is illiberalizing and oppressive, contradicting the idea of emancipation functioning behind the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. Thus, the contradictory discourse of the war in Afghanistan does not serve the purpose of victory as Trump envisages it.