Malignants in the Body Politic: Redefining War Through Metaphor

By Douglas R. Stickle

In the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush declared the dawn of a new kind of war. He has repeatedly emphasized that means and measures of success in this new war will differ greatly from wars past. However, if this "war on terrorism" is unlike any other war, then what is it like? From the public statements of high-ranking US officials, metaphorical answers emerge: terrorism is a metastasizing cancer, a plague, a threat from which we are not immune. Major Stickle explores the analogies of immunity, infection, and cancer. In doings so he addresses the classic strategic question: what is the nature of the enemy and of the fight? In the never-ending battle against microbes and a 30-year-old "war on cancer," the enemies are microbes-threats from without and threats from within. In the context of the announced war on terrorism, Major Stickle converts these biological and medical themes for reflective contemplation and concludes that the administration might look further to the language of disease to better communicate the challenges of the war on terrorists.

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1249327369
• ISBN13: 9781249327363
• Release Date: September 2012
• Publisher: Biblioscholar
• Length: 44 Pages
• Weight: 0.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.1" x 9.2"