Rescuing America from Iraq: the gothic remorse of Iraq War documentaries

Abstract

Taking a rhetorical approach to documentary, this article examines the narrative and aesthetic constructs of policy documentaries about the Iraq War. Focusing on two high-profile films, No End in Sight and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, the article outlines how these documentaries work to extenuate American transgressions during the occupation by invoking a superficial gothic rhetoric. Within this rhetoric, the neo-conservatives of the Bush administration are cast as shadowy and conspiratorial forces who have corrupted American values. Alternatively, policy-makers and military personnel are cast as virtuous representatives of American democracy and emerge as innocent victims of a seemingly monstrous administration. By relying on this simplistic good and evil construct, which ironically mirrors the rhetoric of Bush administration's War on Terror, and by ignoring outright the question of the war's legitimacy, these films ultimately reaffirm the virtues of the very institutions which oversee American war and occupation. The Iraq War is then memorialised as a catastrophe created by corrupt neo-conservatives and one which does not merit deeper reflection on the use of war as a tool of US foreign policy.