Holy War

Following the events of September 11, 2001, then President George W. Bush began to doff his cowboy hat and scuff his cowboy boots in the dirt of his ranch as he addressed the citizens of the United States. This swagger was no accident. Bush was evoking in the public imagination the foundational, nation-building story known as the frontier myth - a story of war. The United States was born in war with the Indians and has never stopped waging war. This perpetual war is no coincidence, argues Mark Cronlund Anderson, but should instead be understood as a pattern established at birth - a pattern that the nation is compelled to symbolically re-enact in the name of nation-building. Through an examination of the media narratives surrounding the Mexican War, Custer's Last Stand, the Vietnam War and interventions in Nicaragua (with a few aliens and zombies tossed in for good measure), Holy War demonstrates that the response to 9/11 - that God has decreed that we must wage a defensive war against the savages, who are trying to destroy all that is civilized - is as old as the United States itself.