Ten years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the so-called “War on Terror” still remains at the center of academic attention especially due to on-going U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, there is a considerable lack of attention to the discursive dimension of the “War on Terror,” most notably in relation to the role of foreign policy in discursively (re)affirming a specific national identity. This paper attempts to shed light on the processes through which dominant discourses attempt to create order, write identity, reflexively construct external threats and enemies, produce consent, and discipline behavior within the domestic body after a social crisis. This paper attempts to argue that the U.S. “War on Terror” should be interpreted as an attempt to re-establish order and to articulate new meanings to the very notion of what should be commonly understood as “Americaness”. Based on textual analysis of a selection of key texts produced in the aftermath of 9/11, I highlight the specific elements articulated by the discursive formation arising from them in order to make a correlation between foreign practice discursive practices and national identity. Finally, I will argue that the US “War on Terror” discourse emulates the "jeremiad" political sermons of the 1600s Colonial America. By comparing their narratives, meanings, symbols, myths, and representations, I shall demonstrate that both set of discourses strive to create order and signify American national identity based on a Puritan ideological matrix.
