Roads to war: is the U.S. taking the road never traveled?

This thesis explores President Barack Obama’s rhetorical strategies in his calls for military strikes against the Syrian government. Many scholars have noted the stylistic, substantive, and situational regularities in ways in which presidents sell war to Congress and the public, which is why many have presented war rhetoric as a genre. By taking into account the historical development of American war rhetoric, I employ a generic criticism to provide insight into his rhetorical strategies and how his rhetoric fits with the broader genre. Ultimately, I argue that while his rhetoric was unsuccessful in terms of selling military action, it demonstrated a progressive break from a problematic discourse of romanticized violence.