Frames Of The Iraqi War

The Frames of the Iraqi War

There are many views, theories, perspectives, and ideas pertaining to the War in Iraq. Throughout the last three years, as more and more information becomes available, the reasons for going to war with Iraq has changed. The War in Iraq would be considered a social movement. Therefore, it has many collective action frames, which legitimize a set of beliefs about a certain action or movement.

The first pro-war frame is the first reasoning that the government gave for going to war with Iraq in the beginning - weapons of mass destruction. The United States had reason to believe that Sadaam Hussein, Iraq's leader, had weapons of mass destruction and was harboring terrorists or contributing to terrorist actions. This could be identified as the motivational frame. It seemed as though America had a legitimate, rational explanation for invading Iraq. The United States government had both factors that contributed to the effectiveness of the frame: credibility and relative salience.

The motivational frame, weapons of mass destruction, was given credibility when it was said by the Central Intelligence Agency that they had reason to believe that Iraq was producing such weapons. It was also given credibility when the President identified Iraq as part of the "Axis of Evil" and a threat to the United States. The American people look at the President to know the information needed to make big decisions to go to war. It seemed logical, and congruent to that information, that the U.S. invades Iraq for its own protection. The three dimensions of relative salience are also there. The centrality, or the ideas of going to war and getting rid of Sadaam and the weapons of mass destruction seems beneficial to the United States at the time. Also, it under the circumstances, and the frame of mind of the people at the time, it definitely gives the American people a little more peaceful state of mind, which affects everyday life.

After it was found that Iraq was not hiding or producing weapons of mass destruction then government changed its view on the war in Iraq. The government elites, such as the Secretary of State and the President himself, are pushing the fact that Sadaam Hussein was an awful leader who was horrible to his people. He had mass graves, and poured fear into his people. The President made it clear in his "Axis of Evil" speech that the United States would not tolerate inhumanity by anyone. This is what could be called the diagnostic frame, or injustice frame. The government used the injustices of the Iraqi people to stay in Iraq. They push the fact that the Iraqi people will be better off once we get democracy spread into that nation.

Both of these frames were pushed by frame articulation. The people leading the social movement, the United States government, connected the events of the belief of weapons and the injustice of the Iraqi people by Hussein as a logical reason to invade and go to war