ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the notion of security within the state and its relation to national interests. It shows how terrorism made relevant to state survival, not a challenge to its survival. It reviews presidential rhetoric regarding US responses to terrorism. The chapter also reviews how Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald W. Reagan solidified the rhetoric and discourse surrounding terrorism. It analyses presidential rhetoric in the presidencies of the postcold war era. It examines the Bush Doctrine as it reveals how national security discourse maintained thirty years of presidential rhetoric on terrorism. The chapter further investigates the other three components of terrorism: definitional variations, application of meaning, and the employment of moral authority. It presents discourse as something more than just text and speech. It explores how language enhanced by images becomes the device that contextualizes terrorism's five components while articulating a field for the state to manage.
