Charitable violence: George HW Bush and simulated atonement for Vietnam

Abstract In this essay I offer a reconsideration of President George H.W. Bush’s rhetorical campaign for the Gulf War. I argue that Bush’s rhetoric was an instance of simulated atonement—a variant of the atonement rhetorical form. Bush’s use of this form enabled him to both sanitize and ennoble the violence of the war as self-redemptive corrective action for the public memory traumas of the Vietnam era. Bush yawed between dissociation and analogy—first entirely dissociating Vietnam from the Gulf War and later embracing the Gulf War as analogical redemption for Vietnam. I also briefly consider an example of genuine atonement offered by one of President Bush’s successors.