Overview
The short story, ‘The History of the Private Campaign that Failed’ is a classical fictional story written by Mark Twain portraying the wars that broke out during the second half of the 19th century in the United States as a result of foreign invasion by alliance forces (Messent 133).
During this time, several states did not want to be part of the larger United States of America but instead they advocated for their own independence and sovereignty.
From hearing the news that South Carolina has successfully detached itself from the union, the narrator, together with a group of other men formed an armed unit to protect Missouri from invasion by union forces.
This unit was called Marion Rangers. However, most of the individuals who formed this group did not remain in the war for a long period of time to enjoy its long-term outcomes.
Instead, they left the war, as war veterans but not as war heroes. Despite all this, they played a critical role in keeping the states Missouri away from union forces.
With regards to the political actions and phrase juggling of the narrator, this essay shall focus on the impact of phrase juggling in the modern political arena by focusing on the speeches of former presidents of the United States in maintaining national security of the nation.
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States. During his reign as president, he faced several challenges as the leader of a great nation. First, USA was recovering from the economic crisis that the country had experienced in the 1930’s.
At the same time, the nation was in the middle of the Second World War. It was thus of key importance for the nation to maintain warm diplomatic relations with the allies and other nations to protect its national and foreign interests.
To the surprise of Roosevelt and his administration, Japan launched attacks that targeted American troops at Pearl Harbor on 7th December 1941 (Taylor 34).
On this surprise attacks, quite a huge number of US army personnel lost their lives while others sustained injuries. Additionally, hundreds of aircrafts were destroyed and naval cruisers sunk.
All these came while USA and Japan were in the middle of peace talks to secure the safety of American and Japanese naval troops at sea.
A day after these attacks, Roosevelt made a speech before the Congress. In this speech, he referred to the ongoing diplomatic negotiations that USA had with Japan.
However, he stated that it had been barely an hour before they received a message from the Japanese government discrediting the negotiations. This message did not contain any threats but barely an hour later, Japan had already launched attacks against US troops.
From a critical analysis, the president stated that these attacks had been planned for several weeks if not months during a time the nation was having diplomatic talks with Japan.
As a result, lives were lost and properties destroyed. From all this, the president viewed Japan as an enemy of the United States and wished for the congress to declare war against the nation.
From an analysis of the speech, instances of political phrase juggling are present. In the speech, the president created awareness of the importance of securing the safety of America and Americans within and outside the United States.
Any individual or nation who tried to threaten the security of the nation was thus an enemy. From this speech, USA declared war on Japan.
This led to several offensive attacks against Japan and finally the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings that ended the attacks and the Second World War.
Lyndon Johnson
Lyndon Johnson was the 36th President of the United States. He served in office during a time that the United States was fighting the Vietnam War. This war commenced in November 1955 and continued for almost 20 years.
The war was fought between North Vietnam and its communist allies and South Vietnam and anti-communist allies (Sodaro 109).
USA was one of the nations that supported South Vietnam due to its anti-communist stand. However, like any other war, massive loss of lives and casualties were suffered.
It is with regards to this that President Johnson made a public speech on 31st March 1968 to address the issue. In this speech, Johnson used political and phrase juggling techniques to clearly present the stand of the United States on the Vietnam War.
He stated that USA was ready to get into negotiations with the North to bring the war to an end (Sodaro 143). To show its consideration, the President had already stopped bombardment of Northern Vietnam.
Thus, with collaboration from Hanoi, the war could easily come to an end and a peace agreement agreed upon.
This speech was made on a diplomatic standpoint. USA was seeking to improve its foreign relation to its allies and enemies alike on the war.
George H. W. Bush
In August 1990, Iraqi forces invaded and took control of its neighboring state, Kuwait. Being a small nation, the oil rich state did not have the military power to support itself against foreign invasion.
At the same time, Iraqi forces commenced to mass within the border of Saudi Arabia. These acts propelled President Bush to deploy military forces to protect the Saudi border.
Additionally, the US troops joined forces with other UN nations to propel Iraqi forces out of Kuwait (Drakulic 56).
In early January 1991 after failed diplomatic talks with Iraq, USA spearheaded an airborne attack in Baghdad. During this time, President Bush made a live speech to the public via television.
In his speech, Bush vowed that he would use any means possible to stop Saddam Hussein from foreign invasion.
This speech and the deployment of the US military in the Middle East clearly show the extent to which USA can go to protect its foreign interest and maintain world peace.
George W. Bush
On 11th September 2001, USA experienced a series of terrorist attacks on American soil. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon led to the loss of thousands of innocent lives, destruction of property and development of a state of insecurity.
In response to this, President Bush made a speech on the same day to restore hope and faith among Americans. In his speech, the termed the acts of terrorism that had hit the nation as actions that aimed at destroying the brightest and strongest nation in the world (Cohen 19).
However, he assured the citizens of the United States that the nation was well prepared for such acts. Through its military and other emergency response teams, the government had already commenced rescue missions at the scenes of crime.
Additionally, he stated that through its intelligence team, investigations were already underway to find the individuals responsible for the acts.
He promised not to discriminate between the criminals and the people who harbored them while bringing them to justice. These acts led to offensive attacks in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in a bid to fight
Works Cited
Cohen, Jean. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT press, 2002. Print.
Drakulic, Slavenka. A Letter from the United States: The Critical Theory Approach. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. Print.
Messent, Peter. The Short Works of Mark Twain: A Critical Study, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Print
Sodaro, Michael. Comparative Politics: A Global Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2007. Print.
Taylor, Henry. The Idea of Freedom in Asia and Africa, London: Sage, 2002. Print