Stance on the War on Terror

2 October 2002, Federal Plaza, Chicago, Illinois

In October 2002 Barack Obama stated his stance on the war on terror. By 2002 Barack Obama was an established state senator – gave a public address in Chicago in which Barack Obama staked out his position on the War on Terror – the invasion by the United States and its allies of Afghanistan and Iraq in pursuit of Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center and other terror attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001.

In the course of this stance on the Iraq war on terror speech, Barack Obama repeats the crucial ideas over and over again. One message is that he is not a peacenik: he is not against armed conflict in principle. In the Obama war speech he states that he is ‘not opposed to war’ a total of five times and uses the verb ‘opposed’ a further seven times in other forms to make it clear what he is against, namely ‘a dumb war ( Iraq war )’, a phrase Obama uses three times. He also begins four sections of the stance on the Iraq war on terror speech with the rhetorical question, ‘You want a fight, President Bush?’ (George W. Bush, President of the United States, 2001–9), before adducing reasons why this is the wrong fight, at the wrong time, against the wrong enemy.

Read Obama war speech