A Rhetorical Analysis
In order to have a solid ground for rhetorical analysis, this paper has chosen a particular angle of collective memory as the artifact to be studied. Because collective memory deals with a memory of an event shared by a certain group of people, it is only fitting that we examine an event of national importance, something that had marked in the history of America and the World. One event that falls into that category is the 9/11 incident. Thus, in this paper, we will try to analyze a collective memory by dissecting the rhetorical appeals and tools used in an online article dedicated to uncovering the truth about the 9/11 event.
9/11 is the shorthand name for the four organized terrorists attack on September 11, 2001 in America that resulted in the collapse of Twin Towers of the World Trade Centers, the plane crash at the Pentagon, and another plane crash 20 minutes away from Washington, DC. The attack was said to be led by the international Islamist extremist terrorist network Al-Qaeda which was founded by Osama bin Laden. The 9/11 tragedy took the lives of nearly 3000 people. Of course, because of the wide extent of damage both to property and human lives that the incident brought about, the 9/11 attack quickly became known worldwide. It left its mark as a dark day in American history and as thus, is still remembered until now even if over 13 years had gone by.
The article “9/11 Hard Facts, Hard Truth” however has a theory that can potentially change the way we know about the 9/11 tragedy. According to the article, the 9/11 incident was not just a simple terrorist attack. It was a conspiracy by a handful of powerful people in the government in order to justify the changing of the American domestic and foreign policy in order to suit their own self-serving purposes. That declaration is undoubtedly the article’s main argument.
Before we proceed to the claims under the main argument as well as the supporting evidences, we would just like to clarify that this paper is a rhetorical analysis and not an argumentative paper. Thus, it is not the intention of this paper to argue for or against the topic and the article presented here. The claims are detailed only as a spring board in which to examine the rhetorical appeals and tools used.
That being said, we can now proceed to the three main claims of the article “9/11 Hard Facts, Hard Truth” regarding the 9/11 incident.
The first claim of the article is that the intelligence officers did warn the high-level government officials about a potential terrorist attack on America but the officials deliberately failed to heed the said warning. Evidences to this claim, according to the article, include the statement of Army Intelligence Officer Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer regarding the identification of the terrorist suspects a full month before the 9/11 incident, the information from the so-called 20th hijacker Zacharais Moussaoaui regarding the plan to attack, and the case of the CIA director George Tenet talking to the then National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice about a possible attack by the Al-Qaeda group. In all three cases, government officials chose to ignore the information clearly given to them and even prevent the said information from getting into the hands of the public or the appropriate government agencies.
The second claim of the article is that not only are the government officials aware of the attack before it happened but that they took part in planning it as well. If that claim is to be believed, then it would imply that the reason of the first claim – deliberate ignorance – would be because the government officials were the ones who planned the attack in the first place. Evidence of this claim would be the near-perfect fall of the World Trade Center Building 7. Less known than the north and south Twin Towers collapse, the fall of the WTC Building 7 was described in the article as a “free-fall” and “straight down” movement wherein it collapsed in a precise manner even if it was not touched by the hijacked planes. Furthermore, it was suspicious, according to the article, that the damage of Building 7’s fall to the surrounding buildings was not significant considering the circumstances by which it fell.
The third claim of the article was that it is impossible for the United States military defense to have missed the four hijacked planes coming into restricted airspace. This claim is further backed up by the fact that the United States of America has the most state of the art military equipments as well as the most trained soldiers in the whole world. For the military to have failed to intercept even the most blatant of plans as evident by the lack of immediate military response to the plane crash on the Pentagon an hour after Twin-Towers incident, it could only mean two things. Either the military personnel of the United States are incompetent or they were acting according to plan and thus could not do any further actions. According to the article, it is the latter.
There are several more claims but the three are enough as basis for our analysis.
Now that we have a clear picture in mind of what the article wants to say, we can now proceed to how the article said it. In other words, we will now analyze the article using rhetorical lenses.
First, we will examine the article’s use of rhetorical appeal. These rhetorical appeals are ethos, pathos, logos. Assuming that you are not familiar with the three mentioned appeals, we will briefly explain them. Ethos is an appeal using credentials. Pathos is an appeal to people’s emotions. Logos uses logic and facts. In the article “9/11 Hard Facts, Hard Truth,” the author used ethos when he mentioned that he graduated Summa Cum Laude in the History Department at the University of San Francisco. This was quite a direct use of ethos. By using this appeal, the author had disregarded all doubts about his credibility when it comes to topics of delicate matter such as the 9/11 incident. The author had also of course used logos when he presented the topic. In fact, he had some very impressive amount of data in the article. The article spoke of a well-researched argument. This appeal supported his use of ethos in the sense that his claim of being an expert in history research was justified through the extensive knowledge he had shown on the paper. Pathos was not as widely used in the paper as the other two rhetorical appeals but it is there nonetheless. In fact, the introduction had already made use of pathos when the author mentioned that the lives of the nearly 3000 people who died that fateful day of September 11, 2001 may have been lost in vain. Imagine the feeling of being cheated, of being made to believe a lie. Before families and friends of the deceased people in the 9/11 attack could find comfort in the fact that their loved ones death brought about good change in America. If the article is proven true, their death would mean more of a murder. The author knew it would evoke strong emotions in the reader if he put his article in this way and indeed it is effective because even if you didn’t personally know those people who died, you can sympathize with those who did.
Collective memory in itself can be viewed as a powerful means to evoke reactions in an artifact may it be a website, like in this article, or in any other forms. This is because it plays with pathos, logos and even ethos. By urging people to recall certain events, you can prove a point. As such, it can be said that collective memory is, in a way, a rhetorical tool. The “9/11 Hard Facts, Hard Truth” article made use of this fact as a means to evoke outraged emotions from the readers. By deconstructing what most people’s sees as truth or their collective memory, the author had put doubts things that people automatically assume are right and good even without questioning it first.
The purpose of the article was to encourage the readers to stop their blind faith in the government and to be critical of what is being fed to their minds by the media, the society and even the government. I believe the article was successful in their purpose.
Work Cited
“9/11 Hard Facts, Hard Truth.” 911HardFacts.com. 9/11 Hard Facts, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2014.
<http://www.911hardfacts.com/>
