Philanthropic Soldiers, Practical Orientalism, and the Occupation of Iraq

Abstract

This article discusses the ways in which white, male, United States soldiers make sense of both themselves and Iraqi others. Drawing from qualitative interviews with twenty-four said soldiers from southern Indiana, most of whom having deployed to Iraq, it is shown how these soldiers perform gendered and racialized Orientalist discourses to rationalize United States empire and in particular the military occupation of Iraq. Specifically, imperialist discourses that imagine a superior “us” and an inferior “them” and understand United States state violence as ultimately a Western humanitarian “rescue” are shown to be powerful cultural logics in the sense-making practices of the interviewed soldiers. This article then is concerned with what others have called “practical Orientalism”—or the ways in which formal and official Orientalist discourses are adopted by everyday actors.

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