Linguistic and rhetorical means of legitimization of the US military campaign in the Middle East in American political discourse

The article is concerned with the linguistic and rhetorical means that enable the implementing of the legitimization strategy of the US military campaign in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan in 2016 and 2017. The corpus of data under analysis is represented by the speeches of American politicians: Ambassadors to the United Nations S. Power and D. Pressman, Secretary of State R. Tillerson, National Security Advisor H. MacMaster and Secretary of Defense J. Mattis. The paper investigates how American politicians focus the reader’s attention on the anti-terrorist character of the US military operation. The study describes the types of lexis, syntactic constructions and logical fallacies which prompt the reader to perceive the US military actions as morally right and legitimate. It also explains how metaphors and argumentative strategies condition the discourse positioning of terrorist organizations as a source of mortal threat to the international community.