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US Special Forces: an other within the self

ABSTRACT In the post-9/11 era the United States’ (US) Special Operations Forces have become an increasingly prominent feature amongst the country’s vast military options. This article is the first to examine US Special Forces through a critical discursive lens. The article examines the conditions of possibility that US security discourse constructs for its Special Forces, who use some methods of warfare which are more commonly associated with US enemies in constructed notions of US warfare. The article argues that the Special Forces’ representation as an ‘elite’ fighting force in popular US discourse acts to stabilize the Special Forces within the wider discursive structures of US security. This is supplemented by a narrative of mystique and the willingness of the Special Forces to ‘fight fire with fire’ against imagined radical threats. In doing this it is possible to highlight the damaging effect of the Special Forces on understandings of the US Self, which constructs its identity in part through how the US ‘should’ fight wars. Despite the difficulty in articulating the Special Forces as part of the ‘American way of war’, US security discourse has proved remarkably flexible in reconciling the Special Forces within its existing structures.