In this opening chapter, I describe the intent of the book and its methodological framework. I explain the key theories involved in the book, including Orientalism, critical discourse analysis, and affect theory. My book employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) and the theoretical framework of Orientalism. I use this approach to analyze the way the elite policy- and discourse-making community in the United States discusses applying a foreign policy of overt violence by U.S. military forces in all cases of such action from Vietnam (1964–1969) to Iraq (2003–2007). I focus on officially recognized violence because covert violence, by its nature, does not necessarily require public discursive justification by policymakers (Forsythe, 1992). The cases between Vietnam and Iraq that will be analyzed include Grenada (October 1983), Libya (April 14, 1986), Panama (December 1989–January 1990), Iraq/Kuwait (1991), Somalia (December 1992–May 1993), Yugoslavia (1999), and Afghanistan (2001). The rationale for the case selection and timeframes involves the following: The cases bounded by, and including, Vietnam and Iraq represent all cases of overt aerial bombardment/strafing applied by the United States. The timeframe for Vietnam and Iraq, respectively, involves the practical consideration that President Lyndon B. Johnson left office in 1969 and President George W. Bush’s Iraq war policy underwent a fundamental shift in 2008, which created profound policy changes, involving the conclusion—rather than the justification—of violent policies this project is concerned with. My main reasoning for focusing on Vietnam and Iraq, with the others, including Afghanistan, being smaller case studies, has to do with the following: Vietnam and Iraq are the most similar in terms of the relative intensity of the violence. That is, far more known combatant and noncombatant deaths have been confirmed in those conflicts than in the others.