The Bush administration’s success with propaganda is astonishing. The Christian Science Monitor reported that before the media war trumpets sounded, only about 3 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein had anything to do with Osama bin Laden’s 9-11 attacks. Now, thanks to uncritically and repeatedly broadcasting the never-even-remotely-proven accusation, some 40 to 45 percent of our citizens swallow the tale. It should gall Americans that they’ve been so snookered by charlatans, who have long hidden their real agenda of a long series of conflicts. But the tactic of putting blinders on the public by blatant lying is an old one. The German Nazi regime was masterful in that regard, and the tactic has continued down through Lyndon Johnson, Nixon/Kissinger, George Bush I, and now Junior.
How many times will we be told of the “growing coalition” (including, thank God, major powers such as Micronesia), and not be told of the bribery and intimidation used to marshal compliance?
How many times will we not be told that even among our “allies” (none of whom, other than Britain, actually back words with soldiers), polls show that, other than in Israel, the vast majority oppose this war?
How many times will we not be told of the great unease among true patriots such as retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who recently told Salon.com: Strategies to end Saddam’s rule “didn’t have to necessarily be military and they didn’t have to be now. It’s the administration that chose to do this set of actions at this time. And the reason they’ve had problems persuading people of the necessity for doing it has been because they couldn’t address the urgency.”
The rest of the press is largely mute, just the way Bush wants them. What Americans don’t know can’t offend them. And as long as media morons such as CNN’s Aaron Brown treat the war as a whiz-bang video, the War Party has no fear of being outed.
The war’s real goals — it’s the first of many conflicts to ensure our global dominance over resources, especially oil; it keeps the threat of terrorism high, enabling further administration attacks on Americans’ liberties; it’s a profiteering goldmine for Bush’s corporate backers as we head for a $500 billion yearly war budget; it deflects attention from a devastated economy and any number of domestic blunders; it provides the rationale for undermining the United Nations and for obliterating international accords on the environment, disarmament and labor rights; it will bully nations and dissenters into quiescence; the Middle East is left to the mercy (or lack thereof) of Bush’s Likud partners in Israel; etc. — will never be explained to the public. If you want the game plan, read 1984 — not, as Bush would have you believe, The Bible.
Of all the lies perpetrated by the Bush boys and their supporters, the one that is most loathsome is that being anti-war is unpatriotic and undermines our troops in the field.
The neocons decry Tom Daschle or, even more so, Sen. Robert Byrd, who in a speech to the Senate last week said, “Today I weep for my country” — and was promptly denounced as unpatriotic.
From the warlords in Washington to the administration’s awful media cheerleaders, the screech is to close ranks with Bush, support his war without question — and all, of course, for the sake of our soldiers in the field.
I’ve encountered this before. For years, I was intrigued by the tales of the soldiers being spat upon as they returned from Vietnam. I had volunteered to wear a uniform during that conflict, and I later became an anti-war firebrand. I’m well aware that the tide turned against that war when veterans and, then, active duty GIs began marching in the demonstrations. These were the heroes of the anti-war movement. I never saw a demonstrator spit on a soldier. We supported them in the best way possible — we wanted them home and alive.
And now, Jerry Lempcke, a professor at Holy Cross College in Massachusetts, has scoured the records from the 1960s and 1970s. “It simply never happened,” he told me last week. Other researchers have found the same thing. No news reports, no evidence at all that anti-war demonstrators abused our troops. It’s a conservative myth.
“The spitting story evolved as a way to discredit the anti-war movement,” says Lempcke, a Vietnam vet. “It was particularly used in 1990 and “91 to persuade people against opposing the first Gulf war. The grounding of the story was as an alibi to explain why we lost the Vietnam War, that it was lost on the homefront from a lack of patriotism. And the clear record shows that the spitting didn’t happen and that the war was lost long before public opinion had turned against it.”
But, what the hell, why bother with truth?
Atlanta CL Senior Editor John Sugg says, “I go to church, adopted five kids when I saw the need, help run a Boy Scout troop and wore a uniform when the guys who plotted this war were avoiding the military, so to hell with those who falsely claim a monopoly on patriotism.” He can be reached at john.sugg@creativeloafing.com.
This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2003.
