Suppose you have a controversial project you wish to push through, but
you're afraid that if you come right out and say what you're up to,
there will be so many objections from other officials and ordinary
citizens that you might never get a chance to implement your agenda.
But you're savvy about how influence-molding works and you know that
with the right kind of massive publicity and P.R. campaigns, you
probably can "spin" public perception in your direction.
So, on a foundation of lies and deception, you decide to launch your
project, careful to keep absolutely secret the most controversial
aspects. And then, under the table, you hire (a.k.a. "bribe") numerous
journalists, opinion pundits and respected "consultants" to speak on
behalf of your product.
It works! The public is snowed by the P.R. momentum and by the
overwhelming consensus of the "experts," and your project takes off.
This is how such things are done every day in the business and
advertising world. What's the big deal?
THE LIES & DECEPTIONS
Well, as you've probably figured out, I'm talking about the way the
CheneyBush Administration sold the Iraq War/Occupation to us citizens.
We've known for a long time about the various lies and deceptions that
took America to war -- the supposed "weapons of mass destruction" that
Saddam was supposed to possess but didn't, his alleged ties to al-Qaida
that didn't really exist, his supposed but non-existent complicity in
the 9/11 attacks, and so on. Eventually, even the Administration was
forced to concede there were no WMD, no ties to 9/11, no relationship to
Al Qaida, though it vowed never to let those inconvenient facts get in
the way of continuing its occupation of Iraq. (And Cheney and his
minions still continue to this day to hint at the old deceptions.)
Also revealed some years back was that the Administration secretly put
various conservative TV/radio/print journalists on the payroll to
write/speak favorably about various programs and policies emanating from
the Executive Branch.
THOSE PENTAGON "EXPERTS"
What we didn't know about until the
New York Times broke the story a few weeks ago was that the
CheneyBush Administration, to help sell the pending Iraq war to members
of Congress and the citizenry at large, marshaled a huge phalanx of
retired military officers and sent them out disguised as private,
independent "experts" and "consultants" to deliver the pro-war spin the
Administration wanted. The author of the story, David Barstow, used the
term "media Trojan horse" to describe the impact of this deception.
Because the media, always eager to curry favor with the Administration,
did not vet the bona fides of these "private consultants," the public
had no knowledge of the retired officers' deep and abiding connection to
the Pentagon. These ex-military officers received special briefings,
including by Rumsfeld himself, on the Administration's daily spin
points, and they either had or would soon be receiving high-paying jobs
with various defense contractors.
What the public now knows is that the daily commentary and advice by the
"military experts" -- supposedly independent analysts, free of any
conflicts of interest -- helped "catapult the propaganda" (to borrow
Bush's own term) in favor of war with Iraq.
And it worked: CheneyBush and their neo-con ideologues inside the
Administration got U.S. boots on the ground in Iraq, controlled the oil
flowing out of that country, created chaos and catastrophe from which
their huge private-corporation sponsors could make huge pots of money,
built the world's largest new embassy in Baghdad, and constructed
permanent military bases inside that country from where the U.S. will
help control the geopolitics of the greater Middle East for generations
to come, etc. etc. All this presents a perfect illustration of Naomi
Klein's thesis of
"shock
doctrine" and "disaster capitalism."
This use of hired guns -- all those prestigious, smart-looking
ex-generals and such -- to do their propaganda work for them is further
confirmation of the mendacity, duplicity and
illegality
Bush&Co. employ to get their way.
LITTLE OR NO COVERAGE
True to form, of course, the corporate mainstream media have paid scant,
if any, attention to this story of how dozens of retired officers helped
shape American military policy while secretly still attached to the
Administration teat. See
here,
here, and
here.
In this instance, and many more that could be named, the
mainstream press, by not mentioning or following up on such CheneyBush
scandals, does democracy a dangerous disservice.
Our political system depends on citizens receiving accurate information
about what's being done in their names so that they can make intelligent
decisions when voting for those who represent them.
LIES & DECEPTIONS
If they respond at all, Busheviks tend to say that even if these stories
are true, how we wound up in Iraq is "old news," it's history, we're
there, let's just make the best of it, "finish the job" and then go
home.
However, if your original reasons for invading a sovereign country were
based on lies and deceptions, and a lot of incorrect assumptions and
ignorance, then your occupation policies will never work and you will
have alienated and angered the local population to the point of violent
resistance against you. The result: You will be stuck in a quagmire of
your own devising, where the most you can hope for is endless stalemate.
This was the case of the U.S. screwup in Vietnam in the 1960s and '70s,
and it's the case today with the its five-years-and-counting occupation
of Iraq.
Now, it can be argued that endless stalemate is of no great concern to
the shock-doctrine practitioners of Bush&Co.; indeed, it may be the
desired result as it guarantees prolonged chaos and thus more need for
companies like Blackwater, Bechtel, Halliburton, KBR, et al. to help
keep the broken society together. The U.S. and Iraqi dead and maimed are
but the inevitable "collateral damage."
But, as CheneyBush have learned, domestically you can push the U.S.
military, and American citizens, only so far before both begin to push
back and call for a new, more rational approach to political and
foreign-policy adventuring.
Key military officers within the Joint Chiefs of Staff (even, to some
extent, Defense Secretary Gates) are watching their armed forces
stretched much too thin around the globe. Because there is no military
draft, the Pentagon is forced to use and abuse its existing troops to
the point of near-rebellion, resulting in lower morale and increased
psychological damage, including 300,000 Iraq veterans returning home
with mental problems
and a rising rate of
suicides.
'08 VOTE A REFERENDUM ON WAR
This abuse includes overuse of the stop-loss policy of refusing to let
soldiers go home after they've completed their Iraq rotation, constantly
recalling troops who have been sent home after completing their extended
service, lowering the army's physical, intellectual, psychological and
moral standards in order to fill the recruiting gap when the services
can't meet their enlistment quotas, returning physically or
psychologically wounded soldiers to battle despite their doctors'
recommendations, etc. etc.
Moreover, the citizens appear to have had enough. Since two-thirds of
polled Americans believe the Iraq invasion and occupation are
outrageously expensive follies and it's time to start bringing the
troops back home, the opposition party is about to nominate as its
presidential candidate someone who aims to get the troops out within 16
months. The Republican Party is set to nominate someone who wants to
continue the CheneyBush war even if it means keeping U.S. troops in Iraq
for a hundred years or more, and probably starting more conflagrations
in the Greater Middle East.
In a fair and open election, the Democratic candidate should win that
contest easily. However, there is
compelling
evidence that in the past eight years, U.S. elections have been
corrupted through the use of hackable, unverifiable, paperless
"touch-screen" machines, and vote-tabulating computers, which utilize
secret software, manufactured and programmed by companies with
Republican affiliations.
BOMB, BOMB, BOMB IRAN
All this isn't just "old history." CheneyBush are itching to bomb Iran's
military installations and scientific laboratories while they are still
in control of the Executive Branch, and are "catapulting the propaganda"
for such an attack in ways eerily similar to how they deceived Congress
and the American people into bombing and invading Iraq.
There are reports that Secretary Gates has been trying to stop such
attack-Iran moves, or at least to greatly reduce the scale of the
operation. But other reports suggest that the decision to bomb already
has been made, and the appointment of Gen. David Petraeus to take over
at Central Command is a key sign that all the ducks are just about lined
up in a row.
(The former head of Central Command, Admiral William Fallon, said there
would be no attack on Iran on his watch; he was forced out, and
CheneyBush lackey Petraeus was moved over from Iraq.)
BURMESE MILITARY'S "OPPORTUNITY"
"The shock doctrine" is not employed solely by American governments and
multi-national corporations. In Burma (Myanmar), the military junta
ruling that country, having just put down a potential revolt led by
Buddhist monks, clearly is terrified that a coup might be organized by
individuals or organizations who want to bring aid into the country to
help the residents in the wake of the cyclone disaster. And so they're
keeping those aid workers out of the country, thus putting at risk the
lives and health of hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring into
Rangoon and elsewhere in search of medical care, food, shelter.
The effect of the disaster and the Burmese government's insufficient
response to it means that a good share of the junta's political
opposition is now dead or dealing with the aftermath of the huge,
rampaging storm. In other words, the disaster offers a great
"opportunity" for the ruling elite to settle old scores by continuing to
repress the opposition and to remake the affected areas as they wish.
(There have been reports, unconfirmed, of bodies of monks being found in
the cyclone rubble -- burned in a suspicious manner -- mixed in with the
tens of thousands of other corpses found floating in the rice fields and
ditches and rivers.)
The long time-delay in getting food, water and shelter to the hundreds
of thousands of displaced survivors of the cyclone is reminiscent of the
way the Bush Administration dilly-dallied with regard to the
post-Katrina period in New Orleans and Mississippi. In her book, Klein
used the Katrina experience as a perfect example of "disaster
capitalism" in the U.S.: A government watches a natural catastrophe wipe
out an entire population sector, and lets the catastrophe play out over
days and weeks and months -- with large numbers of citizens abandoning
their homes, forced to go elsewhere for adequate assistance -- and then
giving no-bid contracts to Blackwater and Halliburton and KBR for the
reconstruction phase, in accord with social planning as laid out by the
ideologues in the White House.
In Burma, the government may not be operating out of an exactly similar
motivation, but the result appears to be much the same: using a natural
calamity to reshape the economic, political and social future of the
affected region for their own political and economic aims.
NATURAL RESOURCE SHORTAGES
As for the huge worldwide "run" on commodities -- especially important
staples such as wheat, rice, oil -- already local greed-merchants and
multi-national companies are salivating at the prospect of selling, at
exorbitant rates, food and shelter and clothing and oil and the like.
They will be literally "making a killing" on the backs of the starving,
the poor, the dispossessed.
In so doing, in line with Klein's "shock doctrine" and "disaster
capitalism" theses, these elite forces will be re-shaping the politics,
economies and social arrangements of these countries for generations,
both to consolidate and expand their reigns of power and to benefit
themselves and their rapacious, greedy supporters.
In short, when catastrophes are being dealt with, it doesn't seem to
matter what the operating governmental system is, be it fascist,
communist, dictatorial, democratic, etc. By and large, the
power/economic/political elites see the unfolding tragedies of their
citizens as "opportunities" for expansion of control, for ways to
eliminate or dilute their opposition, for fattening the bank accounts of
their large-corporation supporters in rebuilding and reconstructing
these devastated societies, in line with their own greed agendas.
This is the world that only will change when these elites and systems
are systematically confronted, changed, or overthrown by citizens
operating under a different moral system, who decide they've finally had
enough.
It would be more effective, of course, if a strong progressive movement
were to develop overnight in America to affect such wide-sweeping
reforms in this country. However, removing Republicans from the White
House in 2008 at least would be a significant sign of the beginnings of
the public's strong desire for significant changes.
Copyright 2008, by Bernard Weiner
