Because You Never Asked

(5/04)

     Both the latest Iraqi war and my first essay with this title are a bit more than a year old. Times have changed.

     One of the most traumatic things that has ever befallen the human race was the conflict known as World War I. From the years 1914-1918 millions of people were slaughtered as if they were no more than heads of cattle being led to the chopping block. (In a sense, that's what they were.) One of the great ironies of this apocalyptic degradation of mankind was the zeal with which it was entered into. The masses did not have to be cajoled into their own execution. They marched lemming-like into the conflict like a horde of extras in a massive Hollywood film (though they were probably paid less). War! War! Glorious war! What greater thrill and honor than to defend your country, your way of life, your superior culture, your King, your wine, your schnitzel .? Yes, let's go, we'll show them.

     Most of them never found the road home.

     As I sit here in Spain, dug in for the next two months, my second "escape from America" was undertaken in a totally different atmosphere. The initial euphoria of our gallant young soldiers marching off to conquer foreign lands for freedom and democracy has become the same turd flushed down a similar toilet as the idea of World War I. It is not hard to imagine our soldiers feeling the same disillusionment and depression as those willing warriors of almost a century ago. What in the hell am I doing here? When can I go home?

     The World War I comparison is only partially correct. Obviously, the scale of the disaster is smaller in Iraq, and the attitude of the American people was not quite the same as that of the Europeans of 1914, who seemed to rollick in the idea of a measured dose of warfare. Some detailed study of the propaganda mechanisms of that era would seem a useful endeavor. The thought of people gleefully embarking on what turned out to be one of the most horrific episodes in history, is well worth trying to understand. But the American people did not show this World War I-like exaltation for the Iraqi war, but rather, an apathy that did not stand in its way. This apathy could not exist without the mercenaries of a volunteer army and one other ingredient to be explained later on.

     The analogy between World War I and the latest Bush Oil War is impeccable in at least one sense: those eager to wage war completely underestimated the difficulty in carrying it out. The troops who became cannon fodder for the "Great War" did so thinking it would be over in a matter of weeks. They were sent off with women blowing kisses, children tossing flowers, with bands playing and flags flying, as if they were embarking on some kind of recreational activity. The Bush Gang, as it turns out, so misunderstood the nature of what they were sending our soldiers out to do, that they officially decided the war was won before it really got started.

     Trying to decipher just how millions of people can be lead to emotionally support the barbaric stupidity of a World War I or this latest Iraqi incursion is not a precise science. But there is one thing that can be postulated with little doubt and it is the second ingredient mentioned above: no country interested in making war can do it without a media mechanism willing to support it. Someone has to sell it.

     The American media establishment wanted this war. Their commercial interests in the global economy made it a tempting adventure for them. They went along with the ruse.

     It was essential, in perpetrating this farce, to make it seem that the Bush Gang went to war in response to some unforeseen happening. For those not blinded by the light, such a premise loses its integrity quite early in the game. Even for those not privy to the fact that this administration had planned this war even before its election, anyone adept at political translation had to know it was inevitable by the first anniversary of 9/11, when the military drum beat officially began. But quite a bit more theater was necessary if the Monday Night Football Yokels were to accept it.

     The monopolistic media moguls that mold American attitudes were more than willing accomplices in staging this production. The pantomime of a Bush administration looking for "diplomatic solutions", or searching for every way possible to avoid military action, or postulating this or that resolution before the United Nations, with the Secretary of State and a whole host of underlings working feverishly in the back rooms of diplomacy, was breast fed to the American public with the workmanlike devotion of a lioness nourishing her cubs. We tried, nobody would listen, we must reluctantly save the Iraqi people and the rest of the world from imminent disaster.

     Fox-CNN et al dutifully created this atmosphere, when, by the first anniversary of 9/11, if they had been sincere with the American people and were not just carrying out their role in the imperial plans of those currently brokering the world's power, they could have said no more than this: "war with Iraq will commence as soon as the experts in such undertakings deem it properly prepared . in other news, the Yankees moved closer to capturing the pennant by ."

     Obviously, a properly dosified amount of debate as to the war's propriety figured in the formula, but it was a debate with much narrower parameters than in the rest of the world, where its legality, legitimacy and morality were seriously questioned. The American debate, at least in the media outlets with the most hegemony over the "lumpen" attitudes of the country, framed the national discussion as only a question of good or bad governmental policy. Even as I write, more than a year into what can now easily be described as a fiasco, the morality of the undertaking has still not been seriously challenged in America.

     By the time the war preparations were complete, the American people had been worked into a fighting mood . and now, from a propaganda standpoint, came the easy part.

     We may have lost the war in Vietnam, but the imperial hawks of America have found a way to use it to their advantage. OK, we've had our cosmetic debate, we've talked it over on Crossfire, the Congress has staged its little number and . surprise! . we went to war. It has now become an unwritten law of American politics to not question the military action once it has begun. The assumption that we lost the war in Vietnam not to those gritty little gooks, but in the news outlets and on the streets of America, has now been used to emasculate opposition to any bellicose operation. Now that we've stepped in the doo-doo, we must close ranks and get behind our mercenaries (of course, they'd never use that word) out there fighting for us all . regardless of the war's wisdom. The verbal battle waged on the car fenders of America is a reflection of this recent nuance in gringo politics. "I support the troops" has become a cowardly way to say, "I support the war in Iraq", which many of our citizens are too squeamish to publicly say.

     Regardless of what kind of fraudulent image our media monsters could manufacture, people like this writer support the troops in Iraq far more than those bumper sticker patriots. We'd have never sent them off to fight this war and now that they are there, we'd find a way to bring them home . and soon. I'm sure almost all of them would prefer that to bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people (or to capturing their oil fields).

     But the moguls of the "Military-Industrial-Media" complex had other plans. Our fighting men and women now go off to war accompanied by some well chosen journalists who are "embedded" amongst them. With everyone now supporting the troops, these "embedded" people have only one job: to show our glorious fighting machine doing a glorious job in a difficult situation. Look at them all, in their matching camouflage outfits, with those dashing Australian kangaroo hats, a Gucci force of well trained, well equipped liberators, so disciplined and competent in their cutting edge approach to modern imperial . I mean warfare. These people know what they are doing. Those billions and billions of taxpayer dollars have not been spent in vane. They are the "good guys", ladies and gentlemen, can there be any doubt, now that one of those "embedded" dudes has shown it to us?

     Which brings me to . (see essay "Introduction to Propaganda, 101").

     Relevant Material - "A conspiratorial wind pushed the green fog towards the French lines, heavily stuck to the ground, a bland mass that molded itself to the most minute accidents of the terrain, sneaking into craters, drowning mounds of earth and barbed wire, a vertical tide like that which engulfed the Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea. ( . ) Raising an insignificant arm in front of their astonished eyes for protection, the men asked themselves what new cruelty had been invented to further add to their misery. The first wisps of poison gas began to wash over their trenches." From the novel, "Les champs d'honneur" (The Fields of Honor), a bitter accusation against war, by the Frenchman, Jean Rouard.