First, the reality check:
The purpose of the US crusade against those who would stand between America and its oil is not:
A) To win hearts and minds. If I break into your house to steal your stereo, winning your heart and mind is not a factor in my strategy.
B) To spread “democracy.” The Majority World is quite capable of holding sham elections without US help.
C) To provide a benefit to ordinary Americans. Some of them are quite upset about so much torture and slaughter when they don’t get any of the money.
There is almost no domestic opposition to US policies.
There are, however a small but significant number of Americans who believe that the policies should be:
A) More attractively worded. Ex. “progressive intervention” sounds so much nicer than “pre-emptive strike.”
B) More flexible in outsourcing of wetwork. Many Americans would feel a lot better about things if their tax dollars were spent to pay nationals from other countries to seize family members and haul them off for “interrogation” at the Ghraib.
C) Implemented under a subsidiary letterhead. Knowing that Iraqi children were being murdered by gunmen wearing blue hats would make US “operations” more palatable.
Something that may have slipped under your radar: One of the principal reasons there is virtually no opposition to the crusade is one of the greatest propaganda tricks of the age.
Washington’s warlords, in cooperation with their media wing, the corporate press, has rendered it seemingly impossible even to express opposition to US policies without voicing support for them.
Let’s start with “insurgent.” When those who claim to oppose the crusade speak of “insurgents,” as they have been meticulously trained to do, no matter what they say, they are pledging their fealty to the principle of the legitimacy of the US invading and occupying a country.
There are no insurgents in Iraq. There is nothing to insurge against. Whatever Kewl Kollaborator Klub the US sets up is not a government, it is not a legitimate authority.
Nor would any homologous body set up by Iran in Washington constitute a legitimate authority, and any action taken by Americans against such a body would not constitute an “insurgency.”
That last, few Americans will deny. Another propaganda victory.
Another favorite meme, “WMD,” or “weapons of mass destruction” has also successfully been used to turn any “anti-war” discussion into a paean of praise for imperialism.
Saddam didn’t have WMD! The war was wrong.
And what if he had? Would that make the war right?
The US has plenty of WMD. Would Finland, or Malaysia, or Iran, then be justified in invading and occupying the United States?
What if Finland et al had specifically ordered the US not to have WMD, but the US defied this?
Surely, then that would justify the carpet bombing of Kansas, the flattening of Chicago, and the “detention” of thousands of Americans in torture camps.
No?
Well, then chalk up another propaganda victory.
And on to “containment.” What about the options for containing Iran? Non military options. We are talking about anti-war progressives here. They just want to contain Iran.
What measures would they suggest Iran use to contain the US? Somebody really should come up with some suggestions here, because the US is anything but contained at the moment.
Whether it is their intention to do so or not, almost any opposing view one hears from American lips or pen is coated with an impermeable layer of agreement that Iraq, like the rest of the world, is US property.
Not only did Bush repeat his “with us or against us” doctrine clearly after his earpiece, his henchmen have made damn sure that whatever your opinion may be, and however you state it, you are with US policies.
The world does not agree, and this fundamental disagreement is not in the best interests of the population of the United States.
Currently, around 350 million people live in the US.
There are over 6 billion people in the world.
In recent years, advances in technology have made more information available to more people than at any other time in history, and the US is no exception.
Today, right this minute, there are Americans reading things about their nation’s activities over the decades that they were not taught in school. While most are pleased and delighted, others are horrified.
“Ignorant Americans” has become a standing joke, but every day now, one sees at least a few Americans who just learned about US activities in the Middle East before their grandparents were born.
To an extent, American ignorance has always been more of a cultural value, a choice, at least in the case of the affluent. Technology has amplified this. The story, any story, is quite literally, at their fingertips.
Although relatively few take advantage of it, Al Gore’s inspired invention of the internets has made it possible, for the first time in the history of the human species, for any person on earth to communicate, in real time, to any other person anywhere on earth, as long as both have a computer, a modem, and a common language.
That potential, though woefully underexploited by individuals, constitutes the single greatest threat to war in the history of mankind.
“The Swiss are evil! We must attack the Swiss!” rings less thrillingly on ears who just got help with their web page from a friendly Swiss person.
An oversimplification of what the internet means: CNN says it is raining in France. You go to IRC, to the #paris channel, and ask, “Are y’all wet?”
Three people will tell you they are drowning, two will tell you that Frenchmen are never wet, four will tell you that the rain story is a tinfoil turban conspiracy theory, and at least five will ask what is this rain you speak of, but if you stick around long enough, eventually over a dozen will tell you that they just came from outside and are shaking water off their umbrellas, they are worried that their petunias are too soaked, but their cousin across town has not seen a drop, ask again in the evening.
There is a downside to this, of course. People with internet access in many nations who are the beneficiaries of US attentions tend to be of the “elite” class, not unlike their American counterparts.
It is unlikely that one will find a lot of dialogue between a low wage earning single mom struggling to stay in housing, and her Iranian counterpart. Their conversation would be quite different from that of an Iranian business executive who stands to make some money if he doesn’t mind selling a few cousins, which he doesn’t, and an affluent American with an interest in progressive intervention to crush insurgencies and contain Iran. (or operatives in the employ of one entity or another passing themselves off as who knows what).
Even with those admittedly troubling liabilities, the potential is there, it is unprecedented, and it is just one element of the end of plausible deniability, and though at the moment, it might not look like it, the end of effective propaganda.
That is, unless the warlords blow up the planet before any of that can kick in.
