George W. Bush does not think that the Taliban are his enemy. He doesn’t think Usama bin-Laden is his enemy. He doesn’t think former Ba’athists are his enemy, or even foreign suicide bombers. No, his enemies are ‘opinion leaders’ here in the United States. That’s you and me.
In studying past wars, they have drawn lessons different from the conventional wisdom. Bush advisers challenge the widespread view that public opinion turned sour on the Vietnam War because of mounting casualties that were beamed into living rooms every night. Instead, Bush advisers have concluded that public opinion shifted after opinion leaders signaled that they no longer believed the United States could win in Vietnam.
Most devastating to public opinion, the advisers believe, are public signs of doubt or pessimism by a president, whether it was Ronald Reagan after 241 Marines, soldiers and sailors were killed in a barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983, forcing a U.S. retreat, or Bill Clinton in 1993 when 18 Americans were killed in a bloody battle in Somalia, which eventually led to the U.S. withdrawal there.
This is really dangerous for a few reasons. Number one, it indicates that they are not concerned with whether the conflict in Iraq is winnable, but only with whether they can maintain the hope that it is winnable.
Number two, it means that they consider the true enemy to be all us latter-day Walter Cronkites.
Number three, it means that we can expect no realism from any government spokespeople, since evidence of doubt is considered a threat to the success of our mission.
Number four, this means that we can expect more Armstrong Williams’ moles infiltrating the MSM to give us pollyanish views of the situation.
Number five, it means that we will be blamed if we succeed in undermining popular support for Bush’s disastrous Presidency and foreign policy.
:::flip:::
If you doubt we are the enemy, read this:
In shaping their message, White House officials have drawn on the work of Duke University political scientists Peter D. Feaver and Christopher F. Gelpi, who have examined public opinion on Iraq and previous conflicts. Feaver, who served on the staff of the National Security Council in the early years of the Clinton administration, joined the Bush NSC staff about a month ago as special adviser for strategic planning and institutional reform.
Feaver and Gelpi categorized people on the basis of two questions: “Was the decision to go to war in Iraq right or wrong?” and “Can the United States ultimately win?” In their analysis, the key issue now is how people feel about the prospect of winning. They concluded that many of the questions asked in public opinion polls — such as whether going to war was worth it and whether casualties are at an unacceptable level — are far less relevant now in gauging public tolerance or patience for the road ahead than the question of whether people believe the war is winnable.
“The most important single factor in determining public support for a war is the perception that the mission will succeed,” Gelpi said in an interview yesterday.
“Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations.”
Bush has used this term several times, but it’s exactly what’s going on here.
Bush and his advisors see the public as victims. We cannot think for ourselves, but rely soley on the word of a few “opinion leaders” to make our decisions.
In other situations, the “opinion leaders” model may fit.
In this case, it’s an insult to the American people.
What the White House officials in charge of shaping public opinion are missing is, in the case of Iraq — BUSH LIED.
The White House keeps pretending that it doesn’t matter that they fixed the facts around the policy. But it does. It’s the reason that people think the mission cannot succeed.
But I say let Bush and his party keep on deluding themselves that they can turn public opinion on this one. Let them blame us — the accusations fall flat.
We have the public on our side on this one. I don’t think a “Blame The Democrats” strategy has any resonance with anyone but the hardcore wingnut faction of the Republican party. And we don’t need them anyway.
Well, just about the only “truth” I heard in the president’s speech was his statement that one must keep fighting against evil.
Guess it just depends on how one defines evil.
This isn’t the first time the Bush administration has tried to paint those of us who disagree with him (and especially those of us who disagree with him publicly) as unpatriotic, traitorous enemies. Still, we, who love our country but abhor his policies, have grown in strength and reach. I intend to go on fighting evil.
More evidence that all Bushco knows how to do is campaign…forget trying to govern responsibly, it’s all about fooling all the people all the time.
Fewer and fewer are being fooled today (even the young folks at the video store the other day called him a liar!), and we’re all going to keep making sure he has a harder and harder time hiding the lies.
What a jerk: doesn’t care about how many people he’s killed, views the public as his enemy, and doesn’t believe he’s ever made a mistake in his life. Could we have a worse president?
Booman, everything you say here is spot on, and I see no chance of things getting better, and I am completely out of ideas.
Buckle up, folks, it’s going to get ugly.
I just told my husband yesterday: the next 6 months to a year are not going to be pretty…things are going to get ugly all over.
I am torn right now between, just ducking out and keeping my head down (for the sake of my kiddos, I fear for my older one if he starts repeating stuff he hears at home when school starts again in August), or getting out there and just raising holy hell (again for the sake of my kiddos…and all of us).
I vote for getting out there and raising holy hell. What kind of signal are we sending our children by doing nothing? What are we teaching them? It is ok for the president to lie but don’t you do it? Are we teaching our kids not to tell the truth if they are in public? What does that tell us? We have lost our right to dissent and freedom of speech. Everything Bushco tries to tall us we are fighting for over there is being sliced away at right here at home.FEAR will chain us to this administrations lies and that is what they continue to try and instill. Bush invoked 9/11 five times in his speech, continuing to tell the lie that has been irrevocably disputed to continue to TRY and instill fear in the US people because it worked for him in the campaign. Who else is going to take these criminals on? At what cost do we bury our heads in the sand? WE MUST do it for our children and grandchildren’s future. This will not stop in three years when Bush leaves office. They will not stop trying to make this country into a fascist state. We must speak up and we must raise HOLY HELL….NOW!!!!! Before it is too late!
Until people stop voting for Republicans and Democrats, and start voting for candidates who actually oppose the war (and support single payer health, are in favor of gay marriage, etc.), things aren’t going to get any better.
The biggest problem is that we have two parties who basically agree on practically everything. NAFTA, the war on terr’, health system based mostly on insurance company survival, separate-but-equal “civil unions;” the list goes on and on.
It might not be the popular viewpoint in this blog, but the Democratic party is a big part of the problem, and is not in any mind to change. We need a third party to represent liberal interests.
This attitude is wrong and dangerous. The Bush Administration has conclusively proved this theory wrong, or at least to the extent that it is not viable AT ALL to talk about a third-party unless and until balance of power is restored in this country.
I won’t even go into the laundry list of differences between the parties, because they are so obvious in these times of bitter partisanship that if you haven’t already acknowledged them, nothing I can say will cause you to do so.
Ralph Nader was my hero until 2000, when he undisputably inserted Bush in the White House with his quixotic campaign. But I continued to respect him until 2004 when he went ahead and ran again knowing what he had done to this country by running in 2000. To quote our wordsmith President: “Fool me once… shame on… me… Fool me once, can’t get fooled again!”
Ok, keep on voting for Democrats, then, but don’t complain when they don’t support your positions.
Kerry and Hillary–and the rest of the party establishment–are both strong supporters of the War on Terr’. Neither supports single payer health or gay marriage. Both supported NAFTA. Both want the cost of fuel to be lower. Neither wants an aggressively progressive income tax. Both want to restrict abortion.
The current Democratic party, even with Dean in there, is not a liberal party. Don’t be surprized when the parties continue to support conservative causes: They know that liberals don’t actually vote for liberals…
No one candidate, even a third-party candidate, is going to agree with you on every single issue, and put priority on exactly the issues you feel deserve priority.
Moreover, this is why we have something called a primary. There were many liberal voices in the 2004 primary that received a lot of attention. You can stay within the party and still seek to move it to the left if that’s your thing.
Do you think if Al Gore won in 2000 we would be in Iraq right now?
Sure I think we would be there if Gore had been elected. Clinton and Gore both were quite open about the problem of Iraq’s WMD, and they would have done the same thing as W did. People seem to have fogotten the 1990s.
There were plenty of international problems during the Clinton/Gore administration, but most people were totally wrapped up in the Lewinsky BJ thing. Reminder:
http://canberra.usembassy.gov/hyper/WF980630/epf201.htm
It’s not like this all just started when the big dope got elected…
asdf,
Thanks for saying what so many don’t want to hear. Truth is, the US is a conservative country, and an empire that is determined to use its power to defend its interests, i.e., to continue its economic military and political dominance when and where it can.
In that context one hopes for a government that is better, not worse.
But for a truly progressive government, you have to leave the US and go . . . where? Canada. There is a right wing here, but they are definitely the minority. Health care. Gay marriage, now. No strong anti-abortion movement. No death penalty. No involvement in Iraq. We are part of NAFTA, however. It’s bloody cold in much of the country in the winter. Could be a lot worse, though. Eh?
Like I said, if you think we’d be in Iraq right now if Al Gore won in 2000 there really is no way for us to have common ground. That saddens me.
Watch the fight now over O’Connor’s replacement and ask yourself whether you would rather have John Kerry nominating someone. The difference cannot be overstated.
I’m sorry that we do not agree. In my view, Gore supporters have bought into a sales pitch that does not reflect reality.
For example, here’s a truly left-wing viewpoint: “Gore didn’t oppose a war in Iraq in principle. Rather, he urged Bush to build a bigger coalition, have a good plan for a postwar Iraq, and focus on al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden before dealing with Saddam Hussein. These criticisms of Bush mirrored the noises coming at that time from Republicans–like George Bush Sr.’s advisers James Baker and Brent Scowcroft.”
http://socialistworker.org/2003-2/470/470_07_GoreToWar.shtml
I wonder if it has something to do with age. Any faith I might have had in Al Gore was crushed a long time ago in the Snail Darter incident, which at the time was a big deal. Of course it’s all but forgotten now… “The Tellico Dam became a national issue after biologists discovered that it would cause the extinction of the snail darter, a tiny fish that lived in the Little Tennessee River, making the dam a test case for the Endangered Species Act. Representative Gore was among those voting successfully to exempt the dam from the ESA.”
http://www.socialistaction.org/news/199911/gore.html
We’ll have to agree to disagree…but I remain convinced that the only useful way forward is to split the Democratic party into a liberal party and a labor party, so that on at least some issues there will be a leftist majority. As it stands, we are about to lose the Supreme Court, and the chance for a Democratic win in the next presidential election–which seems at least possible now–will evaporate when the next terr’ist attack on U.S. soil happens.
BushMart fitting the “intelligence” to the “impulse” (policy).
In other words, they’re just going to people who are telling them that they’re right. “Yes men.”
Nixon (NixMart) tried to blame the press too. By the time NixMart was blaming the press, word on the street had already passed the point-of-no-return.
And this point is where BushMart is. They’ve crossed the line.
They intuitively know it but are incapable of admitting it to themselves; hence continue with failed courses of reaction in the hope that one of these times of doing the same thing, it will actually work.
They’ve dug a hole.
They’re buying shovels.
They’re telling their supporters to dig faster.
I think the most important part was this
They are saying “The President Lies to You because He loves you. You can’t impeach him for Lying.”
> You can’t impeach him for Lying.
unless the war is seen as a lost cause. And then the vultures will come home to roost.
You are either a traitorous opinion leader or someone vulnerable to their negative conjectures! Come over to this Iron Maiden so that we may determine the quality of your betrayal
either/or (both?) … just another reality-based echo in the chamber.
In a sense, they are right, it wasn’t the images beaming into living rooms that doomed the Vietnam debacle. It was the body bags being delivered to families … in flag-draped coffins … all over the country … for years.
You don’t need “opinion leaders” to tell you your child is dead, your husband is gone, your friend will never return. A funeral will suffice.
I believe the true lesson they learned from Vietnam is “blame the messenger,” and they are laying the groundwork to make all messengers out to be the cause of the war’s failure – the guys with the guns, IEDs, and a country to fight for have nothing to do with it. Ignore those fighters behind the curtain….
The administration clearly chose to ignore the much bigger lesson from Vietnam: don’t start unnecessary, unjust wars against an innocent population that poses no threat. Such wars are doomed to become unpopular as the uncomfortable truth emerges.
is that they think the general public is a bunch of dupes.
Yes, opinion leaders are so powerful they can lead the public wherever they want to.
here is an interesting excerpt from a paper published in 2004 by the PR experts mentioned in the article:
from “Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq” (PDF)
My late teenage memory of the period was that public opinion was indeed reasonably supportive of the Viet Nam war at the time veteran World War II correspondent Walter Cronkite toured there (after Tet?) and expressed some of the first serious doubt to be heard by maintream America.
Of course, it’s also true that public opinion was that the ship would continue to New York until the opinion leaders aboard Titanic urged passengers into the lifeboats.
Look, for nearly 40 years the Republicans have consistently shown they are the party of reality. They, not the Democrats, know how the modern world actually works, and they, not the Democrats, have consistently advanced their cause by competing in the United States which actually exist. We on the left plan in a world that hasn’t existed for 2 generations. Our strategies and tactics continue to be based on the support of forces and logistics that have long since become Republican.
We’re in profoundly serious trouble now because we allowed mass media to develop over a century without recognizing that they were becoming a fundamental operating space for society. We never brought them into our Constitutional system in any ways remotely appropriate to the vast usage we make of them.
I’ve been warning that, based on several exercises in active Republican politicking and shutting-out of Dems in both news and paid access, the media would be a formal opponent of Democrats in the next elections. I’m not surprised to have reason to expect them to become oppositional now.
I hope some among us are working on alternative ways to reach the American electorate because it’s going to be considerably harder to do it from here on than it has been in to date. Major owners throughout the economy including the media are perfectly aware of the nature of Bushco and they’re overwhelmingly on board with them if it comes to a choice of supporting them vs. us.
There’s no major American leadership to sway or shame with facts or logic. Their minds are made up and they’ll employ the entirety of their economy to defend their program. It’s us against them.
“There’s no major American leadership to sway or shame with facts or logic. Their minds are made up and they’ll employ the entirety of their economy to defend their program. It’s us against them.”
Kinda puts the whole debate in the starkest possible terms.
George W. Bush does not think
You should have just stopped with that portion. It says it all right there.
. . . the one you posted just before it about supporting the returning vets address the same issue, as described so well by Jerry Lembcke in The Spitting Image. My diary with quotes from his book, is here. I think you will find Lembcke’s work very interesting.
will come with a mandatory clear screen cell from the animated Disney movie Cinderella.
You will adhere this cell to your TV screen so that all viewing of the daily news will be seen with a foreground of softly gathered fabric swags and ribbons hung from the top, bluebirds singing and butterflies fluttering near the sides, and happy little mice in human clothing laughing and dancing, at the bottom, as you view the nightly images of war.
This will enhance your viewing pleasure, alter your experience, and make the whole event a happy joyous sight to behold.
Who the fu*k do they think we are? I don’t care how you filter it- it ain’t gonna flush with anyone who has a brain cell left (and I do mean left) to
THINK with.
BushCo wants to study, focus group, PR, and poll how to sell this fu*king nightmare to those who oppose this war. We are the enemy? THAT IS IT! I am officially on a righteous mission to share this with everyone I know! We are just patties for this AssHat’s war party? I THINK NOT! Now I’m pissed……..
A stance like this was surely a given with all the talk we heard earlier about how reality was unimportant because Bushco was going to make it’s own reality. They have been very successful at this in the US.
One of the most appalling aspects of the Bushco Whitehouse is the blatant lies. This took me by surprise, but I was not a Bushco fan and did not pay attention to W prior to the 2000 campaign. Americans just don’t expect their President to lie right to their faces day after day like this one does. Some, the true believers have drunk the koolaid. Most people, especially older folks, wanted to give Bushco the benefit of the doubt over and over. But I’m hoping that most Americans are waking up.
Now, Bushco will have to attack all the dissenting voices. The problem for them is that we are now the majority. I look for further efforts to reign in the MSM ala the Plame case and attacks on blogging on the Internet.
This Bush regime has been waging a relentless “PsyOps” campaign against the public since before they even got into the White House.
With reckless disregard for the truth, this gang has been weaponizing the ignorance of the public constantly, 24/7. They never let up on the pressure. With lies, misdirection, the inculcation of fear and the exploitation of guilt, they’ve managed to render obedient, compliant and docile a huge segment of the population, persuading them to believe all kinds of completely absurd myths that have no basis in fact.
This is how cults operate; how they recruit and then maintain loyal followers, people whose psychological autonomy the cult manipulators have completely compromised. They’ve managed to turn formerly rational human beings into autonomic loyalists, thoughtless sycophants whose only desire is to support the “Dear Leader” and his crackpot schemes.
but the more I thought about it the more I thought it deserved a diary. So I stood up and I said, Damn straight, I’m the enemy.
Now who’s with me?