… at the absurdity. Crying is too painful.
General Petraeus reportedly wants to make it easier for the military to spread propaganda about the war effort in Iraq. This story originally appeared in the LA Times on April 18th. It describes Petraeus’s request to combine the public affairs (i.e., “public relations”) arm of the Pentagon with the information operations (i.e., psy-ops/disinformation/propaganda) arm. What this accomplishes beyond making it easier to lie to the American people about the war is beyond me:
A 2004 memo by Gen. Richard B. Myers, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, codified the separation between public affairs, which communicates with the press and public, and “information operations,” which attempts to sway people in other countries. […]
But Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has asked for changes that would allow the two branches to work more closely. His request has unleashed a debate inside the Pentagon between those who say the separation has made the Defense Department less agile and those who believe that restructuring the relationship would threaten to turn military spokesmen into propaganda tools.
A senior military officer close to Petraeus said the memo now in place prevents coordination between the information operations officers and public affairs officers. […]
Pentagon officials have told Petraeus’s aides that, while the new policy is being developed, they should not interpret the Myers memo as a prohibition against coordination between public affairs and information operations.
All this really means is that Petraeus wants to cover his ass when it comes out that his public affairs office and “information operations” units have been coordinating their stories about the Iraq war effort in order to deceive the American public. That 2004 memo by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Myers, that supposedly established a firewall between the two has likely been more honored in the breach than in the observance since it became “official” policy back in 2004. Hell, in all likelihood the Myers memo was merely a small part of Bush’s re-election campaign, a sop for the press in order to weaken those critics who rightly pointed out that the war had been based on lies and misrepresentations all along. I suspect no one at the Pentagon ever took it as seriously.
(cont.)
However, General Petraeus is by all accounts has the reputation of a straight arrow, as well as of a tactical genius when it comes to fighting insurgencies. It is impossible to conceive that he is not currently conducting “information operations” that spread disinformation through his public affairs officers, operations for which he doesn’t later want to be criticized or reprimanded. That’s why he’s asked his superiors to formally change the policy of separation between public affairs and information operations which was established by Myers’ 2004 memo.
In short, he asking the Pentagon brass to give him a pass on lying to the American public on behalf of the Bush administration about the war. No doubt Cheney and Bush have let it be known that Petraeus had to continue their policy of deceiving the American public about the war effort before he was appointed as the commander in Iraq. I’m sure they are convinced that such “operations” are vital to national security, or at least to their own job security. I’m also certain that they accept as fact the old shibboleth, which hearkens back to the conservative critique of why we lost Vietnam, that so long as the public supports the war effort, and so long as we keep our troops in the field, victory can be achieved.
As if that is going to somehow magically make a difference. The PR battle was lost a long time ago. That loss was confirmed by the results of the 2006 election. Of greater significance, the war was itself lost the day it was conceived in the reptilian brains of Cheney and Rumsfeld. Their strategy, if you could call it that, was flawed from the beginning by false assumptions and gross misperceptions regarding the Middle East, Iraq and the consequences that would follow the removal of Saddam’s regime by a foreign power. There was no way in hell that imposing an American military occupation on Iraq was ever going to succeed. It certainly hadn’t succeeded for the British when they tried it after the First World War.
I’m sure Petraeus knows all this. But he’s committed to giving it one last try using his “hearts and minds” approach to “pacification.” He probably convinced himself when he took the job on that it was still “doable.” I suspect that now that he’s in charge of the whole ball of melting wax, the doubts that he suppressed about his ability to make a difference are already creeping back in with each new bombing and each new fatality. He may be starting to realize that victory in Iraq is a chimera in which only the most delusional “War President” (and Vice President) in our nation’s history still believe. However, it’s too late for him to back out now. All his chips are in the pot.
Which is why this story isn’t about his attempt to restart a propaganda war back on the home front. That campaign has never abated. No, all this story signifies is that Petraeus is determined to salvage what he can of his reputation. I suppose a part of me can’t blame him for that.