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Articles : IraqBlaming the Antiwar Messengers
The surge of antiwar voices in U.S. media this month has coincided with new lows in public approval for what pollsters call President Bush’s “handling” of the Iraq war. After more than two years of a military occupation that was supposed to be a breeze after a cakewalk into Baghdad, the war has become a clear PR loser. But an unpopular war can continue for a long time — and one big reason is that the military-industrial-media complex often finds ways to blunt the effectiveness of its most prominent opponents.
Right now, the pro-war propaganda arsenal of the world’s only superpower is drawing a bead on Cindy Sheehan, who now symbolizes the USA’s antiwar grief. She is a moving target, very difficult to hit. But right-wing media sharpshooters are sure to keep trying.
The Bush administration’s top officials must be counting the days until the end of the presidential vacation brings to a close the Crawford standoff between Camp Casey and Camp Carnage. But media assaults on Cindy Sheehan are just in early stages.
While the president mouths respectful platitudes about the grieving mother, his henchmen are sharpening their media knives and starting to slash. Pro-Bush media hit squads are busily spreading the notions that Sheehan is a dupe of radicals, naive and/or nutty. But the most promising avenue of attack is likely to be the one sketched out by Fox News Channel eminence Bill O’Reilly on Aug. 9, when he declared that Cindy Sheehan bears some responsibility for “other American families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq who feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.”
That sort of demagoguery is on tap for the duration of the war. Military families will be recruited for media appearances to dispute the patriotism of antiwar activists — especially those who speak as relatives of American soldiers and shatter media stereotypes by publicly urging withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
So far, during this war, President Bush is leaving the defamation chores to his surrogate media fighters. But loud noises coming from the right wing today are echoes of key themes that other presidents eagerly voiced.
During the mid-1960s, as President Lyndon Johnson escalated the Vietnam War, he grew accustomed to trashing Americans who expressed opposition. They were prone to be shaky and irresolute, he explained — and might even betray the nation’s servicemen. “There will be some Nervous Nellies,” he predicted on May 17, 1966, “and some who will become frustrated and bothered and break ranks under the strain. And some will turn on their leaders and on their country and on our fighting men.”
Delivering a speech in mid-March 1968, President Johnson contended that as long as the foe in Vietnam “feels that he can win something by propaganda in the country — that he can undermine the leadership — that he can bring down the government — that he can get something in the Capital that he can’t get from our men out there — he is going to keep on trying.”
LBJ’s successor Richard Nixon was quick to brandish similar innuendos. “Let us be united for peace,” Nixon said early in his presidency. “Let us be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.”
Martin Luther King Jr. found that former allies could become incensed when he went out of his way to challenge the war. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, he said, the U.S. was “on the wrong side of a world revolution.” King asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions “of the shirtless and barefoot people” in the Third World, instead of supporting them.
That kind of talk drew barbs and denunciations from media quarters that had applauded his efforts to end racial segregation. Time magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post warned that “King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”
When the Gulf War began, snappy phrases like “blame America first” were a popular way to vilify dissenters. “What we cannot be proud of, Mr. Speaker, is the unshaven, shaggy-haired, drug culture, poor excuses for Americans, wearing their tiny, round wire-rim glasses, a protester’s symbol of the blame-America-first crowd, out in front of the White House burning the American flag,” Representative Gerald B. H. Solomon said on Jan. 17, 1991.
During a typical outburst in early 2003 before the Iraq invasion, Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience: “I want to say something about these antiwar demonstrators. No, let’s not mince words, let’s call them what they are — anti-American demonstrators.” Weeks later, former Congressman Joe Scarborough, a Republican rising through the ranks of national TV hosts, said on MSNBC: “These leftist stooges for anti-American causes are always given a free pass. Isn’t it time to make them stand up and be counted for their views, which could hurt American troop morale?”
Such poisonous sludge is now pouring out of some mass media — and we should expect plenty more in response to a growing antiwar movement.
This article is adapted from Norman Solomon‘s new book ““War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471694797/ref%3Dase%5Fcommondreams-20/103-2320689-9231058.” For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com.
Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He has worked as a producer for MTV and Fuse. He is the co-author of GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc,...
Take the moral high ground.
Defend that ground.
We have better speakers than Bill O’reilly on our side.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or
that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American
public.”
[Theodore Roosevelt] 1918
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. “
[Thomas Jefferson]
I just have to add to that…
“If we suffer ourselves to be frightened from our post by mere lying, surely the enemy will use that weapon; for what one so cheap to those of whose system of politics morality makes no part?”
—[Thomas Jefferson to James Sullivan], 1805.
“It is always better to have no ideas, than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. In my mind, theories are more easily demolished than rebuilt.”
—Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788.
“There is more honor and magnanimity in correcting, than persevering in an error.”
—Thomas Jefferson: Batture at New Orleans, 1812.
“I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.”
—Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804.
“That there should be a contrariety of opinions respecting the public agents and their measures,... is ever to be expected among free men.”
—Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Leesburg Republicans, 1809.
“Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.”
—Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801.
Quoting the founding fathers is a very good way to get right wingers to question their beliefs. If you quote Ghandi and Martin Luther King it doesn’t speak to the right wing as much as quotes from the founding fathers do.
Good to see this article made it to the frontpage!
I was pleased with this article. It puts into words thoughts that have been rattling around in my mostly-empty head as of late.
I’m an admitted pessimist. After Gee Dubya is done kicking up his heels at the ranch, I think she’ll be left by the media way-side and forever-after be fated to preach to the choir. I don’t even think the right needs to do anything other than wait the rest of this month out. ‘Course, that’s no fun, so they’re going to do their best to destroy her.
I think they are poisonous scum for their behavior. I don’t look at families who are still pro-war after a war-death in the family and think, “TREASONOUS!!!” I don’t agree with how they feel, but at least I have some semblance of decency and respect their loss. Unbelievable.
Yes, we have better speakers than O’Reilly in PLENTY. That’s not the problem. The problem is that their shitty speakers have been given such huge bullhorns that they usually drown everything else out.
We need a new gameplan.
The Iraq War and MoveOn
by Norman Solomon
The day after Wednesday night’s nationwide vigils, the big headline at the top of the MoveOn.org home page said: “Support Cindy Sheehan.” But MoveOn does not support Cindy Sheehan’s call for swift withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
Many groups were important to the success of the Aug. 17 vigils, but the online powerhouse MoveOn was the largest and most prominent. After a long stretch of virtual absence from Iraq war issues, the organization deserves credit for getting re-involved in recent months. But the disconnects between MoveOn and much of the grassroots antiwar movement are disturbing.
Part of the problem is MoveOn’s routine fuzziness about the war — and the way that the group is inclined to water down the messages of antiwar activism, much of which is not connected to the organization.
Consider how the MoveOn website summarized the vigils: “Last night, tens of thousands of supporters gathered at 1,625 vigils to acknowledge the sacrifices made by Cindy Sheehan, her son Casey and the more than 1,800 brave American men and women who have given their lives in Iraq — and their moms and families.” Such a gloss excludes a key reason why many people participated in the vigils: They wanted to express clear opposition to any further U.S. involvement in the war.
Despite its high-profile role in the vigils this week, MoveOn is still not giving a high priority to addressing the Iraq war in its ongoing work. When I went to the MoveOn website today and looked at its roster of “Current Campaigns,” just a single item on the list was focused on Iraq — and that one, from June, involved “demanding that Bush address the evidence in the ‘Downing Street Memo.’”
The political action wing of MoveOn has committed itself to supporting congressional legislation, co-sponsored by Reps. Walter Jones and Neil Abercrombie, which would require the president to start withdrawing troops from Iraq … by October 2006.
In contrast, MoveOn never supported Rep. Lynn Woolsey’s resolution, introduced early this year, stating that “the president should develop and implement a plan to begin the immediate withdrawal of United States Armed Forces from Iraq.” (Despite the lack of MoveOn’s support, the measure received 128 votes in the House.) Nor has MoveOn gotten behind Rep. Barbara Lee’s more recent bill to prevent the establishment of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.
What if MoveOn were to directly ask its 3 million members (people who’ve signed up for its e-mailings) whether they favor the idea of waiting till autumn 2006 before the start of U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq — or whether, on the other hand, those members would prefer that withdrawal get underway before the end of this year? I believe that most MoveOn members would opt for the latter scenario. But MoveOn policy is set by a few individuals who have not been willing to put such options in front of members for a vote.
On Tuesday, the day before the vigils, Cindy Sheehan said in a conference call that the Jones-Abercrombie timeline is “not soon enough.” She doesn’t see any good reason to continue the U.S. military occupation; she’s opposed to any delay in pulling out. And while it’s all well and good for MoveOn to tell people to “Support Cindy Sheehan,” the MoveOn leadership should publicly explain why the organization refuses to join her in supporting a swift withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq.
During the next few weeks, MoveOn will have an opportunity to devote some of its appreciable resources to strengthening the antiwar movement. With an umbrella theme of “End the War on Iraq — Bring the Troops Home Now,” protests in Washington and elsewhere are on the calendar for Sept. 24-26. The national coalition United for Peace & Justice is playing a key role in creating momentum for those demonstrations, which will begin an autumn of historic antiwar activism. Hopefully, MoveOn will catch up with its grassroots base and get involved in a supportive way.
Norman Solomon is the author of the new book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com
i posted this in headlines yard yesterday, but oh well…
i though articles had to be wholly original content written by GNN users and NOT republished articles from other sources, otherwise, i would have posted this one in the articles yard myself. arg
Solomon is a GNN contributor
You can publish an article by someone else to the Yard if you have their permission to do so.
Its important to remember Dr King as more than a “black leader” as he is usually defined, he was a people’s leader, a world leader in many respects, generally a good man.
It is strange that we want to install democracies across the whole globe but globally we do not act as a democracy instead we use mob rule through warfare as the driving force of the West in international affairs.
Solomon is a GNN contributor
You can publish an article by someone else to the Yard if you have their permission to do so.
Or if you say they are a “GNN contributor”.
Even Nelson Mandela was called a terrorist for opposing the apartheid government. Even the US had initially joined in calling him a terrorist in the early stages of the struggle. So what’s happening now is nothing new.
However, it is good to see that now, the propoganda can be seen for what it is. Clever wording will only expose you further as a fake.
Peace,
M.
yeah i remember when mandela was being called a terrorist on network news, when i was a kid