[Mb-civic] It's The Empire, Stupid

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Today's commentary:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-07/23jensen.cfm

==================================

ZNet Commentary
It's The Empire, Stupid July 29, 2005
By Robert Jensen 

a review of 
War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
By Norman Solomon
John Wiley & Sons
291 pages, $24.95

To put the problems of U.S. foreign and military policy into the
quip-ridden language of contemporary politics: “It’s the empire,
stupid.”

Understanding this big picture is crucial as we struggle to respond
politically to the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yes, the
Bush administration is a threat, but it’s not the threat. True, the
neocons are a danger, but not the danger. 

The threat and danger -- the rot at the core of U.S. actions abroad -- is
not a single politician or school of thought, but the project of
empire-building. That has gone forward through Republican and Democratic
administrations alike, most intensely and recklessly since the end of
World War II, when U.S. power and domination peaked.

Take what is probably the single most obscene enterprise in this period --
the U.S. attack on Indochina, what we call “the Vietnam War.” Its roots
were in the policy of a moderate Midwestern Republican (Dwight
Eisenhower), who supported French attempts to recolonize Vietnam and
undermined a political settlement after the Vietnamese kicked out the
French. The violence necessary to prop up a client regime in the South was
ramped up by the darling of liberal East Coast Democrats (John Kennedy),
and then intensified to truly barbaric levels by a rough-edged Southern
Democrat (Lyndon Johnson) and a rough-edged Western Republican (Richard
Nixon). 

In U.S. political mythology, we were either a well-intentioned giant that
simply misunderstood the nature of Vietnamese society (the liberal view),
or a well-intentioned giant kept from victory by a fifth column at home
(the reactionary view). 

In the mythology of U.S. journalism, the news media played the role of
tough critic, holding the powerful accountable for their mistakes. In this
story, reporters and editors are either heroes for their courage (the
liberal view) or traitors for their contribution to defeat (the
reactionary view).

The problem is that both myths are myths. The U.S. assault on Vietnam,
Laos and Cambodia was part of a wider attack on independent movements in
the Third World, which U.S. policymakers were eager to destroy. And the
U.S. press was mostly boosterish about the war, especially in the early
years, becoming skeptical only when larger forces in society turned
critical.

At a point when abandoning these myths is crucial to building a
left/progressive political movement that can challenge the U.S. empire,
media critic Norman Solomon has written an engaging book that helps
explain how the myth-making machine works. War Made Easy: How 
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death outlines how politicians 
and corporate journalists typically see the world in similar fashion,
sometimes squabbling over the finer points of empire construction and
maintenance but with the same basic worldview. 

Solomon’s book is organized around 17 specific myths that presidents and
pundits -- even when they may be locked in what seems to be conflict --
work together to maintain. The first is most central to the imperial
enterprise: “America Is a Fair and Noble Superpower.” 

It is this American exceptionalism -- the belief that unlike other great
powers, the United States is motivated not by the self-interest of some
set of elites but by benevolence -- which allows policymakers to sell wars
that are designed to extend and deepen U.S. power as a kind of
international community service. In the words of pundit Charles
Krauthammer, “We run a uniquely benign imperium,” a claim that is
regarded as absurd around the world but is shamefully easy to peddle to
the U.S. public.

Because we are this benign power, “Our Leaders Will Do Everything They
Can to Avoid War.” Solomon methodically goes through the evidence for the
opposite conclusion: U.S. leaders often strive to make war inevitable.
Most important here is Solomon’s attention to the first Gulf War and
Yugoslavia. In the aftermath of the Bush II debacle in Iraq, too many
folks (including, sadly, some on the liberal/progressive side) talked
wistfully about how George W.’s father “did it right” in 1990-91 by
building an international consensus before going to war. 

Yes, George H.W. displayed more savvy in derailing diplomacy and then
bullying/bribing other nations to fight that war -- which was necessary
only to demonstrate U.S. power and establish greater dominance in the
Middle East -- but that’s hardly something to celebrate. In the Clinton
attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 -- a war that many liberals were willing to
believe was “humanitarian” in intent and execution -- Solomon describes
how the United States made sure diplomacy would fail in negotiations by
insisting on conditions no nation could accept, clearing the way for war. 

None of this should surprise anyone; it’s how empires behave. In an
empire that has expansive political and expressive freedom, however, we
want to believe that journalists can check such abuses. Here, Solomon
explains the folly of believing that “If This War Is Wrong, the Media
Will Tell Us.”

The strength of Solomon’s analysis is that he doesn’t caricature the
news media. Journalists often do excellent work, and when the political
conditions are right, they can be an important part of a healthy political
culture. But Solomon points out that while stories that critique the
powerful do get written, challenges to the conventional wisdom typically
run once, often buried inside the paper. Meanwhile, the pronouncements of
the powerful are repeated day after day, often on the front page. Accurate
and important reporting is usually overwhelmed by the drumbeat. 

Solomon explains that in addition to the ideological similarities between
journalists and policymakers, one key reason for this is the slavish
reliance of corporate journalists on so-called official sources:
politicians, policy advisers, military leaders, think-tank hacks, and the
other “experts” created by the public-relations machinery. We have a
free press, but one that doesn’t use that freedom to act in consistently
independent fashion. 

How bad is it, really? Karen DeYoung, a Washington Post reporter and
former assistant managing editor, put it bluntly in an August 12, 2004,
Post story that looked at the paper’s failures in the run-up to the Iraq
War: “We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in
power. If the president stands up and says something, we report what the
president said.” DeYoung explained that contrary arguments tend to get
pushed off the front page, down in the story where many will never read. 

That’s how bad it is. An experienced reporter can acknowledge that
journalists routinely allow themselves to be used as conduits for lies;
one of top newspapers in the country can publish that acknowledgement; and
the game between politicians and journalists rolls along without much
interruption. 

There are indications, however, that more and more people are tired of
empire and the news media’s capitulation to power. We shouldn’t
overestimate the percentage of the U.S. population that is becoming
critical; Bush and politicians of his ilk continue to dominate the
political landscape, and much of the rest of the voting population accepts
the empire-with-a-human-face that John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and most
Democrats continue to sell. But the seeds of a principled and committed
anti-empire movement are here. 

On the media front, things are similar; polls show that a majority of the
public accepts the idea that the media’s main problem is that they’re
too liberal. But the seeds of not only a limited media-reform movement but
also a more expansive and critical media-justice movement also are taking
root. 

Solomon is hopeful but not naive. He knows long-term grassroots
organizing is necessary, and he’s on the lookout for issues that can
engage people. In recent weeks he’s written about the possibility of
pressing for Bush’s impeachment after the “smoking gun” memo from
Britain, which made clearer the Bush administration's lies to manufacture
the pretext for a war on Iraq. He’s not promising Bush could actually be
impeached but arguing that a serious movement could “push over the media
obstacles and drag politicians into a real debate about presidential war
crimes and the appropriate constitutional punishment.”

What will lead people to want to be part of that movement? No doubt some
of the motivation will come from a realization of self-interest -- while
imperial conquest enriches a small elite segment of this country and
provides some short-term material benefits to average Americans, it’s
inherently destructive and unsustainable. But Solomon ends his book by
pointing out that U.S. citizens also have a lot of moral self-reflection
to do. “While going to war may seem easy, any sense of ease is a result
of distance, privilege, and illusion,” he writes in the book’s
conclusion. 

Can we be the people we claim to be -- with the values we claim to hold --
and support empire, whether it’s Bush’s full-bodied version or the
Democrats’ empire-lite? The answer is clearly no. But breaking through
the “War Made Easy” mythology is difficult, especially in a
mass-mediated age. As Solomon points out, “The mass media are filled with
bright lights and sizzle, with high production values and lower human
values, boosting the war effort.” 

But his final words contain the hope we need: “Conscience is not on the
military’s radar screen, and it’s not on our television screen. But
government officials and media messages do not define the limits and
possibilities of conscience. We do.”

It’s up to us not just to critique what politicians say and what’s on
television, but to understand where conscience must lead us: Taking
seriously the responsibility and risks that will be required to help
dismantle the U.S. empire.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at
Austin, a founding member of the Nowar Collective,
http://www.nowarcollective.com/, and a member of the board of the Third
Coast Activist Resource Center, http://thirdcoastactivist.org/. He is the
author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and
Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City
Lights Books). He can be reached at rjensen at uts.cc.utexas.edu.





-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, 
option D (up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options 
(option A - 1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option D - 
up to 3x/day) please reply and let us know!  If someone forwarded you 
this email and you want to be on our list, send an email to 
ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which option you'd like.


"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050729/e88c67e9/attachment.htm