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The Afghanistan Gap: Press vs. Public
This month, a lot of media stories have compared President
Johnson's war in Vietnam and President Obama's war in Afghanistan. The
comparisons are often valid, but a key parallel rarely gets mentioned
-- the media's insistent support for the war even after most of the
public has turned against it.
This omission relies on the mythology that the U.S. news media
functioned as tough critics of the Vietnam War in real time, a fairy
tale so widespread that it routinely masquerades as truth. In fact,
overall, the default position of the corporate media is to bond with
war policymakers in Washington -- insisting for the longest time that
the war must go on.
In early 1968, after several years of massive escalation of the Vietnam War, the Boston Globe conducted a survey of 39 major U.S. daily newspapers and found that not a single one had editorialized in favor of U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. While millions of Americans were actively demanding an immediate pullout, such a concept was still viewed as extremely unrealistic by the editorial boards of big daily papers -- including the liberal New York Times and Washington Post.
A similar pattern took shape during Washington's protracted war in Iraq. Year after year, the editorial positions of major dailies have been much more supportive of the U.S. war effort than the American public.
In mid-spring 2004, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll was showing that "one in four Americans say troops should leave Iraq as soon as possible and another 30 percent say they should come home within 18 months." But as usual, when it came to rejection of staying the war course, the media establishment lagged way behind the populace.
Despite sometimes-withering media criticism of the Bush administration's foreign policy, all of the sizable newspapers steered clear of calling for withdrawal. Many favored sending in even more troops. On May 7, 2004, Editor & Publisher headlined a column by the magazine's editor, Greg Mitchell, this way: "When Will the First Major Newspaper Call for a Pullout in Iraq?"
Today, the gap between mainline big media and the grassroots is just as wide. Top policymakers for what has become Obama's Afghanistan war can find their assumptions mirrored in the editorials of the nation's mighty newspapers -- at the same time that opinion polls are showing a dramatic trend against the war.
While a recent ABC News-Washington Post poll found that 51 percent of the public says the war in Afghanistan isn't worth fighting, the savants who determine big media's editorial positions insist on staying the course.
Recycled from the repetition-compulsion department, a spate of new hand-wringing editorials has bemoaned the shortcomings of Washington's allied leader in the occupied country. Of course the edifying pitch includes the assertion that the Afghan government and its armed forces must get their act together. (Good help is hard to find.)
"President Obama has rightfully defined success in Afghanistan as essential to America's struggle against Al Qaeda," the New York Times editorialized on Aug. 21. Yet Al Qaeda, according to expert assessments, is scarcely present in Afghanistan any more. There are dozens of countries where that terrorist group or other ones could be said to have a much larger presence. Does that mean the U.S. government should be prepared to wage war in all of those countries?
Paragraph after paragraph of the editorial proclaimed what must be done to win the war. It was all boilerplate stuff of the sort that has littered the editorial pages of countless newspapers for many years during one protracted war after another -- in Vietnam, in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
When congressional leaders and top administration officials read such editorials, they can take comfort in finding reaffirmed support for their insistence on funding more and more war. If only public opinion would cooperate, there'd be no political problem.
But, increasingly, public opinion is not cooperating. While the media establishment and the political establishment appear to belong to the same pro-war affinity group, the public is shifting to the other side of a widening credibility gap.
In a word, the problem -- and the threat for the press and the state -- can be summed up as democracy.
Now, one of the pivotal questions is what "liberal" and "progressive" online organizations will do in the coming months. Many are led by people who privately understand that Obama's war escalation is on track for cascading catastrophes. But they do not want to antagonize the leading Democrats in Washington, who contend that more war in Afghanistan is the only viable political course. Will that undue deference to the Obama administration continue, despite the growing evidence of disaster and the sinking poll numbers for the war?
A cautionary note for those who assume that the impacts of public opinion will put a brake on the accelerating U.S. war in Afghanistan: That assumption is based on a misunderstanding of how the USA's warfare state really functions.
Under the headline "Someone Tell the President the War Is
Over," the New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote: "A president
can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies)
won't stay with him." That was way back in August 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/
(The next day, I wrote a piece headlined "Someone Tell Frank Rich the War Is Not Over.")
http://www.commondreams.org/
The war on Vietnam persisted for several horrific years after the polls were showing that most Americans disapproved. The momentum of a large-scale and protracted U.S. war of military occupation is massive and cataclysmic after the engine has really been gunned.
That's one of the most chilling parallels between the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The news media are part of the deadly process. So are the politicians who remain hitched to some expedient calculus. And so are we, to the extent that we go along with the conventional wisdom of the warfare state.
- Posted in
33 Comments so far
Show AllYou know we're in trouble when the only credible news sources are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Yeah, that's glib but oddly enough they provide more critical thinking, dressed in humor, than the real news/punditry shows. The rest of the critical thinking comes mostly from Rachel Maddow, with some contributions by Keith Olbermann, and an occasional and rare bit of it from an annoying Chris Matthews.
I've been hoping Jon Stewart would go the Al Franken route.
Maddow, Olbermann are only slightly better than most of the MSM. When it comes to the Middle East or the Muslim world in general, most definitely Maddow, but probably also Olbermann would toe the Israeli line.
Frankly, I can't stand Matthews--he's loud and boorish and merely skims the surface of many important issues. Deep down, I think he sees himself as a white, Catholic guy from Philly...at least he seems to mention the Catholic and Philly part of him a lot.
any country that gives birth to a disgrace like fox news (hic) is a backward and ignorant country - for fox news to find such a receptive audience for its mindless propaganda speaks volumes about the quivering guava jelly that is the brain of those who watch it.
then there is glen beck - who i see as the post-modern tammy faye baker - you know the one who weeps on cue. beck should be wearing the big black mascara like tammy dd because it is so dramatic when it smears
the cheerleading for the war state is yet another embarassment
how about 50 million hours of oj's trial, or octomom, or you name it...
not exactly journalistic nirvana
the media is a propaganda machine for pax americana and the corporations for which it stands. look at the build up to the war in iraq, the coverage since the start of that war and the current war in afghanistan - utter bullshit non-coverage
brian williams, asshole couric, oreilly, blitzer, dobbs...the list goes on and on - the ghouls who spew this crap news from one end of the week to the other - filling the hours with pablum lies and hate speak
the whole mess is like a barometer for the rest of american culture - which is to say - it sucks big time
don't even get me going about the 9/11 tv show that was part and parcel of the psyop self-inflicted wound that started the bullshit war on terror.
finally, folks were waxing a few weeks ago when cronkite died - i guess they forgot how supportive old walt was about killing the little yellow men in vietnam all through the sixites. he was the pom pom girl with sideburns, transcednding through his death into the crystal tower where he now shares a a room with elvis and james dean, all sins forgiven but truly at the end of the day just another corporate hack spewing the corporate line night after night on the propaganda news of the us
no wonder afghanistan is poorly covered - in the us its a time honored tradition - its the american way
ps. the latest news from fox - obama is not a citizen but he does want to kill your granny
wait...i hear glen beck weeping from here, somebody get me the mascara
extraordinary comment. Keep up the good work, keep attacking.
-- Does that mean the U.S. government should be prepared to wage war in all of those countries? --
Mr. Solomon, have you not been listening to locust?
I point out yet again:
For the first time, an active Army unit in the US ("...an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks".)
AFRICOM, a new military command for Africa (which will soon handle the military aid effort to the poor unfortunate souls in the DRC, where the coltan is and where future terrorists WILL be found or at least manufactured).
"The U.S. military is reviving a naval command for the Latin America and the Caribbean region, which has not been active since World War II."
Syria raid against "foreign fighters linked to al-Qaeda"
Somalia attacks against "Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda"
Obama just announced a new enemy to our list, 'al-Qaeda affiliates'.
It's a worldwide DAFT war. And we need to end it before it ends us.
End the DAFT war. Revoke Public Law 107-40 or at least talk about it. Why don't our leaders talk about it? If they don't, shouldn't we?
I add:
Last year --
The White House claims that AFRICOM is also a move against the rise of radical Islam over the continent.
Has this changed like we believed in?
This will continue until a plurality or even a majority of the US public recognizes that the real enemies of the public are not in Iraq or Afganistan, or in Pakistan, Iran, or North Korea. They must recognize that the real enemies are in corporate boardrooms in the US, including the boardrooms of the corporations running the major US media.
Excellent post!
And a good analysis by Mr. Solomon. The MSM is so incredible.
Their probable answer to that would be "So?".
Norman Soloman is very correct about the "mythology" that mainstream media criticism of the Vietnam war eventually produced the withdrawal of US military forces from southeast Asia. It was the mass protests in the streets - and the huge popular cultural upheaval of the 60's linked to the antiwar movement - that finally forced that end result upon the politicians of both major parties. The NY Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS (even dear Walter Cronkite) never "functioned as tough critics of the Vietnam War in real time....."
Grassroots Main Street America turned against perpetual mindless carnage in Vietnam long before the media, and the nation's leadership in Washington DC, did. With Nixon fatally weakened by Watergate, and the Democratic Party bitterly divided within itself between hawks and doves, the US ground presence de-escalated while the air war cranked up, orchestrating the face saving appearance that military force had wrung concessions from the North Vietnamese in the Paris peace negotiations, bringing us "peace with honor", sort of, very temporarily.
It was all so hypocritical, but it finally ended the American venture into Vietnam, with over three million Asian lives lost.
Today, the polls show more than half the US public thinks the war in Afghanistan/Pakistan is not worth fighting. This is without tumult in the streets, and with antiwar critics muffled and marginalized by the mainstream media. Unless President Barack Obama changes course dramatically and soon, he will almost certainly go the way of LBJ.
What an historic opportunity, tragically missed.
Bill from Saginaw
Every person in this country old enough to form a thought could be against our middle eastern adventurism and we would still never get out. The MSM would ignore all of it; for them the story wouldn't even exist. If we don't get rid of the Republicans and the Democrats, no change is possible, except the change Reality will impose, whether we like it or not.
I voted democrat, but have always been an independent--voting for whomever and for whichever canidates of the (...sigh!) two-party system party...) seemed to have the most compassionate and progressive platform for the common people--BOY! Have I been a dupe!
We have to change this system and get true democracy and the common people represented and their will obeyed!
It's inspiring to read all of the insight and wisdom contained in these first 5 comments. People, at least at this site, seem to grasp the reality of these wars; corporate agendas, manipulative "news" organizations, unstated geopolitical intrigue, et al. May I add one more consideration; the enervated, bowdlerized fairy tale that passes as "history" in our "schools". That anyone can come out of that 12 year indoctrination and take seriously that some alleged outrage has required an armed response (war) and NOT immediately think, "Wait! Isn't this just like [Gulf of Tonkin, "American blood shed on American soil" (Mexican War), Poland is attacking Germans (Hitler's rationale for invading Poland), Spanish soldiers bayoneting babies in Cuba, hell, the Romans' claim that Mithridates of Pontus had murdered 80,000 Latins] is proof that schools are there only to make us passive proles. History should familiarize us with the tricks that rulers consistently use to fool us. Kids would see the point in learning that. Instead it is presented as a buffet of insubstantial trivia, useless after being regurgitated on the next standardized test. Public school History, and Literature, should have the stated goal of preparing Citizens for the task of Democracy.
Good points, however an informed and educated (not indoctrinated or propagandized)public does not serve the interests of the ruling classes. We in California see this very clearly with perhaps the lowest per-pupil funding (with yet more budget cuts forthcoming) in the developed world. Yet at the same time this is one of the wealthiest places on the planet.
"Romans' claim that Mithridates of Pontus..." Great reference, sadly I did not know this history until I read "Rubicon" by Tom Holland
Howard Zinn's "People's History" should be required reading for all 8th and 9th graders, just for starters.
The War of Jenkins' Ear is one of locust's favorites.
His favorite battle is Dreux, 1562, where the commanders of BOTH sides got captured.
No, our corporate-owned media oligopoly would never distort the facts, exaggerate threats, act as sycophantic cheerleaders for imperialism, racism and bloodshed, tell half-truths and even outright lies would they?
There is no historical precedent for that. Herman and Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" was just a bunch of commie pinko lies.
Those bad old Talebans and Al Kayders are gonna come over here and blow up America. Spending more than the rest of the world combined on weapons, military, military aid, etc. is never enough to keep us "safe". We must escalate imperial aggression and spend even more money. And even then we must live in fear and spend even more money on the Penagon the five-sided Fist-a-gon.
YEAH! ARMED WITH THEIR BOXCUTTERS AND THEIR STEREOTYPICALLY 'TERROIST" LOOKS THEY WILL BE ABLE TO FREELY RUN RAMPANT AND WE'RE HELPLESS TO STOP THEM...
I don't have poling data, but it is my impression that a huge number of Obama supporters are still lost in the pixie dust; they are complacent and tuned out. They think they voted for "hope" and "change" and that we should "give him time" and somehow, without conflict, without struggle, without winners and losers, etc, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (let's not forget Iraq - still raging) will just sort of end.
Power concedes nothing without a fight. Obama's primary mission appears to be one of distracting people from this truth. Seems to be working too. Lots of Obama youth seem to have accepted this completely contrived and baseless "conflict-free" mode of politics.
As if we were, somehow, "all Americans, in this together". As if, if we just keep on "talking to each other instead of fighting", we'll eventually find a "win-win situation". As if the stakes were not life and death. As if our ruling elites have any intention of giving up their prerogatives.
Nothing in Washington is as it appears, but appearances are (apparently) good enough for most of us. Thus we settle for the "appearance of democracy". Meanwhile, real permanent wars will look more and more like apparent peace, as drones, mercenaries and proxy armies do more and more of the killing and dying. It will be hard to make the ragged amputation wounds and gushing bullet holes look like anything other than what they are, but as long as others supply the bodies, well, we still have our "hope" and "change", right?
Obama surrounded himself with people who had worked the Washington system for all their lives. That was the kiss of death for 'hope and change'. The rationale was to have experienced people who knew the ropes and could get things done. The result is an echo chamber the echoes the same old crap and gets the same crappy results.
The MSM is owned almost exclusively by conservatives that are nothing more than whores for the MIC. Their sychophants that work for them know what the parameters are if they want to stay employed; also they are given millions of $ in advertising revenue that they do not want to lose---so what do you expect? Like someone said," the U.S. has a free press as long as you own it"!
there was a big difference in the way Vietnam was covered and now. network tv news showed graphic pictures every night- I sill remember a lot of those images, and that's how the we could experience revulsion at what we saw, and go marching.
and also remember that this anti war movement was
organized without the internet
that's why old bush saw to it that no photos would escape from his gulf massacre, and why junior has also kept the disasters of war from reaching us.
i feel like nobody hardly even knows what we have been doing to Afghanistan the last 8 years.
also nobody, including Norman, seems willing to point out that the military objectives in the Middle East are really and truly insane.
peace people like me and most of us can see it's wrong. or mean and nasty. Vietnam was inhumanly cruel but it did have a cold war realpolitik rationale- at that time the u.s. would jump to kill any least hint of what was red, or might become red, because the balance of power depended on it. The balance of power in the nuclear age was obsolete, it's true. but still real estate is real estate.
get out of Afghanistan NOW
One truly amazing thing is that the USA kept secret that it was dropping more tonnage of bombs on Laos than in all of WII and the public including me did not know it was occurring.
I'm beginning to wonder if the conventional wisdom that these congress persons will do anything to get re-elected is true any longer. I suspect that they have their eyes on lucrative lobbying jobs as life after congress, in which they will continue to legislate every bit as much as they did when in office. Perhaps more so, since they may then have a chance actually to write Bills. Anyway, they certainly give the impression that they don't give a damn for public opinion, & care nothing for the old-fashioned notion that they are supposed to be *representing* the interests of the people of their districts & states.
I hope that our weekly demonstrations against the wars and for health care are making some impression, but there's damn all evidence that they are.
I see your point. The ultimate aspiration for a legislator is the Lobbyslature. They can really have power then and no pesky elections to deal with.
Once again, an article on the disparity between reality and what the media reports. And right on point is this article published today by non-other than AP, the King of Misinformation itself:
Group: US is monitoring journalists in Afghanistan
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090826/ap_on_re_eu/eu_journalists_afghanistan;_ylt=ArELw41wXlUKVSxi3JqlUHh0fNdF
BRUSSELS – The International Federation of Journalists complained Wednesday that news people covering the war in Afghanistan are being monitored by the U.S. military to see if they are sympathetic to the American cause.
The federation said journalists seeking to travel under the protection of U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan may be screened first by an American public relations firm to see if their coverage portrays the military in a positive light.
"This profiling of journalists further compromises the independence of media," Aidan White, general secretary of the Brussels-based federation, said in a statement.
What passes for news on television these days is airheads reading Twitter posts from viewers. Why hire journalists at all when you can just read viewer opinions? It's no big step from reading tweets as news to allowing only happy news 'journalists' into the war zones, or vice-versa. 'Embeds' don't do journalism; they do PR.
While Norman Soloman may be correct in noting that no major newspaper had called for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2004, it should be pointed out that the major newspaper in Eugene, Oregon [which is the second largest city in Oregon], the Eugene Register-Guard, did indeed call for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq during that time period.
Don't forget Bill Moyers, the real class act of the public's airwaves.
Probably lots of Americans don't even think, on a daily basis, that the United States is waging three hot wars at once. Certainly, we don't get to see the blown-up bodies after the weather report on network TV.
Solomon, of course, is talking about the standard corporate-owned press, which has been laying off thousands of journalists. The bad economy no doubt caused that, but good journalists likely were driven out even before the economic plunge.
The U.S. press tends to break through its hum-drum corporate routine when some political figure speaks out publicly against the wars. Few have, and the Democratic majority in Congress and the White House hasn't made a difference in that respect. In fact, Democratic leaders have been winking at things like torture.
Norm was a delegate for Obama, even though Obama promised to attack Pakistan and Afghanistan during his Presidential campaign. I still don't get this disconnect. You vote for a mass murderer, and you get a mass murderer. Kind of simple.
-TIA
OSAMA vs OBAMA - three point shots won't win this game.
The average birthrate for muslim women is 4.5. Their offspring, having no prospects for education or employment, will inevitably become taliban "terrorists" dedicated to removing the infidels from their sacred soil. The Obama administration seemingly is willing to match this birthrate with endless military casualties far off into the future and end up with destruction of the US.
Osama has no need to flatten more WTC's, we'll do it for him.