Are you someone who thinks the war in Iraq was waged to destroy Saddam’s WMDs? Do you believe it America’s moral duty to free the peoples of the world from tyranny? Do subscribe to the notion that Iraq was an “imminent threat” to our “American way of life?” If you embrace any of these common ideologies, you are not to be blamed, faulted or criticized. Deep inside, you’re scared, and you believe your government’s clarion call to arms was necessary to keep you safe.

Hang on, there’s a cure for that churning in the pit in your stomach. It is almost certainly psychosomatic. You need to consider the possibility that maybe - just maybe - the Iraqi threat to America was exaggerated. While to you it seems real, perhaps your discomfort stems from an intense, government-sponsored propaganda scare campaign filled with half-truths, misdirection and deceit. After all, your government has done this before. Relax, breathe deeply and concentrate while I take you on a brief, illusion-free exploration of American imperialism.

Like the great imperialists of bygone days, America’s rulers share a long history of creating fear – one “evildoer” or another always threatens the destruction of “the American way of life.” Then, while the frightened population huddles gratefully under the umbrella of power, the government pursues an agenda calculated to transfer vast sums of public wealth into the hands of the corporate and political elite.

One hundred years ago, industrial America was awash in textiles, steel and manufactured goods and needed to expand its markets across the Pacific to Asia. Spain, by then a corrupt, weakened empire, possessed colonies America coveted – Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. To get those assets, President William McKinley began a campaign of propaganda centered on America’s need to “free the Cuban people from Spanish tyranny.” With the assistance of the mass media of the day – William Randolph Hurst and Joseph Pulitzer – McKinley convinced Americans Spain was an imminent threat (just ninety miles from our shores), possessed weapons of mass destruction (Spanish warships), and it was America’s duty to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world (manifest destiny). To strengthen his argument, McKinley announced to Congress that he “got to his knees” in the White House and received God’s assurance that American expansionism was heaven sent. The 1898 Spanish/American War and ensuing Philippine Campaign bolstered American business, secured American colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific and cost the lives of six-hundred thousand innocent Filipinos who happened to be in the path of the “bandwagon of Anglo-Saxon progress and decency.”

The Spanish/American War was just America’s first overseas war of conquest and occupation. There have been others - each one preceded by a vast government/media fear-based propaganda campaign. During the fifties and sixties, the bogyman was Communist expansion, and defense industry corporate giants prospered. Today, the 1960’s American mandate of freeing the South Vietnamese people through occupation and mass murder doesn’t even rise to the level of laughable.

In the eighties, President Reagan warned the American people that Daniel Ortega’s Nicaraguan army was only “eight hours by truck from Harlingen, Texas.” Later, in a speech before Congress, he announced that America was once again “standing tall” after seven thousand Marines battled thirty Cuban construction workers for possession of Grenada, the nutmeg capitol of the world. I’m not making this up, friends. Space limitations prohibit me from reminding you of the imminent threats to U.S. sovereignty from Moammar Gadhafi (Libya) and Manuel Noriega (Panama).

Government use of fear on a population to manufacture consent for bad policy is not new and only succeeds because we allow it. Noam Chomsky was correct when he stated, “units of power – corporate, political and military – will only act in their best interests. For them to do otherwise would be illogical.” As citizens, we must act in our best interests. We owe it to ourselves and our society to be skeptical of our leaders, question authority, demand the truth and hold them accountable.

William Schroder, the author of the historical novel, Cousins of Color, lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.

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