Carole wrote in to note "Why They Crawl" and "Why We March." Having addressed weak spined Dems and having covered why some of us demonstrate, she wondered if we'd cover the media? Specifically, why the media conducted themselves the way they did in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq as well as "in the years that followed"? There are many reasons but one of the analysis we enjoyed most was made by Norman Solomon in his book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. (We discussed the book on August 21, 2005.) This is one criticism and we're going with it because we enjoyed Solomon's book and want to make sure that any of our readers that thought about picking it up but didn't get another nudge in the right direction.
From pages 236-237:
War coverage becomes routine. Missiles fly, bombs fall. Live briefings -- with talkative officers, colorful charts, and gray videos -- appear on cable television, sometimes like clockwork, sometimes with sudden drama. The war is right in front of an American public and very far away.
When a country -- particularly a democracy -- goes to war, the tacit consent of the governed lubricates the machinery. Silence is a key form of cooperation, but the warmaking system does not insist on quietude or agreement. Mere self-restraint will suffice.
Post-9/11 fears that respond more affirmatively to calls for military attacks are understandable. Yet fear is not a viable long-term foundation for building democratic structures or finding alternatives to future wars. Despite news media refusals to be sufficiently independent,, many options remain to invigorate the First Amednment while challenging falsehoods, demagoguery, and manipulations.
While going to war may seem easy, any sense of ease is a result of distance, privilege, and illusion. The United States has the potential to set aside the habitual patterns that have made war a frequent endeavor in American life.
There remains a kind of spectator relationship to military actions being implemented in our names. We're apt to crave the insulation that news outlets offer. We tell ourselves that our personal lives are difficult enough without getting too upset about world events. And the conventional war wisdom of American political life has made it predictable that most journalists and politicians cannot resist accommodating themselves to expediency by the time the first missiles are fired. Conformist behavior -- in sharp contrast to authentic conscience -- is notably plastic.
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices," Voltaire wrote. The quotation is sometimes rendered with different wording: "As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities."
Either way, a quarter of a millennium later, Voltaire's statement is all too relevant to this moment. As an astute cliche says, truth is the first casualty of war. But another early casualty is conscience.
When the huge news outlets swing behind warfare, the dissent propelled by conscience is not deemed to be very newsworthy. The mass media are filled with bright lines and sizzle, with high production values and lower human values, boosting the war effort. And for many Americans, the gap between what they believe and what's on their TV sets is the distance between their truer selves and their fearful passivity.
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 of conscience. We do.
There are other criticisms, both individual ones and systematic ones. We think this is a valid one and hope it raises your interest in Norman Solomon's War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.