alternative reader no. 134
Manufacturing Consent for Corporate Wars – in the Land of
the Free and the Home of the Brave
By Siv O'Neall
Axis of logic
Posted by Bulatlat
What Did You
Learn in School Today
(Tom Paxton)
What did you
learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
What did you
learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
I learned
that Washington never told a lie
I learned
that soldiers seldom die
I learned
that everybody's free
That's what
the teacher said to me
And that's
what I learned in school today
That's what
I learned in school
What did you
learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
I learned
that policemen are my friends
I learned
that justice never ends
I learned
that murderers die for their crimes
Even if we
make a mistake sometimes
And that's
what I learned in school today
That's what
I learned in school
What did you
learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
I learned
that war is not so bad
I learned
about the great ones we have had
We fought in
Germany and in France
And someday
I might get my chance
And that's
what I learned in school today
That's what
I learned in school
What did you
learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
I learned
that our government must be strong
It's always
right and never wrong
Our leaders
are the finest men
So we elect
them again and again
And that's
what I learned in school today
That's what
I learned in school
Copyright
Cherry Lane Music Publishing Co., Inc.
SOF
Hiding the
truth
The reality
behind the distorted version we generally receive, via the authorities and
via the media, of U.S. war games and aggression is completely hidden in
the massive rewriting of history. The true reasons for the war games
before and while they are enacted is not for the people to see. The
reality is that the United States has been heading in one direction only,
for well over a century, that direction being a consolidation of power and
world domination through whatever means are available, through lies and
distortions, insidious propaganda and the shrill denunciation of
‘unpatriotic’ individuals. In fact, all independently thinking people are
unpatriotic according to the powers that be.
The U.S.
politicians and historians have always been superbly qualified to invent
‘acceptable’ pretexts for invading and killing civilians and rebels in
countries that didn’t live up to the norms of desired cooperation with the
United States. Which is to say that the countries that did not willingly
let themselves be subjected to U.S. domination, to a subordinate role in
the commercial dealings with ‘the greatest democracy in the world’, had to
put up with the dire consequences of their insubordination. They either
got invaded or they were forced to toe the line.
The ‘enemy’ is
always made out to be somewhat subhuman and with no respect for life. ‘We’
have all the moral rights, ‘they’ are savages who either have to be killed
or civilized. This is a staple in U.S. foreign policy. History never plays
a part in ‘our’ decisions. History is irrelevant. ‘We’ create history and
‘we’ create the world we live in. ‘We’ are the center of the universe. All
else is of secondary importance.
The propaganda
and the biased writing of history that followed the wars of aggression
were primarily intended for the American people themselves, for the
history books and, before that, for the engineering of consent within the
country. Cases in point would be the hyped-up aggressive wars and punitive
sanctions, such as the continued aggression against Cuba and the ludicrous
invention of a massive Communist threat, from the war on Grenada in
1983-84 to Nicaragua and El Salvador during the presidency of Ronald
Reagan in the eighties.
Going back in
history
The Mexican war
(1846-1848) was fought to gain control over the overall important cotton
production in Texas and neighboring states. It was the beginning of the
U.S. history of expansionism, except for the inhuman extermination of most
of the Native Indians in the ‘Westering’, one of the most cruel and
demeaning chapters in
U.S.
history.
From
Encarta:
“Mexico’s
territorial losses signified the end of any likelihood that Mexico, rather
than the United States, would become the predominant power in North
America. As the first conflict in which U.S. military forces fought almost
exclusively outside of the country, the Mexican War also marked the
beginning of the rise of the United States as a global military power.”
The
Spanish-American war in 1898 was not wholeheartedly supported by the U.S.
government but the business community saw their advantage from a war. The
ever increasing weakness of Spain most certainly also contributed to the
decision to go to war.
From the
Wikipedia:
A U.S. Senator
from
Nebraska declared that "War with
Spain
would increase the business and earnings of every American railroad, it
would increase the output of every American factory, it would stimulate
every branch of industry and domestic commerce."
A state-run
propaganda machine is born
The use of
state propaganda was developed in Britain before World War I and as a
result of this clever strategy they managed to get the U.S. incensed about
the war and get them to join, thus furthering British imperial interests.
Quite an accomplishment. Britain had much to lose at the time and the era
was still far in the future when it would be willing to play second fiddle
to the U.S. It was still the era of ‘Rule Britannia, rule the waves’. The
time of U.S. predominance in world affairs would come after World War II.
However, the British propaganda system during WWI so impressed the Nazis
that they took it as the model for their own Ministry of Propaganda.
World War II
established the Unites States as the superpower, a position which it has
ever since anxiously been consolidating with whatever means available. The
cold war that followed was of course a wonderful invention to steadily
increase the output and the profits of the arms manufacturers. The arms
race was just what the industry wanted and it worked to perfection. The
Communist demon was ubiquitous and it served miraculously well, again and
again, in whipping up popular support for the most absurd wars or, as in
the case of Vietnam, the cruelest and environmentally most destructive of
wars ever fought.
In all this,
the mainstream media were the most willing coconspirators and the
corporate powers were steadily gaining strength in the ever increasing
rise to become the true rulers of the United States and, as the plans
went, of the Planet. The President and the Congress, be they Republicans
or Democrats, got to be the front men for the corporations. The people
were becoming more and more expendable in the views of the corporate
controlled government, and the environment, as in the case of Vietnam, was
of no consequence whatsoever.
Wars under the
guise of putting down a Communist threat to the Nation
John F.
Kennedy, the so much praised ‘liberal’ president and also his brother
Robert had an almost psychopathic fixation on Castro, Cuba and ‘vicious’
Communism. They declared Cuba an open threat against the United States and
they very nearly put the whole planet in danger of extinction through a
nuclear war in their response to the Cuban missile crisis. The Mexican
ambassador in 1961 realized the absurdity of declaring Cuba the United
States Enemy Number One. In response to the U.S. president’s call to
collective action the ambassador is reported to have said: "If we publicly
declare that
Cuba
is a threat to our security, 40 million Mexicans will die laughing."
But even today,
the majority of Americans still see Cuba as a Communist threat, and even
many Europeans who deplore the poverty in Cuba blame it on the wicked and
dictatorial Castro regime. The truth is of course that U.S. sanctions are
the foremost cause of this poverty and the mere fact that Castro is still
alive (in spite of innumerable assassination attempts by the CIA) and in
power and a national hero to boot, is close to a miracle.
The Cuban
health system is outstanding. All Cubans are covered by government
sponsored universal health care and their physicians, and also teachers,
are sent out to assist democratic countries, from Nicaragua and Angola in
the nineteen eighties to Venezuela today.
Just as an
example of Cuban care for human lives and superior organization – when
hurricane Ivan struck Cuba in September 2004, the second major-force
hurricane in less than two months, not one life was lost.
From
Environmenttimes:
“The
authorities sounded the hurricane alarm in good time, mobilising the
country’s military-style civil-defence system in exemplary fashion. Some
2 million of the country’s 11 million inhabitants were temporarily
evacuated.” (boldface added)
There is much
to be said here if we compare with the U.S. government’s dealing with the
New Orleans Katrina crisis, which has still not been solved. And it’s even
doubtful if the majority of the displaced people will ever get back to
anything like the lives they had to flee from – if they were lucky enough
to survive in this ‘Sauve qui peut’ (everyone for himself) disaster.
Ronald Reagan’s
vicious wars in Central America
Under the
presidency of Ronald Reagan, attempts at bolstering U.S. hegemony by
terror and overwhelming military power took several forms, all vicious,
and of course none led by any humanitarian concerns, which was, however,
the message the government always sent out.
Whether the
U.S.
was aiming at overthrowing a dictator, such as in Grenada (1983 – 84) or
in Panama (Noriega 1989 – 90) or whether they were involved in
exterminating a leftist rebel organization, the real reason was always the
consolidating of corporate U.S. power. The CIA-backed the Nicaraguan army
and the vicious dictator Somoza against the Sandinista rebels, they
supported the fight against the rebels in El Salvador or they eliminated a
popular leader like Salvador Allende in Chile. Human rights and human
lives were totally beside the point. The only essential thing was
overthrowing the regime that presented a danger to U.S. hegemony, be it a
vicious dictatorship or a popular regime.
The open
support by the U.S. government for the Somoza dictatorial regime in
Nicaragua (1981 – 90) and for the contras who viciously fought the popular
Sandinistas in their desperate attempt to achieve some degree of social
justice, this shameless piece of maneuvering was just one typical example
of U.S. priorities.
When the
Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, the former great ally of the U.S.,
was becoming too independent for the U.S., the government turned against
him and overthrew him in a coup in 1989. Noriega was a ruthless gangster
who killed thousands of freedom fighting guerillas in Western Panama. That
fact did not in any way disturb the U.S. government, but when George Bush
Sr. found that Noriega had lost his usefulness to the U.S. big
corporations, he was transferred to the category of ‘evil’ and he had to
go. One moment he was hailed as the initiator of the process of democracy,
the next moment he was caught in a violent bombing raid that killed
thousands of civilian Panamanians. Noriega was brought to the United
States and tried for drug trafficking. All this was under the cover of the
fight against drug trafficking and typically, in our Orwellian times, this
military invasion of Panama was labeled ‘Operation Just Cause’.
Independence
and nationalism had to be resisted. And for the country which labeled
itself the ‘greatest democracy in the world’, the American people and
hopefully the rest of the world to some extent as well, had to be
indoctrinated into the belief that U.S. aggression was all in a humane
cause. Either it was the fight against Communism or some such ‘evil’, or
there was a direct threat to the Nation or even to world peace. ‘War is
Peace. Peace is War.’
The overthrow
of a nationalist hero who won’t toe the line
The U.S.
governments have never thought twice about toppling people-friendly
regimes like Sukarno’s in Indonesia (1965) which had mass support by the
people. However, Sukarno was too friendly with the Communist regimes and
he was thus a threat to the world-dominating role that the United States
was in the process of establishing. In a CIA-backed military coup the
democratically elected Sukarno was overthrown in 1965. He was replaced by
one of his generals, Suharto, who ruled as a tyrant, viciously putting
down rebellions in East Timor and Aceh, until he was toppled by the people
in 1998. He was the instigator of one of the worst politically-engineered
mass murders of this century, but the U.S. at the time considered
Indonesia a particularly friendly regime. (See (A
Brief History of CIA Sponsored Involvements 1953-2004)
After the cold
war comes the war with no end
When the cold
war was over, the United States was desperate for a war that could now
replace the Soviet block as the hyped up public demon and serve as the
pretext for endlessly increased arms and high-tech manufacture with the
purpose of ultimately militarizing space. The post-cold-war era was of
course saved for U.S. world-dominating aspirations when 9/11 splashed on
the scene. The stage was set, the war could begin.
This was to
become the television / entertainment war in a television / entertainment
era. The show business war of all wars, the war with no end, the war that
was going to make the United States into the one and unique world power,
the undisputed power that would be in a position to dictate to all the
minor powers the conditions for their continued existence. To win this
media war, it was of course essential that the press and the television,
all the various media, go along in this carefully staged hoopla, cleverly
hyping the Viciousness of the Enemy for the benefit of the masses. And the
media were more than willing to do their part in this game of deception.
The role of the
media
Obviously, in
this strategy of convincing the world that the United States is a superior
democracy, a beneficent power that is inevitably and consistently on the
side of ‘good’, the mainstream media have to play the game from the very
beginning. The world has to believe that the United States is a beacon of
freedom, of civil rights, of altruism, of humanitarian principles, of true
ethos. The truth behind
U.S.
imperialism must at all costs be covered up and the media are willing and
powerful tools in this effort. The fact is of course that the corporate
media are part of the big scam. They constitute one essential sector in
the system of corporate rule in the United States.
It has barely
dawned on the American people that they are being had in a most obscene
way. People are expendable. The planet is expendable. Money flows from the
bottom up and is being concentrated in the hands of a small number of
corporate lords who will not think twice about screwing their very base if
it concentrates power and capital in the hands of the very few. The
widening of the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ is
intentional, since it creates the kind of instability that will facilitate
the domination of the few over the masses.
The money goes
to the military machinery and to the arms, oil and pharmaceutical
industries, to all the big corporations with powerful Washington lobbies.
The people pay for the wars and for the little that is left of social
expenditure, and the corporate lords collect the profit. Education and
health care are being starved to death and that is precisely the
intention.
Make the people
easy victims of the relentless propaganda that is dished out via
television and advertising, make them impervious to truth and reason,
hypnotize them through the creation of false values, make them addicted to
ostentatious consumption, make them blind to the real values in life by
the creation of artificial values, dull their senses so as to turn the
people into robots who obediently accept whatever the advertisers tell
them they want.
It all amounts
to a systematic game of manipulation, where the goal is to create the kind
of people you can easily deceive and control. The people are the willing
victims, the corporate lords are the omnipotent rulers of a sterile world.
As long as the
corporate media go on playing their essential part in this absurd game,
there is small hope that people will ever revert to being individuals and
cease to be robots.
The outcome of
this deadly game is up to us
The remaining
question is now whether there is one last chance to turn the clock back
and return to a world where living can mean intellectual stimulation, the
deep pleasure of learning, the appreciation of beauty, artistic creativity
– all those fragile values that the dead-at-heart rulers of today don’t
even know the existence of. Or are we just going on satisfying our
accumulation addiction and remaining blind to the intricate business of
living?
Jun 15, 2006
Posted by
Bulatlat
BACK TO
TOP ■
COMMENT
© 2006 Bulatlat
■
Alipato Media Center
Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided
its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.