Slicing Through 'Surge' Propaganda: Haven't We Heard It All Before?

Full disclosure: I have no military background. I do have 30 years of experience as a professional journalist, and have known enough U.S. history, for long enough, that at 17, I earned 6 hours of college credit in that subject just by taking a test. Take those for whatever they're worth.

My perhaps-risky thesis: The "surge" in Iraq, now being touted as some kind of unequivocal success, is yet another deception in a military campaign that will be remembered as the war that keeps on costing.

Granted, al Qaeda in Iraq has apparently been dealt some crushing blows (for now), and U.S. military casualties are sharply down. These things are being widely reported as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is in Baghdad to take stock of things.

But, the latter point, about the decline in U.S. casualties, reflects the ethnocentrism with which Americans tend to look at foreign conflicts. Juan Cole, writing on Informed Comment, points out:

Despite all the talk about Iraq being "calm," I'd like to point out that the month just before the last visit Barack Obama made to Iraq (he went in January, 2006), there were 537 civilian and ISF Iraqi casualties. In June of this year, 2008, there were 554 according to AP. These are official statistics gathered passively that probably only capture about 10 percent of the true toll.

That is, the Iraqi death toll is actually still worse now than the last time Obama was in Iraq! (See the bombings and shootings listed below for Sunday). The hype around last year's troop escalation obscures a simple fact: that Obama formed his views about the need for the US to leave Iraq at a time when its security situation was very similar to what it is now! Why a return to the bad situation in late 05 and early 06 should be greeted by the GOP as the veritable coming of the Messiah is beyond me. You have people like Joe Lieberman saying silly things like if it weren't for the troop escalation, Obama wouldn't be able to visit Iraq. Uh, he visited it before the troop escalation, just fine.

To read the entire Cole article, click here.

What we seem to be hearing is that when fewer Americans are being killed and maimed as a result of the "surge," that makes it an unequivocal success. When the furrenurs is gettin' whacked a little faster than they wuz two and a half years ago, well, that's their tough luck. It's an A-Murkan world.

And, we've heard all this before, at other times and in other places. And it hasn't been so long since we've heard it. I seem to recall that "we" (in the editorial sense) were supposed to have pretty much routed the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies in Afghanistan. Been reading or hearing any news from there lately? It ain't over till it's over. And that one, the war "we" actually have reasonable justification for, is far from over.

I also seem to recall a day in 2003 when, just weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Il Doofus staged a landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared major military operations in Iraq to be over.

The MSM mouthpieces remain very much on the Pentagon bandwagon (not to mention the Straitjacket Express), with a mantra of "Obama was dead wrong" on the outcome of the "surge."

True, Obama didn't call it right in predicting that the "surge" would bring an increase in violence.

But, given the continued toll on Iraqi civilians, reports of success seem greatly exaggerated. I think the "surge" could be pronounced a success on the day that there are no unusual civilian deaths in Iraq, that the millions of refugees can return home safely, and that a stable Iraqi government can be elected without being propped up by a U.S. military presence. Perhaps in 100 years?

I'll venture a possibly risky prediction, but one firmly based on recent U.S. history.

In January 1973, the Nixon administration finally reached that elusive "peace with honor" deal with North Vietnam. The "peace" lasted a while. Then, a couple of years later, communist troops were overrunning South Vietnam. The American people were so sick of that bottomless pit of lives and money that they said a loud and resounding "NO" when the Ford administration had the nerve to propose that "we" go back in there.

The bottom line is that the U.S. is an occupier in a land generally hostile to the occupation. And, it should come as no surprise that the resistance will hide and play possum with every "surge" that our taxpayers can be conned into bankrolling. That's the name of the game in guerrilla warfare.

I'll gamble, and predict an outcome similar to the previously cited ones. For Americans, this will be the war that keeps on costing.

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Is anyone else sick to death of hearing about how the "Surge™" has been a stellar success?

When the guns fall silent, the safest bet is to assume that the other guy is reloading.

Why does that simple truth seem to so thoroughly elude those who support the so-called Surge™?

Google "surge is working" and look what pops up - 1,910,000 hits in .32 seconds. The Surge™ got underway on February 14, 2007 - and less than two weeks later, the keyboard commandos with the waning erections were already talking up the success of the scheme and their own flagging Johnsons. Patrick Ruffini at Townhall.com was the first in line to slaver, a mere ten days after the first boots hit the ground. It took less than a month for fatassed chickenhawk Robert Kagan to smirk from the pages of the Washington Post that, yeah, people criticized Bush for not having a plan B, but (witty and erudite as he is) he found an unimpeachable response to the critics: Did the critics have a backup plan in case it did? (Kagan has apparently mastered the playground retort of "I know you are, but what am I?") A week later, Gordon Cucullu was penning mash notes to David Petraeus and the AEI architects of the scheme from the pages of the nutty-as-squirrel-poop New York Post.

Except...

None of these paeans to the success of an unsustainable troop buildup took a careful assessment of the situation. For one thing, very few of those who touted the success considered the impact of Muqtada al Sadr ordering his militia, the Jaish al Mahdi, to stand down for six months. Another tactic that has been touted as brilliant since it's inception was that of arming and paying off Sunni militants, many of whom had been insurgents, to form into neighborhood protectorates to oppose the foreign jihadists that have taken up arms in Iraq to train in real-time against American forces.

What an unholy, fucked up mess these idiots have created.

It was a given that desperate measures were going to have to be taken during the brief time the surge window was open. Too bad that they took the drastic steps that they did instead of the ones proposed by Dr. Steven Metz. Instead, they stubbornly pursued a path that many pointed out severe problems with from the outset.

And now, a lot of those warnings that were issued by people like me who have consistently opposed the United States occupation of Iraq are coming true - just read this one paragraph from a post at Abu Aardvark, and follow the links, and see what I mean:

What with this and the Anbar Salvation Council threatening to take up arms against the elected council and refusing to fly the new Iraqi flag and dismissing the entire Parliament as illegitimate and Awakenings leaders declaring that no Iraqi police are allowed in their territory and clashing with them when they do and blaming Shi'ite militias (and not al-Qaeda) for the wave of attacks against them and fighting over territory and threatening to quit if they aren't paid, it really is hard to see why anybody would think that there might be anything troublesome about the relationship between the Awakenings and the Iraqi "state". Nothing to see here but great big gobs of victory folks, please move along.

On Friday, hundreds of members of the newly armed Sunni militias in Baquba donned traditional keffiyeh headdresses and took to the streets demanding that the police chief, who has been accused of operating with a Shiite death squad, be fired. They shut down two neighborhoods in the capital of Diyala province. Shops were ordered closed, and people were ordered to stay inside. The police ordered a curfew be instituted.

And on Sunday, explosions and gunfire wreaked havoc and killed approximately 50 people in attacks that targeted Iraqi Security Forces and American-backed ad hoc militias. The attacks unleashed as Secretary of Defense headed to Iraq for an unannounced get together with Iraqi leaders and members of the US General staff, including David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno.


Just hours before Gates landed in Baghdad, a massive suicide car bomb exploded on the periphery of a local market in Salahuddin province north of Baghdad. That blast alone killed 23 and injured at least 45. The blast frought down part of the market structures, and additional victims might still be trapped in the rubble said a police spokesman.

Another car bomb detonated near Ramadi, killing three. Two more car bombs were reported in Mosul. In all of the attacks, Iraqi soldiers and security personnel were specifically targeted, and in one of the explosions, four Iraqi soldiers were killed.

West of Mosul, at least 21 people were killed as insurgents battled members of one of the US backed Sunni militias. Five "Awakening council" members were killed and 10 insurgents perished in the fighting.

And John McCain has staked his entire presidential bid on convincing us that four more years of staying the course and experiencing more of this "success" is just what the country needs.

Cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State

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Washington Post: "Al-Qaeda in Iraq Reported Crippled"

Well, the foam-flecked loons will have a field day with that WaPo headline. I can hear the chest thumping and chickenhawk bravado from here. They are already lighting bonfires around which to dance naked while chanting “Boo-Ya, Bitches! We Win! U!S!A! U!S!A!”

They are so predictable.

They will read the first sentence:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

Then conveniently overlook the inconvenient parts…

But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.

"I think it would be premature at this point," a senior intelligence official said of a victory declaration over AQI, as the group is known. Despite recent U.S. gains, he said, AQI retains "the ability for surprise and for catastrophic attacks." Earlier periods of optimism, such as immediately following the June 2006 death of AQI founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid, not only proved unfounded but were followed by expanded operations by the militant organization.

[keep reading]

I hate that these jokers make me a conspiracy theorist, but what the hell? I’m just a crackpot blogger anyway, so here goes…is the WaPo article just a piece of a larger PR campaign?

Let’s take stock…last spring more astute observers started noticing that suddenly every single thing that happened in Iraq was the work of al Qaeda in Iraq. If a swarthy man sneezed, it was the work of al Qaeda. By last summer, virtually every report out of Iraq was citing violence by “al Qaeda” – but in reality, al Qaeda in Iraq has never really been more than a bogey-man, even the most generous assessments put their numbers at 10% of the insurgency, and likely only about 4%. (It has been long acknowledged that Shi’ite militias have represented a far greater threat than Sunni insurgents and jihadist fighters professing membership in AQI.)

Then the references slowed down.

And now, the WaPo prints a specious headline (Fred Hiatt is a perennial contender for the Wurlitzer Prize) and yellow feathers fill the air as the self-congratulating cowards and chickenhawks bust out the beer-bongs, launch at one another in belly-bumps and exchange high-fives and Hulk poses. “We’re kickin’ ass!!!”

Of a piece? That’s possible I suppose.

It’s always good news when groups attacking Americans are on the wane. But only if there is some “there” there, and this cast of characters has a lousy track record where honesty is concerned - having lied to get us into the war in the first damned place - so you'll just have to pardon me if I don't come running when the little boy cries "wolf!"

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More Fox War Mongering; Extra Disgust.

I often question (mainly to myself) the value of anecdotes when it comes to news coverage. Obviously, they're terribly subjective, and second, they're not necessarily representative of the world at large. It's like when conservatives rail against affirmative action, and they point to Colin Powell or Condi Rice. "See," they'll say, "Black people are achieving! They don't need special treatment. Powell and Rice were/are some of the most powerful people in the world. Affirmative action is no longer necessary!" One or two cases - or even thousands - is not enough to substantively establish a larger change in a social issue like race dynamics. Just because one or two African Americans make it to Secretary of State isn't necessarily indicative of a sudden birthing of substantive racial egalitarianism.

That said, however, anecdotes do act as powerful symbols, and when it comes to public policy rhetoric, these symbols can be powerful motivators which drive action. Obviously, using anecdotes to achieve policy aims isn't the strict purview of conservatives - us libs use them all the time. Michael Moore uses symbols - personal anecdotes more specifically - to make very powerful arguments about violence in America, or health care, or the effects of globalization. It can be hard, then, to penetrate the emotional power of symbols to get down to the nitty-gritty of policy development; just the facts, ma'am.

But even then, public policy is a very emotional process. It isn't like market exchanges in which material things are exchanged for greater utility. People's well-being and emotional states are critically linked to their quality of life. When people suffer, even if they're part of a small minority, it matters. That said, Fox News has really taken the use of symbols to a ridiculous extreme. I can't imagine anybody running this piece and still claiming to adhere to any sort of code of ethics. I suppose one (from Fox) could argue that, hey, this is just one man's story. But it's inclusion as part of their World Coverage is troubling. Below is the entirety of the piece. It's relatively short.

Michael J. Totten is an independent journalist reporting on the
war in Iraq. Here is a portion of his latest journal entry provided exclusively
for FOXNews.com.

Iraqis who are not American citizens and who work as interpreters
for the American military cover their faces when they work outside the wire.
Mahdi Army militiamen and Al Qaeda terrorists accuse of them of collaboration
with the enemy. They and their families are targets for destruction.

Here is the story of one such interpreter who works with the 82nd
Airborne Division in Baghdad. He calls himself “Hammer.”

Michael J. Totten (MJT): Why do you have to cover your face?

Hammer: To protect my family. My family lives in Iraq. If they go to
the U.S. I won’t have to do it. But I don’t want anyone to know me, to follow me
and see where I live and kill my wife and son.

MJT: How did you feel when the U.S. invaded Iraq?

Hammer: Happy. It was like I was living in a jail and somebody set me
free. I don’t want Saddam ruling me. Never. I was just waiting and waiting for
this moment.

MJT: What do you think about the possibility of Americans
leaving?

Hammer: It is like bad dream. Very bad dream. A nightmare. Worse
than that. Like sending me back to jail. Like they set me free for four years
then sent me back to jail or gave me a death sentence.

MJT: Tell us about living under Saddam Hussein.

Hammer: It was crazy life, like feeling safe inside a jail. If they
sent you to an actual jail nothing changed. They arrested everyone, literally
everyone, for no reason and sent them to jail for two weeks just so they could
see the jail.

I went there three times. The first time because I worked for a movie
company. They sent all of us to jail. It had nothing to do with me.

I was given a three year sentence. My family has money, so I paid the
judge $50,000. I gave it directly to the judge, plus four new tires for his car
and a satellite TV. He gave me a three-month sentence instead of a three-year
sentence. He scratched “3 years” off my sentence and wrote “3 months” in by
hand.

They sent me to Abu Ghraib. I saw so many things. If you want me to
talk about that I would need a whole newspaper.

MJT: Is there a solution to the problem in this country?

Hammer: Nuke Iraq.

MJT: Be serious.

Hammer: I am serious. If you screen all Iraqis, 5 million of them would
be good people. Clear them out, then kill everyone else. Syria and Iran would
surrender. [Laughs.]

Right now they see 100 corpses every day in the streets.
It’s not okay to kill the bad people who do that?

OK, if you want a serious solution try this:

Charge money to the families of insurgents. Fine them huge amounts of
money if anyone in their family is captured or killed and identified as an
insurgent. Make them pay. You can put it into law. Within one week they won’t do
anything wrong because they want money. Their familes will make them stop.

The militias pay them $100 to set up IEDs. Fine them thousands of
dollars if they are caught and their families will make them stop. Give them
that law. Go ahead. Try it.

Is this guy frickin' serious!?

I see what Fox is trying to do. This interview by an "independent journalist" (whatever that means) puts a human face on those who stand to suffer if the U.S. pulls out of Iraq, and I'm sure that we're all sympathetic to his plight. It's a tough situation to be in for sure. Assuming good faith (as I am inclined to do), this man just wants to do something good for his country, and make some money for his family; not that different from the rest of us. Hell, I say, give his ass a green card, and ship him stateside once we leave, he's earned it.

One issue I have with this piece is that Totten neglects to ask some pretty obvious (at least to me) questions that I think should probably have been asked. I don't know, maybe he asked them and they were just clipped. Only he and "Hammer" know for sure. Hammer says, in the answer to the first question, "If [my family] goes to the U.S. I won't have to [cover my face to avoid retribution]." Has he tried to get his family sent to the U.S.? I would imagine so, since he brought it up without prodding and didn't mention a more feasible alternative like Syria or Jordan. The problem is, though, that the U.S. has allowed fewer than 200 Iraqi immigrants into the country since October. If we're really serious about helping this loyal ally to the United States, then perhaps Fox should look at some of the very serious moral issues that have surfaced when it comes to protecting the family of these critical U.S. allies in Baghdad. I think it's a legitimate question to ask, especially considering the likelihood of a U.S. draw down after 2008 (one would hope). Of course, Fox is too busy cheerleading a long term occupation of the country to support any sort of contingency plan once our occupation (inevitably, in my opinion) fails.

Those questions aside, though, the content of this interview was pretty disturbing.

MJT: How did you feel when the U.S. invaded Iraq?

Hammer: Happy. It was like I was living in a jail and somebody set me
free. I don’t want Saddam ruling me. Never. I was just waiting and waiting for
this moment.

Hmmm... was it worth it, Hammer? I mean, really. I think that question should be the automatic follow up to answers like these. I'm serious. Liberty, and Democracy, and Freedom more generally are all things that I value dearly. But you know what? Stability is pretty frickin' important. Of course this man doesn't want the U.S. to leave. But does he feel safer now that Saddam Hussein is dead? Is his family safer? Are his friends? Is it worth it?

Of course, we then get the obligatory story about how atrocious Hussein's regime was. I believe it, for sure. And I see why Fox is high-lighting this anecdote. Hussein was a terrible man, tortured, killed, started wars, etc etc etc. I get it. However, he wasn't the worst dictator, and if he were still around, he still wouldn't be the worst. How many people have died in Iraq since March 2003? I don't know, and neither does anybody else. So many people have died that it's almost impossible to count. The Lancet suggests that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of this war. 655,000! That's the mid-range. I read the report (via JSTOR, sorry, can't link to those), and the margin of error, while high, still allows for a low-end estimate of something like 400,000 and a high end of nearly 1 million. These numbers out of a starting population of 30 million; revolting.

And then there's this question...

MJT: Is there a solution to the problem in this country?

Hammer: Nuke Iraq.

MJT: Be serious.
Hammer: I am serious. If you screen all Iraqis, 5 million of them would be
good people. Clear them out, then kill everyone else. Syria and Iran would
surrender. [Laughs.]

SO FUNNY!

Of course, turns out he was joking. But you know what's even funnier? His "serious" solution...

Charge money to the families of insurgents. Fine them huge
amounts of money if anyone in their family is captured or killed and identified
as an insurgent. Make them pay. You can put it into law. Within one week they
won’t do anything wrong because they want money. Their familes will make them
stop.

The militias pay them $100 to set up IEDs. Fine them thousands
of dollars if they are caught and their families will make them stop. Give them
that law. Go ahead. Try it.

OF COURSE! FINE THEM! Jesus H. Christ, I can't believe Gen. Petraeus hasn't thought of this yet! It's so obvious! The State of Washington doesn't want me to speed on I-5. I tried it once, and I had to pay a fine. Do I speed? Well, sometimes, but you know, whatever.

Fine them. First of all, punishing the family for the actions of an individual is immoral. Isn't that what "Hammer" is afraid will happen to his family? Of course, fining someone and killing them are completely different ball parks, but it's the same logic. But let's assume that the Iraqi Parliament passes a law which outlines fines for the families of known insurgents (since, you know, that Oil law hasn't been making any progress... maybe they'll try this one out). Who is going to enforce that law? Who is going to collect that fine? How are they going to pay for it? There's no significant respect for the rule of law in that country, obviously, and the state has zero capacity to exert its will on even the capital city! They can't extract sufficient revenue to run the place via taxes right now, how does one expect them to collect fines that no one is inclined to pay, not to mention the problems with selective enforcement...

Anyway, I guess my real point regarding all this is that it's ridiculous. This interview adds nothing to the debate, provides no information, and doesn't even really inspire empathy for interviewee. Typical Fox News garbage.



(Hat Tip: Tzepish)

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Indiana University study shows Fox News' Bill O'Reilly using propaganda techniques

Although this post is not directly related to watching Congress and government, I think it relates, if for no other reason than the fact that this study details progaganda techniques.

Indiana University today released a study showing that Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly out-propogandizes one of the top hate mongers of the 20th Century.

The study published in the spring issue of Journalism Studies notes, and the emphasis in bold is mine:

Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Conway, Grabe and Grieves found that O'Reilly employed six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials. His editorials also are presented on his Web site and in his newspaper columns.

The seven propaganda devices include:

• Name calling -- giving something a bad label to make the audience reject it without examining the evidence;
• Glittering generalities -- the oppositie of name calling;
• Card stacking -- the selective use of facts and half-truths;
• Bandwagon -- appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to follow the crowd;
• Plain folks -- an attempt to convince an audience that they, and their ideas, are "of the people";
• Transfer -- carries over the authority, sanction and prestige of something we respect or dispute to something the speaker would want us to accept; and
• Testimonials -- involving a respected (or disrespected) person endorsing or rejecting an idea or person.

The same techniques were used during the late 1930s to study another prominent voice in a war-era, Father Charles Coughlin. His sermons evolved into a darker message of anti-Semitism and fascism, and he became a defender of Hitler and Mussolini. In this study, O'Reilly is a heavier and less-nuanced user of the propaganda devices than Coughlin.

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Calling Winston Smith...

The Pentagon just needs to change the name of the American Forces Press Service (the PR arm of the Pentagon) to The Ministry of Truth and be done with it.

Extended Deployments Should Lessen Army Stress, Commander Says
By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, April 24, 2007 – Extended overseas deployments affecting soldiers serving in Afghanistan and other locales overseen by U.S. Central Command should help to alleviate the stress on the Army, a senior U.S. officer in Afghanistan told Pentagon reporters today.

“I’m absolutely confident that that’s going to work and that’ll manage the pressure and the stress on the force,” Army Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, said during a satellite-carried news conference.

All active U.S. Army units already operating within U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility, including Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, or en route there “will deploy for not more than 15 months and return home for not less than 12 months,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced April 11 at a Pentagon news conference.

The change automatically increased the length of soldiers’ overseas tours in those areas from 12 to 15 months...

The 15-month deployments are needed to ensure that the Army retains the capacity to sustain the deployed force, Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of Multinational Corps Iraq, said April 13 from Baghdad during a teleconference with Pentagon reporters.

The tour extensions will provide more predictability and stability for soldiers and their families, Odierno said, noting the policy “will ensure 12 months at home station between rotations.”

Schweitzer acknowledged difficulty in measuring how the extended deployment affects individual soldiers under his command. However, he expressed strong support for the personnel decisions made by senior defense department and Army leaders.

The Pentagon’s civilian and military leaders “put a lot of rigor and analytical analysis into this (tour extension) to determine what is best for the service and what is sustainable,” Schweitzer said. (emphasis mine)

Yeeaahhhh...

In other news: "War Is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."

Oh...And we have always been at war with Eastasia.

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