Anthony DiMaggio: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Despite the termination of George W. Bush’s presidency, continued opposition to ending the Iraq war remains in the halls of Washington and amongst media pundits. In a Meet the Press interview this month, Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks explained that, under current thinking in Washington, the U.S. may continue “to have American troops dying in Iraq for years to come.” He specifically cited opposition to withdrawal on the part of military officials such as General Ray Odierno, who indicated his support for keeping 35,000 troops in the country through at least 2015, down from the high of 155,000 currently in Iraq. One report this month from journalist Gareth Porter highlights the opposition of military commanders to Obama’s 16 month plan for a troop reduction. Odierno, again, reportedly hoped to convince Obama of revising the Status of Forces Agreement made with Iraq, which requires a full withdrawal of troops by December, 2011. Odierno wanted to circumvent the agreement by “re-categorizing large numbers of combat troops as support troops,” potentially allowing them to remain in Iraq indefinitely. This plan seems to resemble Obama’s ambitions in Iraq in many respects, as the President has long indicated that, despite his plan for 16-month de-escalation, he may keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq until at least 2013. General David Petraeus was also reportedly opposed to Obama’s 16 month drawdown of American troops.

Despite the public’s long-standing opposition to the war and support for a short timetable for withdrawal, Obama and his generals continue to defy public wishes as they debate whether the occupation will continue for another three years, six years, or indefinitely into the future. Much of the justification for this obstinacy is based on manipulation of available intelligence and from deceptively simplistic arguments that the 2007 troop surge “worked.” Detailed analysis reveals that this deception is wide-ranging, as support for the surge spans across liberal and conservative mainstream media outlets.

Continued celebrations of the occupation are reflected in a spate of editorials this month in one of the most prominent media outlets: the Washington Post. Charles Krauthammer argues that the “near miracle” of Iraq’s provincial elections contradicts the “general establishment/media narrative of Iraq as a ‘fiasco,’” while Jim Hoagland similarly maintains that “Iraq is closer today to being a source of regional stability than it ever was in its pre-American era.” Robert Kagan optimistically describes the security situation in Iraq as “quiet,” in light of U.S. plans to escalate the conflict in Afghanistan. Emboldened by bi-partisan defense of the surge, conservative media monitoring groups have taken it upon themselves to forward cavalier, although mostly unsubstantiated attacks on the mainstream press for not being sycophantic enough in their support for U.S. military power. One release by the Media Research Center complains that, amidst the decrease in violence in Iraq during 2007 and 2008, media outlets covered the conflict less than in earlier periods. The center takes issue with the decrease in stories on Iraq from the major three networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) from September through October 2007, when coverage declined by 62 percent as violence in Iraq was also falling. The MRC has specifically chastised the mainstream press for emphasizing “discouraging developments” while neglecting “positive stories,” and for appropriating the term “civil war” to describe the violence in Iraq.

What has systematically eluded these pundits is the possibility that the decrease in news on Iraq may in fact have worked in favor of the Bush administration, as well as to the advantage of the war-lite Obama administration. The unpopularity of the Iraq war amongst the American public is documented as a function of a number of factors which have little to do with the “good news” of decreasing violence levels. When asked about their primary reasons for opposing the war, Americans provide the following answers: 1. The war is costing too much at a time when the economy is in dire straits; 2. The war was originally supported as a means of protecting Americans from WMD and Al Qaeda threats, not as a mechanism for “democracy building,” (which was never part of the original public mandate for war). Americans are twice as likely to agree that the Iraq war is “fundamentally wrong and immoral” than to agree with the claim that it is “humanitarian in its mission and goals”; 3. Too many American troops have died during this conflict (the current number of deaths is 4,250); despite the decline in troops casualties in 2007 and 2008, Americans view the aggregate number of lives lost, and see these losses as unacceptable in light of the false pretexts that got the U.S. into war; and 4. Violence levels in Iraq have actually increased dramatically since the declared end of “combat operations” and the announcement of “mission accomplished” in 2003. None of these four points of opposition are likely to change in light of the relative change in violence levels in Iraq during mid to late 2007, when the attacks decreased from mass ethnic cleansing to the level of near-mass ethnic cleansing. In short, the decrease in news from Iraq is likely to constitute good news for Democratic and Republican policy planners, not bad news. Little public attention to Iraq can be considered beneficial in that it allows officials to conduct business in Iraq with minimal accountability.

Despite the critical evidence above, conservative and mainstream liberal pundits and politicians continue to maintain that the 2007 troop surge changed everything in Iraq for the better, and that the media needs to simply get on board with the positive changes by taking on a more cheerful approach. We should strongly question these claims on the following empirical grounds:

This study has merely skimmed the surface of the bi-partisan deceit that drives media and political rationalizations for the war. Fortunately, most Americans seem to have rejected these defenses as opportunistic and manipulative. Whether the American public will be able to effectively hold the Obama Presidency to its pre-election promise to quickly end the war in Iraq is uncertain. One thing, however, is clear. If the public doesn’t place continued pressure on this administration, the U.S. will likely remain in Iraq for many years to come.

Associated Press, “Iraq Conflict Tops Democratic Debate Agenda,” MSNBC, 26 September 2007, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21000458/

Gareth Porter, “Pentagon Brass Chafes at Obama’s Iraq Pullout Plan,” Inter Press Service, 3 February 2009

Peter Hart, “Spinning the Surge: Iraq and the Election,” Extra!, September/October 2008,

Charles Krauthammer, “Iraq: Good News is No News,” Washington Post, 13 February 2009, 17(A); Jim Hoagland, “Iraq’s Example,” Washington Post, 9 February 2009, 17(A); Robert Kagan, “No Time to Cut Defense,” Washington Post, 3 February 2009, 15(A).

Rich Noyes, “TV Keeps Pushing Bad News Agenda on Iraq,” Media Research Center, 21 July 2008, http://www.mediaresearch.org/realitycheck/2008/fax20080721.asp; Rich Noyes, “Good News = Less News on Iraq War,” Media Research Center, 4 December 2007, http://www.mrc.org/realitycheck/2007/fax20071204.asp

The public’s primary reasons for opposing the war are explained at length in Chapters 7 and 8 my book: When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent, which will be released from Monthly Review Press in late 2009.

For more on these statistics, see Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book, When Media Goes to War.

Ibid.

Iraq Body Count, “The Baghdad ‘Surge’ and Civilian Casualties,” http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/baghdad-surge/

Global Security, “Overall Weekly Security Incident Trends,” http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2008/iraq-security-stability_jun2008_04.htm

Ibid.

For more on these statistics, see Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book, When Media Goes to War

John Hendren, “‘Sunni Awakening’: Insurgents Now Allies,” ABC News, 23 December 2007, http://abcnews.go.com/International/Story?id=4045471&page=1

Juan Cole, “Kahl: Iran Tamed Mahdi Army,” Informed Comment, 16 August 2008, http://www.juancole.com/2008/08/kahl-iran-tamed-mahdi-army-al-maliki.html

Juan Cole, “A Social History of the Surge,” Informed Comment, 24 July 2008, http://www.juancole.com/2008/07/social-history-of-surge.html; Matt Duss, “Escalation Architect Fred Kagan Doubles Down On His Claim That Sectarian Cleansing In Baghdad Is A ‘Myth,’” Think Progress, 25 March 2008,
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2008/03/25/kagan-cleansing-myth/; Karen DeYoung, “Balkanized Homecoming,” Washington Post, 16 December 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/15/AR2007121501921_pf.html; Matt Duss, “CNN’s Ware: Sectarian Cleansing In Baghdad ‘One Of The Key Elements To The Drop In Sectarian Violence,’” Think Progress, 3 April 2008, http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2008/04/03/ware-sectarian-cleansing/

Mark Jurkowitz, “Why News of Iraq Didn’t Surge,” Pew Research Center, 26 March 2008, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/775/iraq-news

Reuters, “Reporters Say Baghdad Too Dangerous Despite Surge,” Reuters, 28 November 2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN27496676; Committee to Protect Journalists, “For Six Straight Year, Iraq Deadliest Nation for Press,” Committee to Protect Journalists, 18 December 2008, http://cpj.org/reports/2008/12/for-sixth-straight-year-iraq-deadliest-nation-for.php

A key-word search of Lexis Nexis finds that over 2,500 stories appear for the two words: “Iraq” and “Reconstruction” from March 20, 2003 through February 23, 2009.

For more on this, see Ch. 8 in my recently released book: Mass Media, Mass Propaganda: Examining American News in the “War on Terror.”

For more on these trends, see Chapters 3, 7, and 8 in my forthcoming book, When Media Goes to War.

For more on these trends, see Chapter 8 in my forthcoming book, When Media Goes to War.

Two chapters of When Media Goes to War (Ch. 7 and 8) are specifically devoted to exploring how the public forms its own counter-frames to those reinforced in official propaganda.

From Bush to Obama

Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray

From Bush to Obama

Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics Kevin Alexander Gray

Waiting for Lightning
to Strike:
The Fundamentals
of Black Politics
Kevin Alexander Gray