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HOW HADITHA HAPPENED; WHY IT WILL
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What explains the gullibility of Americans,
a gullibility that has mired the US in disastrous wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan and which promises war with Iran, North Korea
and a variety of other targets if neoconservatives continue to
have their way?
Part of the explanation is
that millions of conservatives are thrilled at the opportunity
to display their patriotism and to show their support for their
country. Bush's rhetoric is perfectly designed to appeal to
this desire. "You are with us or against us" elicits
a blind and unquestioning response from people determined to
wear their patriotism on their sleeves. "You are with us
or against us" vaccinates Americans against factual reality
and guarantees public acceptance of administration propaganda.
Another part of the explanation
is that emotional appeals have grown the stronger as the ability
of educated people to differentiate fact from rhetoric declines.
The Bush administration blamed 9/11 on foreign intelligence
failures; yet, the administration has convinced about half of
the public that mass surveillance of American citizens is the
solution!
Many Americans have turned
a blind eye to the administration's illegal and unconstitutional
spying on the grounds that, as they themselves are doing nothing
wrong, they have nothing to fear. If this is the case, why did
our Founding Fathers bother to write the Constitution? If the
executive branch can be trusted not to abuse power, why did Congress
pass legislation establishing a panel of federal judges (ignored
by the Bush administration) to oversee surveillance? If President
Bush can decide that he can ignore statutory law, how does he
differ from a dictator? If Bush can determine law, what is the
role of Congress and the courts? If "national security"
is a justification for elevating the power of the executive,
where is his incentive to find peaceful solutions?
Emotional appeals to fear and
to patriotism have led close to half of the population to accept
unaccountable government in the name of "the war on terrorism."
What a contradiction it is that so many Americans have been
convinced that safety lies in their sacrifice of their civil
liberties and accountable government.
If so many Americans cannot
discern that they have acquiesced to conditions from which tyranny
can arise, how can they understand that it is statistically impossible
for the NSA's mass surveillance of Americans to detect terrorists?
Floyd Rudmin, a professor at
a Norwegian university, writing in CounterPunch
(May 24, 2006) applies the mathematics of conditional probability,
known as Bayes' Theorem, to demonstrate that the NSA's surveillance
cannot successfully detect terrorists unless both the percentage
of terrorists in the population and the accuracy rate of their
identification are far higher than they are. He correctly concludes
that "NSA's surveillance system is useless for finding terrorists."
The surveillance is, however,
useful for monitoring political opposition and stymieing the
activities of those who do not believe the government's propaganda.
Another reason for the gullibility
of Americans is their lack of alternative information to government
propaganda. The independence of print and TV media disappeared
in the media consolidations of the 1990s. Today a handful of
large corporations own the traditional media. The wealth of these
corporations consists of broadcast licenses, which the companies
hold at the government's discretion.
Newspapers are run by corporate
executives, whose eyes are on advertising revenue and who shun
contentious reporting. The result is that the traditional media
are essentially echo chambers for government propaganda.
The Internet and the foreign
news media accessible through the Internet are the sources of
alternative information. Many Americans have not learned to
use and to rely on the Internet for information.
Many Americans find the government's
message much more reassuring than the actual facts. The government's
message is: "America is virtuous. Virtuous America was
attacked by evil terrorists. America is protecting itself by
going to war and overthrowing regimes that sponsor or give shelter
to terrorists, erecting in their place democracies loyal to America."
Sugar-coated propaganda doesn't
present Americans with the emotional and mental stress associated
with the hard facts.
In National Socialist Germany,
by the time propaganda lost its grip, Germans were in the hands
of a police state. It was too late to take corrective measures.
Not even the military could correct the disastrous policies of
the executive. In the end, Germany was destroyed. Does a similar
fate await Americans?
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of
National Review. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
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By Michael Neumann
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