Opinion Control on the Next War in Iraq:
Freedom to Fear, Freedom From Thinking

“For a prince must have two kinds of fear: one internal as regards his subjects, one external as regards foreign powers.” Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

America is a nation in an information war with itself. On the one hand, American journalists and editors tout the virtues of a free and open media, the international imperative for the free flow of information, and the constitutional responsibility for government to avoid dominating the flow and exchange of information. On the other hand, these free media principles have been wanting throughout the post-9/11 war on terrorism and incipient war with Iraq. Analysis of the media coverage of a pending war with Iraq offers an interesting case study of modern information and opinion management. To learn more, we need to look back briefly to the last war with Iraq under a different Bush Administration to see how the son responds to the father’s example. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that familial history repeats.

“In retrospect and in balance, the remarkable control of American consciousness during and after the war must be regarded as a signal achievement of mind management, perhaps even more impressive than the rapid military victory.” Herbert I. Schiller wrote these words in May 1991 for the French newspaper, Le Monde Diplomatique, to explain the then Bush Administration’s great success in controlling information about the war and American press acquiescence in withholding information that the public needed to make a sound decision about critical issues of war and peace. It wasn’t until after the Persian Gulf war that the U.S. press claimed any mea culpa complicity in its reportage, as when Tom Wicker of the New York Times reported “the real and dangerous point is that the Bush Administration and the military were so successful in controlling information about the war they were able to tell the public just about what they wanted the public to know. Perhaps worse, press and public, largely acquiesced in the disclosure of only selected information.” That public acquiescence followed from the American people’s media consumption habits. As Michael Deaver, spin doctor to President Reagan, gloated in the New York Times, “Television is where 80% of the people get their information,” and what was done to control that information in the six weeks of war “couldn’t [have] been better.”

Similarly, television coverage about Iraq from September 2002 to March 2003 was overwhelmingly dominated by the image of a resolute President Bush and his closest advisors who stuck to one dominant view—that Saddam must go and most likely by force. In the months leading up to the first anniversary of 9/11, President Bush merged the debate about Iraq into the ongoing War on Terror, thereby cinching any dissent. By cleverly linking the perpetual fear around shadowy terrorist groups to what to do about that leftover problem of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the American people had no political option but to join the bandwagon of support for the President on Iraq, given the only alternative offered of support for terrorists. To quote Bill Maher, deposed late-night host of Politically Incorrect of the state of free speech in America: “When you ride alone, you ride with Bin Laden.”

The Bush Doctrine that arose from the ashes of 9/11 successfully broadened the rhetorical “War on Terror” from those international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda directly responsible for the September 11th attacks on the United States to a perpetual war against any government that seeks chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons (weapons of mass destruction) that might threaten the United States and the world. In three separate speeches to military academies (The Citadel, Virginia Military Institute, and West Point) that were not well covered by the U.S. media, Bush told his enthusiastic listeners that Afghanistan was just the beginning of a long campaign to change government leadership. In his June 1, 2002 graduation speech at West Point, Bush outlined his Newthink war doctrine:

For much of the last century, America's defense relied on the Cold War doctrines of deterrence and containment … new threats also require new thinking. Deterrence -- the promise of massive retaliation against nations -- means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies… the war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.

The phrase, war on terror, Nicholas Lemann of The New Yorker wrote, “has entered the language so fully, and framed the way people think about how the United States is reacting to the September 11th attacks so completely, that the idea that declaring and waging war on terror was not the sole, inevitable, logical consequence of the attacks just isn’t in circulation.”

The greatest gift of British writer George Orwell was to present how political leaders often control language for their own ends. In his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” he argued that language should express and not conceal thought. However, “in our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Orwell’s classic example of language control is the slogan, “war is peace.” Lest we think that it’s impossible to hold two opposing ideas in our minds at the same time and actually believe in them, think about the language that defines our present situation with Iraq. When Bush said, “we’re at war,” upon hearing that a second plane had flown into the World Trade Center, many of us may have thought then that war meant something with a definite conclusion, like the war in Afghanistan. Yet the slogan, “war on terror,” is a symbol of perpetual thinking about perpetual war. Its sister slogan, “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” symbolizes the triumph of one accepted mode of thought, controlled thought, over any other modes of thought (free thought, dissenting thought) that might actually challenge the position of the state and its leaders.

By the time of the October 2002 Congressional vote on Iraq, there was really only one acceptable position on Iraq using the narrow linguistic metaphor, war on terror. With no Democratic opposition and no press coverage of antiwar opposition, Bush was free to utter statements like the following: “America is speaking with one voice: Iraq must disarm and comply with all existing U.N. resolutions, or it will be forced to comply.” With the Republican majority takeover in the November 5th elections, Bush was riding on the saddle of the imperial president, a picture of resolute firmness and almost eager willingness to engage in perpetual war against “those who hate freedom,” another favorite catch phrase in the rhetorical war on terror that chills any serious debate about issues of life and death.

In late November 2002, legendary investigative journalist Bob Woodward helped further the cause of unquestioning thought about Iraq when he took over America’s television screens to discuss his yearlong portrait of the President, Bush at War. While perspectives from antiwar activists both here and abroad remained almost invisible in America’s establishment press and were left to talk amongst themselves on the Web,there was Woodward seemingly everywhere (CNN, 60 Minutes) touting the virtues of the prince, er president. Woodward reported that Bush the son had no problem, like his father, with “the vision thing.” In fact, this President was absolutely sure of himself and according to Woodward, knew exactly how his presidency would define itself in the shadow of 9/11. The picture that emerged was of a President who triumphed in personality to manage public opinion to the point of unanimity (one voice). Consider this exchange on CNN’s Larry King Live between a caller and Woodward about former U.N. Inspector Scott Ritter who for months made the rounds on college campuses and in mostly alternative media denouncing war against Iraq:

CALLER: Yes, good evening, gentlemen. I recently observed a lecture being given by a gentleman who was a previous Iraqi arms inspector. He was also, I believe, a Gulf War combat veteran, a man by the name of Scott Ritter. And I'm most interested in what Mr. Woodward's opinion would be of Mr. Ritter's credibility and his message.

WOODWARD: There's an immense amount of skepticism. I understand Scott Ritter feels very, very strongly about that. I've talked to people who know about the intelligence and the information we have. And there is no question that there is something there. There also is no question that Saddam Hussein is kind of an industrial strength package of psychiatric disorders and a very dangerous man. Now, whether you have to go to war to solve the problem remains to be seen, but he is a threat and one of the things Condi Rice said on the record when I talked to her about this, said the lesson of September 11 is simple. Take care of threats early. Not late. That's what should have been done with Bin Laden and there is a feeling about Saddam on this now. We'll see how it plays out. Scott Ritter, I don't know enough about him. I'm sorry, sir.

Whatever the outcome of the war on terror and its latest expansion to regime change in Iraq, the information war will continue to be led by the control of language from the top. In the case of Iraq, slogans and facile statements of freedom over tyranny from the President seem to satisfy the appetite of the press, while opposing thought from the grassroots requires evidence beyond reasonable doubt. As Jacques Ellul said in his seminal book, Propaganda, there can be no unanimity of thought without the steady propaganda of a political chief, “in whom everyone finds himself, in whom everyone hopes and projects himself, and for whom everything is possible and permissible.”

The slogan “war on terrorism” remains a convenient state tactic to control public opinion, expand the climate of fear, and shut down opposition to war in Iraq and elsewhere. Many peace and social change activists in the United States and elsewhere are legitimately concerned with the manner in which countering terrorism through better intelligence and policing has been replaced by aggressive war talk about “preemptive strikes” and “regime change.” To many, we live in a climate of fear that chills dissent from the state’s declaration of war. But as Lt. General William Odom (Ret.) U.S. Army said on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal: “Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic. It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism. And it does whip up fear. Acts of terror have never brought down liberal democracies. Acts of parliament have closed a few.