For a long time, the last refuge of scoundrels was “patriotism.”
Now it’s “the war on terror.”
President Bush and many of his vocal supporters aren’t content to
wrap themselves in the flag. It’s not sufficient to posture as more
patriotic than opponents of the Iraq war. The ultimate demagogic weapon
is to exploit the memory of Sept. 11, 2001.
The fourth anniversary will provide the Bush administration with
plenty of media opportunities to wrap itself in the 9/11 shroud and
depict Iraq war critics as insufficiently committed to defending the
United States. A renewed attempt to justify the war as a resolute stand
against terrorism is well underway.
On Aug. 24, eager to pull out of a political nosedive, Bush stood
in front of National Guard members in Idaho and read from a script that
was thick with familiar rhetoric: “Our nation is engaged in a global war
on terror that affects the safety and security of every American. In
Iraq, Afghanistan and across the world, we face dangerous enemies who
want to harm our people, folks who want to destroy our way of life.”
And: “As long as I’m the president, we will stay, we will fight and we
will win the war on terror.”
Such presidential oratory has become routine. And anniversaries of
9/11 are occasions when the White House ratchets up the spin.
“In the ruins of two towers, under a flag unfurled at the Pentagon,
at the funerals of the lost, we have made a sacred promise to ourselves,
and to the world,” President Bush proclaimed on Sept. 11, 2002. “We will
not relent until justice is done and our nation is secure. What our
enemies have begun, we will finish.”
At the time, the Bush administration was building its agenda for an
invasion of Iraq. “Mr. Bush wants the UN to compel Iraq to submit to
weapons inspections, or face the consequences,” ABC News reported. “And
though he did not mention Saddam Hussein by name ... the White House say
s he had the Iraqi leader in mind when he warned America’s enemies.”
That’s an example of how the propaganda tag-team of government and
media has conveyed implicit lies as actual facts. While talking about
9/11, Bush said: “What our enemies have begun, we will finish.” And
network reporting helpfully explained that “he had the Iraqi leader in
mind.” The absence of evidence didn’t seem to matter much. Repeated
countless times, such slick media maneuvers were able to convince a
hefty chunk of the U.S. population that Saddam Hussein was involved with
the 9/11 attacks.
When the second anniversary came around, Bush went to Walter Reed
Army Hospital and visited soldiers who -- in the words of one TV
network -- were “wounded in the war on terror, both in Afghanistan and
Iraq.” The president’s comments in front of cameras were carefully
targeted: “We’re going to a church service to remember the victims, pray
for their families, victims of 9/11, 2001. Today, this afternoon, Laura
and I are here to thank the brave souls who got wounded in the war on
terror, people who are willing to sacrifice in order to make sure that
attacks such as Sept. 11 don’t happen again.”
During that hospital visit, the commander in chief made a pitch for
war without any foreseeable end: “As I’ve told the American people right
after Sept. 11, 2001, this will be a different kind of war and this will
be a long war. And we’re fighting this war on a lot of fronts, the major
front of which is now in Iraq.”
Last year, Sept. 11 fell on a Saturday, and the president’s weekly
radio address gained unusual visibility. Relatives of 9/11 victims
surrounded Bush in the Oval Office as he made his little speech,
which -- in the words of NBC News -- engaged in “linking the war on
terror to the war in Iraq.”
And so the media siege has gone, to this day. With routine
assistance from news coverage, the Bush administration touts the U.S.
war effort in Iraq as a legitimate response to what happened on Sept.
11, 2001. With the White House now desperate to shore up its sinking
political fortunes, a vast amount of such propaganda is on the horizon.
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Norman Solomon is the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and
Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go to:
www.WarMadeEasy.com. Audio of his recent speech on “Building Agendas for
War” is at:
http://alternet.org/multimedia/24486