The Afghanistan Gap: Press vs. Public
By Norman Solomon
Solomon's ZSpace: Aug 26, 2009
These days, a lot of media stories are comparing President Johnson's war in
Vietnam and President Obama's war in Afghanistan. The comparisons are often
valid, but a key parallel rarely gets mentioned -- the media's insistent
support for the war even after most of the public has turned against it.
This omission relies on the mythology that the U.S. news media functioned as
tough critics of the Vietnam War in real time, a fairy tale so widespread
that it routinely masquerades as truth. In fact, overall, the default
position of the corporate media is to bond with war policymakers in
Washington -- insisting for the longest time that the war must go on.
In early 1968, after several years of massive escalation of the Vietnam War,
the Boston Globe conducted a survey of 39 major U.S. daily newspapers and
found that not a single one had editorialized in favor of U.S. withdrawal
from Vietnam. While millions of Americans were actively demanding an
immediate pullout, such a concept was still viewed as extremely unrealistic
by the editorial boards of big daily papers -- including the liberal New
York Times and Washington Post.
A similar pattern took shape during Washington's protracted war in Iraq.
Year after year, the editorial positions of major dailies have been much
more supportive of the U.S. war effort than the American public.
In mid-spring 2004, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll was showing that "one in
four Americans say troops should leave Iraq as soon as possible and another
30 percent say they should come home within 18 months." But as usual, when
it came to rejection of staying the war course, the media establishment
lagged way behind the populace.
Despite sometimes-withering media criticism of the Bush administration's
foreign policy, all of the sizable newspapers steered clear of calling for
withdrawal. Many favored sending in even more troops. On May 7, 2004, Editor
& Publisher headlined a column by the magazine's editor, Greg Mitchell, this
way: "When Will the First Major Newspaper Call for a Pullout in Iraq?"
Today, the gap between mainline big media and the grassroots is just as
wide. Top policymakers for what has become Obama's Afghanistan war can find
their assumptions mirrored in the editorials of the nation's mighty
newspapers -- at the same time that opinion polls are showing a dramatic
trend against the war.
While a recent ABC News-Washington Post poll found that 51 percent of the
public says the war in Afghanistan isn't worth fighting, the savants who
determine big media's editorial positions insist on staying the course.
Recycled from the repetition-compulsion department, a spate of new
hand-wringing editorials has bemoaned the shortcomings of Washington's
allied leader in the occupied country. Of course the edifying pitch includes
the assertion that the Afghan government and its armed forces must get their
act together. (Good help is hard to find.)
"President Obama has rightfully defined success in Afghanistan as essential
to America's struggle against Al Qaeda," the New York Times editorialized on
Aug. 21. Yet Al Qaeda, according to expert assessments, is scarcely present
in Afghanistan any more. There are dozens of countries where that terrorist
group or other ones could be said to have a much larger presence. Does that
mean the U.S. government should be prepared to wage war in all of those
countries?
Paragraph after paragraph of the editorial proclaimed what must be done to
win the war. It was all boilerplate stuff of the sort that has littered the
editorial pages of countless newspapers for many years during one protracted
war after another -- in Vietnam, in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
When congressional leaders and top administration officials read such
editorials, they can take comfort in finding reaffirmed support for their
insistence on funding more and more war. If only public opinion would
cooperate, there'd be no political problem.
But, increasingly, public opinion is not cooperating. While the media
establishment and the political establishment appear to belong to the same
pro-war affinity group, the public is shifting to the other side of a
widening credibility gap.
In a word, the problem -- and the threat for the press and the state -- can
be summed up as democracy.
Now, one of the pivotal questions is what "liberal" and "progressive" online
organizations will do in the coming months. Many are led by people who
privately understand that Obama's war escalation is on track for cascading
catastrophes. But they do not want to antagonize the leading Democrats in
Washington, who contend that more war in Afghanistan is the only viable
political course. Will that undue deference to the Obama administration
continue, despite the growing evidence of disaster and the sinking poll
numbers for the war?
A cautionary note for those who assume that the impacts of public opinion
will put a brake on the accelerating U.S. war in Afghanistan: That
assumption is based on a misunderstanding of how the USA's warfare state
really functions.
Under the headline "Someone Tell the President the War Is Over," the New
York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote: "A president can't stay the course
when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him." That
was way back in August 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/opinion/14rich.html
(The next day, I wrote a piece headlined "Someone Tell Frank Rich the War Is
Not Over.")
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0815-24.htm
The war on Vietnam persisted for several horrific years after the polls were
showing that most Americans disapproved. The momentum of a large-scale and
protracted U.S. war of military occupation is massive and cataclysmic after
the engine has really been gunned.
That's one of the most chilling parallels between the wars in Vietnam and
Afghanistan. The news media are part of the deadly process. So are the
politicians who remain hitched to some expedient calculus. And so are we, to
the extent that we go along with the conventional wisdom of the warfare
state.
________________________________________
Norman Solomon is the author of many books including "War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," which has been adapted
into a documentary film. For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
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