The Achievements of War Propaganda: Selling Military Intervention to a Reluctant Public

June 09, 2008

By Kevin Young

 

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that Democratic politicians must support policies of war and militarism if they wish to maintain popularity, the people of the United States do not like war. In fact, US citizens have been decidedly reluctant to support most major instances of government military intervention abroad, and have usually voted for politicians who have pledged to avoid military involvement or to extract the US from existing involvements. Woodrow Wilson was reelected in 1916 after promising to keep the US out of World War I. Lyndon Johnson defeated the pro-war Barry Goldwater in 1964 in large part because of his relatively cautious stance on Vietnam. In the 1968 election, Richard Nixon was elected after promising to get the US out of Vietnam, and because his Democratic opponent Hubert Humphrey failed to dissociate himself from the hawkish policies of Lyndon Johnson. Four years later, Nixon won again in part because he was able to cast himself as a peace candidate by proclaiming news of the impending peace agreement with North Vietnam. Even prior to the "good war," World War II, Franklin Roosevelt's victorious 1940 campaign included a stated commitment to stay out of the conflict [1].

The public distaste for large-scale war continues to the present. By 2005 a solid majority of the US public favored a withdrawal from Iraq, with that majority climbing to 60-70 percent a year later and remaining at similar levels since [2]. Had John Kerry taken a more principled antiwar stance while emphasizing the security benefits of withdrawing from Iraq, he probably would have defeated George Bush quite handily in 2004. As is well-known, voters elected a Democratic majority to Congress in November 2006 with a clear mandate to end the US military presence in Iraq, only to be betrayed by many of those same Democrats. Among the nearly two-thirds of the public who oppose the occupation, well over half oppose it on moral grounds—that is, as more than just a "mistake"—saying that the US presence in Iraq is "not morally justified" [3]. Recent polls show that opposition to war and militarism is not limited to the Iraq occupation alone: even those respondents registered as Republicans favor reducing the military budget by 20 percent, while Democrats favor reducing it by 48 percent (the current budget of the Defense Department alone is over $650 billion; total military spending is around $1.4 trillion a year) [4]. The public tends to express support for the UN and generally favors greater international cooperation and the diplomatic resolution of conflicts [5]. Instead of massive military spending, overwhelming majorities of people in this country believe that their government should be spending far more money to provide food and services like health care, housing, and education, and that corporations and the wealthy should be taxed at a much higher rate than they are currently [6].

In those instances when US leaders have mobilized significant support for major military interventions, they have done so through massive propaganda and disinformation campaigns. To prepare the public for war against Spain in 1898, the McKinley administration and press moguls like Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst fabricated the charge that Spain had blown up the USS Maine off the shores of Cuba, popularizing the chant "Remember the Maine." To garner support for the subsequent military occupations of Cuba, the Philippines, and other former European colonies, the same class of people helped promote racist and paternalist views of dark-skinned peoples as incapable of self-governance. In 1917, Woodrow Wilson dragged an unenthusiastic population into World War I in part through a trick perhaps learned from McKinley, by claiming that Germany had sunk a peaceful civilian cruise ship, the Lusitania, which had in fact been heavily-loaded with ammunition. After World War II, every president from Truman to Bush I fostered anti-Communist hysteria and engaged in systematic fabrications, omissions, and covert operations to squash social revolutions and prop up repressive regimes throughout the Third World. The US war in Indochina provides some of the most glaring examples: Lyndon Johnson lied to Congress and the public when he claimed that North Vietnam had launched unprovoked attacks on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964, using that incident to secure a Congressional mandate for the escalation of the war as well as tacit public support; his successor Nixon killed hundreds of thousands of people in Cambodia starting in 1969 in operations which were only made public several years later. Building on the long continental genocide against Native Americans, every president without exception since the beginning of US overseas imperialism in the mid-nineteenth century has helped sow racism, fear, US exceptionalism, and constant disinformation among the public to support US aggression abroad [7].

Viewed in this context, the lies of the current administration are merely the latest link in a long history rather than the exception to the rule. The US government's propaganda about Iraq in 2002-03 and since, readily swallowed and rehashed by many Democrats in Congress and the major press outfits, is well-established enough and so well-known to most Z readers that no comment is necessary here. It suffices to say that without extensive and incessant propaganda, revolving especially around the issues of Saddam's involvement in 9-11 and his possession of nuclear weapons, US public support for the invasion would never have surpassed 10 or 20 percent and the over half a million US citizens who took to the streets to protest the planned invasion in February 2003 might have numbered five or ten times that number.   

Public Knowledge of Iraq: Propaganda's Effects

Several polls from the past two years indicate just how successful official propaganda and media complicity have been in hiding the truth about Iraq from the US public, not simply in the early years of the occupation but right up to the present. Although a strong majority of the US public now opposes the occupation, certain evidence suggests that large percentages of that same public are still in the dark about basic realities in Iraq after more than five years.

To take a single but extremely important example, the public seems fundamentally ignorant of the effects of the US occupation on the Iraqi people. In repeated Western-run polls over the past several years, an overwhelming majority of Iraqis has consistently stated that the US presence increases the level of violence and instability in their country. In the most recent such poll (in February 2008), 72 percent of Iraqis said that the presence of US forces makes security "worse" (61 percent) or has "no effect" (11 percent), with an equal percentage opposing the US presence. Sixty-nine percent said that security would improve (46 percent) or stay "about the same" (23 percent) if the US withdrew entirely [8]. These results are roughly consistent with those of earlier polls of Iraqis [9]. A variety of other indicators—for example, the fact that the majority of insurgent attacks are still directed against US forces, and that around half of Iraqis support those attacks—confirm Iraqis' perceptions about the effects of the US presence. Most knowledgeable and honest observers of Iraq agree that overall violence decreased starting in the summer of 2007 (in early 2008 there has been a moderate upswing again), but emphasize that the reasons for that decline have had little or nothing to do with the surge. Instead, they point to other factors such as the ongoing temporary ceasefire declared by Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in mid-2007, the defection of many Sunni insurgents from their previous alliance with al Qaeda, and the fact that by now most of Iraq is so segregated that sectarian tensions have eased somewhat, returning to "merely" their pre-2006 levels.   

Nonetheless, a large portion of the US public believes that the "surge" is having a positive effect on the Iraqi population. In a December 2007 poll, 40 percent of respondents said that the increased US military presence was improving the situation, while an equal number thought it was having no effect; only 22 percent thought it was making things worse [10].

Table 1: Comparison of US and Iraqi Publics' Views of the Surge [11]

The dramatic difference summarized in Table 1—that is, Americans' fundamental misunderstanding of the effects of the US military presence in Iraq—is largely attributable to elite politicians in Washington and their cheerleaders in the US media. The notion that the US presence is a stabilizing force in Iraq is a sacred cow among mainstream commentators and high-level politicians of both parties; many analysts never even think to question the assumption that the US escalation that started in January 2007 has been responsible for the decline in violence since late-summer 2007. Rarely are the opinions of ordinary Iraqis—particularly on the crucial question of the occupation's effects—mentioned or examined in much detail. The major media outlets have been enthusiastically complicit in the effort to sell this escalation to the US public, and their complicity goes a long way toward explaining disparities like the one shown in Table 1.

Even critics of the occupation often perpetuate the image of the US as a stabilizing force. One of the most vocal Congressional critics of the war, Rep. John Murtha, argued in late 2007 that "the surge is working" [12]. The editors of the New York Times have reinforced similar myths even while advocating US withdrawal:

Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. [13]

Other critics on the liberal end of the mainstream spectrum echo these arguments. Paul Cruickshank of The New Republic criticizes the administration's "myopic focus on Iraq" for having "allowed Al Qaeda to regroup elsewhere," but cautions that "we must not make the same mistake again" by leaving Iraq and allowing terror to flourish there. "A complete U.S. troop withdrawal would likely make the current civil war grow even hotter" [14]. A September 2005 Guardian editorial even outrageously claimed that "[n]o one is arguing for an immediate pull-out" because the occupation still has "responsibilities" to the Iraqi people (by responsibilities, of course, the editors meant that we must maintain a military presence, not that we should pay reparations to the Iraqi people) [15]. Overall, the mainstream consensus is that a US departure would mean a bloodbath for Iraqis. The difference among these critics is that some nonetheless advocate a US withdrawal despite what they predict will be chaos for Iraqis; others insist that we still have the "responsibility" to occupy Iraq.

To bolster their case, defenders of the occupation have repeatedly stated that a "bloodbath" occurred in South Vietnam after the US withdrew in March 1973 [16]. Left without US protection, they say, hundreds of thousands of innocent South Vietnamese were massacred without mercy as the Communists from the North descended upon South Vietnam. But there is little historical basis for these claims. While the North Vietnamese government was no shining example of democracy, it did not engage in the mass and systematic slaughter that characterized the US presence in South Vietnam. This myth has been created and promoted by the Right to defend the occupation of Iraq, but some outspoken critics of the war such as Ron Paul have also picked up on it [17].

The example of the "surge" is but one example of the press's systematic unwillingness to provide readers with relevant information on the war. At least equally successful have been the propaganda efforts aimed at concealing the number of Iraqis who have died as a result of the US invasion. Extremely conservative estimates of the Iraqi death toll range between 84,000 and 200,000, with more realistic figures estimating well over one million total "excess deaths" since the invasion began [18]. Most US citizens, in contrast, are not even aware of the more conservative estimates of the UN, World Health Organization, and other official sources. In a February 2007 poll, seven months after a ground-level survey in Iraq had estimated 655,000 Iraqi deaths, respondents in a US poll stated on average that less than 10,000 Iraqis had died. This estimate is far below even George W. Bush's "estimate" of 30,000 in fall 2006 [19]. One likely reason is that although the researchers and methodology behind the 2006 study received widespread praise from scientists and medical researchers around the world the study was roundly ignored or dismissed by US politicians and the mainstream press. As Table 2 shows, US citizens on average have underestimated the Iraqi death toll by over 98 percent. This percentage is perhaps indicative of the public's general knowledge of the occupation: Americans are aware of less than 2 percent of Iraqi reality.  

Table 2: Scientific vs. US Citizens' Estimates of Iraqi Death Toll

The propaganda has proven at least somewhat successful for other aspects of the war as well. When asked in a March 2008 poll—that is, just a few months ago—whether "Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks," almost a third (28 percent) of respondents still answered an unequivocal "yes," with an additional 14 percent saying they were "unsure" [21]. In other words, 42 percent of the US public is still influenced by a government-propagated lie that has never held any credibility among intelligence and academic experts, and which has been decisively refuted many times over the past six years (though seldom in the mass media or by prominent politicians). Like other propaganda, the perpetuation of such lies has been necessary because US citizens' basic values and attitudes have historically inclined them to be rather cautious about war (and increasingly so since the Vietnam era).  

Propaganda's Limits

In light of these remarkable achievements of wartime propaganda, the fact that a strong majority of people in the United States still wants their government to withdraw from Iraq in the near future—and that at least half morally condemn the ongoing occupation—is somewhat surprising; we can only wonder what the polls would say if respondents knew more about Iraq, and what those people might do to protest if they knew certain basic facts. What the polls and election results noted in the opening paragraphs of this essay suggest is that while government and media propaganda have been relatively successful in limiting people's access to information, the propaganda has been notably unsuccessful in changing people's fundamental values. Despite the pervasive disinformation, people in this country still believe that imperialism is wrong, that sharp societal inequalities are unjust, and that satisfying human needs for food, shelter, education, and health care should take priority over maintaining a massive military and waging war overseas. That is the good news: the core values of the US public, which persist despite relentless propaganda, mean that organizing and educational campaigns hold enormous potential.

The key question for organizers, of course, is how to translate the public's values into political action. This task must confront several obstacles: the limited time and energy that the portions of the US public most affected by the war have to devote to self-education and activism; the unrealistic assumption of many progressives and liberals that an Obama presidency will bring an end to the war and to imperialism in general; and deeply-ingrained values like reverence for the "law" and for the government in general which exist alongside and in an often-contradictory relationship with the public's other values of compassion, indignation over injustice, and desire for peace. Most of all, people's belief that their own opinions and actions have no effect on policymakers—a feeling that has understandably intensified in recent years—must be overcome. The first step in this process of empowerment, perhaps, is simply showing them that they are far from alone in their fundamental values and convictions.

Notes:

[1] On these elections see Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present (New York: HarperPerennial Modern Classics, 2003 [1980]), 361; Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 115, 233-34, 262, 266, 269, 273-74, 278. See also the letter by Howard Zinn, "People's History: No to War," The Nation (21 June 2004), available from http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040621/letter.

[2] See "Gallup's Pulse of Democracy: The War in Iraq," at http://www.gallup.com/poll/1633/Iraq.aspx, and the various polls summarized at http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm.

[3] Based on two separate polls conducted by CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation, the first from 22-24 June 2007 in which 54 percent of respondents said that US actions in Iraq are "not morally justified," and the second from 16-18 March 2008, in which 52 percent said the same. See http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm. It should be noted that the vast majority of Western-run polls do not ask respondents to make moral judgments, instead asking whether respondents think the war is a "mistake."

[4] Program on International Policy Attitudes, "Opportunities for Bipartisan Consensus—2007: What Both Republicans and Democrats Want in US Foreign Policy," January 2007. Available at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/jan07/Bipartisan_Jan07_rpt.pdf. On the federal budget and military expenditures, see the War Resisters' League "Federal Pie Chart" at http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm.

[5] See the analysis of recent polls done by WorldPublicOpinion.org, "Americans Strongly Support UN in Principle, Despite Reservations about Performance," 9 May 2007. Available at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/356.php?nid=&id=&pnt=356&lb=brusc.

[6] Among the vast body of evidence, see the polls—most conducted by mainstream news and polling agencies—compiled in the report by Media Matters for America, "The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America Is a Myth," June 2007, available at http://mediamatters.org/progmaj/?f=h_top. On health care see the 2007 poll reported in Sharon Smith, "Behind the Rhetoric: Health Care and the Democrats," Counterpunch (online), 19 July 2007, available from http://www.counterpunch.org/sharon07192007.html, and Robin Toner and Janet Elder, "Most Support U.S. Guarantee of Health Care," New York Times, 2 March 2007. On public opposition to military intervention in general see Program on International Policy Attitudes, "U.S. Public Rejects Using Military Force to Promote Democracy," 29 September 2005. Available at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/77.php?nid=&id=&pnt=77.

[7] On the specific instances mentioned above plus many others, see Zinn, A People's History, 297-501.

[8] Poll conducted in Iraq from February 12-20, 2008, by D3 Systems of Vienna, VA, and KA Research Ltd., for ABC News, the BBC, ARD and NHK, "Iraq Poll March 2008," 13-14, 17. Available from http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/poll/2008/0308opinion.pdf.

[9] For a brief summary of earlier polls see Kevin Young, "Iraqi Public Opinion: The US Occupation in Slogan and in Fact," ZNet (online), 9 January 2008. Available from http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16156.

[10] Gallup/USA Today poll conducted from November 30-December 2, 2007, reported in Lydia Saad, "U.S. Troop Surge in Iraq Receives a Bit More Credit," Gallup website, 5 December 2007. Available from http://www.gallup.com/poll/103057/US-Troop-Surge-Iraq-Receives-Bit-More-Credit.aspx.  

[11] The questions asked in the two polls differed slightly: whereas US respondents were asked specifically about the effects of the "surge," Iraqis were not asked about the overall effects of the surge in a single question (rather, this question was broken into several more specific questions). In the right-hand column I have therefore used Iraqis' responses when asked about the effects of the US presence more generally. However, the percentages of Iraqis stating that the surge is "making things worse" or "having no effect" is roughly similar to the percentages who gave those same responses when asked about the overall effects of the US presence.

[12] Quoted in Saad, "U.S. Troop Surge in Iraq Receives a Bit More Credit."

[13] "The Road Home," NYT, 8 July 2007.

[14] Cruickshank, "Why Obama is Repeating Bush's Foreign Policy Mistake," New Republic (online), 2 Aug. 2007. Available from http://www.lawandsecurity.org/get_article/?id=76.

[15] Signposting the Exit." Obviously the claim that "no one is arguing for an immediate pull-out" was and remains blatantly false. See David Cromwell, "Immediate Withdrawal," ZNet/Medialens (online), 24 Sept. 2005.

[16] William Blum, "First Pullout, Then Bloodbath: Rightwing Nuts Say It Happened in Vietnam," Counterpunch (online), 13 Aug. 2007. Available from http://www.counterpunch.org/blum08132007.html.

[17] For Paul's comment about the alleged "surge upward in violence" after the US withdrawal from Vietnam, see Scot Lehigh, "The Quirky Candidate," Boston Globe, 14 Nov. 2007.

[18] The figure of 84,328-94,004 was listed on the Iraq Body Count website as of 6 June 2008, http://www.iraqbodycount.org. IBC estimates are admittedly low on two counts: they count only those deaths that are officially reported and registered in morgues and news agencies, and they count only those deaths verified to have been of "civilians." A January 2008 report estimated 151,000 violent deaths up to June 2006: Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group, "Violence-Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002 to 2006," New England Journal of Medicine 358, no. 5 (31 January 2008): 484-493. Available from http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMsa0707782. An October 2006 report by Johns Hopkins researchers estimated around 655,000 "excess deaths" up to July 2006: Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts, "Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey," The Lancet (online) 368 (21 Oct. 2006), 1, 6. Available from http://web.mit.edu/cis/lancet-study-101106.pdf. For an estimate of one million total Iraqi deaths based on a September 2007 poll in Iraq, see Opinion Research Business, "September 2007—More Than 1,000,000 Iraqis Murdered," September 2007. Available at http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78. The group Just Foreign Policy extrapolates from the October 2006 estimate of 655,000 using the subsequent death rate recorded on the IBC site, reporting over 1.2 million Iraqi deaths as of spring 2008. See http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/counterexplanation.html.  

[19] For the 2006 study see Burnham, et al., "Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq." For the February 2007 poll see Nancy Benac, "Poll: Americans Underestimate Iraqi Death Toll," USA Today (online), 24 February 2007. Based on an AP/Ipsos poll, available from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-24-iraqi-deaths-poll_x.htm?csp=24; for Bush's dismissal of the Johns Hopkins study and his own personal estimate of 30,000, see Peter Baker, "Bush Estimates Iraqi Death Toll in War at 30,000," Washington Post, 12 Dec. 2005.

[20] For a sampling of such praise, see Stephen Fidler, "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: How War Casualty Estimates Stir Emotions," Financial Times, 19 Nov. 2004, quoted in Medialens, "Burying the Lancet—Part 2" (online), 6 Sept. 2005. Available at http://www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050906_burying_the_lancet_part2.php; Iraq Analysis Group, "Reactions to the Study: What Have Scientific Experts Said About the Study?" Available from http://www.iraqanalysis.org/mortality/441#faq1628; Owen Bennett-Jones, "Iraqi Deaths Survey ‘Was Robust,'" BBC News (online), 26 Mar. 2007. Available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6495753.stm.

[21] CBS News poll, 15-18 March 2008. Available from http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm.