The Conventional
Media Wisdom Of Obedience
by
Norman Solomon
Dissident Voice
March 13, 2003
As
the possibility of a U.S. invasion turns into the reality of massive carnage,
the war on Iraq cannot avoid confronting Americans with a tacit expectation
that rarely gets media scrutiny. In a word: obedience.
When a country --
particularly "a democracy" -- goes to war, the passive consent of the
governed lubricates the machinery of slaughter. Silence is a key form of
cooperation, but the war-making system does not insist on quietude or
agreement. Mere passivity or self-restraint will suffice to keep the missiles
flying, the bombs exploding and the faraway people dying.
On the home front, beliefs
are of scant importance. Antiwar sentiment is necessary but insufficient to
halt a war. Much more is needed than expressions of dissent that stay within
the customary bounds.
Daily media speculation
about the starting date for all-out war on Iraq has contributed to widespread passivity
-- a kind of spectator relationship to military actions being implemented in
our names.
We can't just blame the
media conglomerates and Washington spinners for the prevailing stupor. After
decades of desensitizing propaganda, we routinely crave the insulation that
news outlets offer. We tell ourselves that our personal lives are difficult
enough without getting too upset about world events.
The conventional wisdom of
American political life has made it predictable that editorial writers and
politicians cannot resist accommodating themselves to expediency by the time
the first missiles reach Baghdad. Conformist behavior -- in sharp contrast to
authentic conscience -- is notably plastic.
A pathetic case in point is
Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who voted for the congressional war
resolution last October while trying to pass himself off as a critic of
President Bush's enthusiasm for war. While campaigning in Iowa recently for his
party's presidential nomination, Kerry told a New York Times reporter:
"When the war begins, if the war begins, I support the troops and I
support the United States of America winning as rapidly as possible. When the
troops are in the field and fighting -- if they're in the field and fighting --
remembering what it's like to be those troops, I think they need a unified
America that is prepared to win."
Prepared to win. Such a
phrase rolls off an oily tongue with ease. As a consequence, of course, many
blameless people must die.
Howard Dean, a former
governor of Vermont, is supposedly an antiwar candidate for the Democratic
presidential slot. On the campaign trail in Iowa, he "stopped short when
asked what he would say if there was a war," according to the Times.
"You know, I don't know
the answer to that yet," Dean said. "Certainly I'm going to support
American kids that are sent over there. Obviously, I'm going to wish everybody
well. You know, you root for your country."
You root for your country.
No matter how horrific its actions.
Billions of buds on
countless flowers and trees will wondrously open across the United States
during the next weeks. Meanwhile, the Pentagon's firepower will destroy uncounted
human beings in Iraq during what will be, to put it mildly, a war of
aggression.
Judgments at Nuremberg and
precepts of international law forbid launching aggressive war -- an apt
description of what the U.S. government has in store for Iraqi people this
spring.
"We must make clear to
the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not
that they lost the war, but that they started it," said Supreme Court Justice
Robert L. Jackson, a U.S. representative to the International Conference on
Military Trials at the close of World War II. He added that "no grievances
or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and
condemned as an instrument of policy."
Last November, more than 300
law professors in the United States signed a statement pointing out that
"the international rule of law is not a soft luxury to be discarded
whenever leaders find it convenient or popular to resort to savage
violence."
The deadening lockstep of
obedience is easier to fault in other societies. Close to home, as the adrenaline
of unfathomable violence pulses through the televisions of America, the siren
of deference to authority may seem irresistible. But it isn't.
Norman Solomon is Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy (www.accuracy.org) and a syndicated columnist. His latest book is Target Iraq:
What the News Media Didn’t Tell You (Context Books, 2003) with Reese
Erlich. Email: mediabeat@igc.org
* For the transcript of Solomon's March 11 appearance
on CNN discussing U.S. plans for war on Iraq, go to: www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/11/sdi.04.html
* Background link: www.lcnp.org/global/IraqLetter.htm