[Mb-civic] Fake Optimism

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

This short article addresses the PBS interview with Richard Meyers that I 
mentioned in my last email....

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0713-20.htm 

Published on Wednesday, July 13, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Fake Optimism of Washington's Warriors
by Norman Solomon
 
In front of TV cameras, Pentagon officials do their best to make war 
sound wise and noble. Most of all, they lie.

Sometimes they do it with bold assertions, other times with 
intentionally tangled syntax. But those who give the orders that consign 
young soldiers to participation in horror must assure the folks back 
home that all the carnage is under control. The officials strive to project 
an aura of calm about the unspeakable; they mumble cliches about 
grief that cannot touch it.

For the most powerful war-makers in Washington, the most dangerous 
potential enemies are the citizens of the United States who might insist 
on an end to taxpayer subsidies for mass slaughter. To forestall such a 
calamity, officials proclaim endlessly that the war's worst days have 
passed and the future looks increasingly bright for the ravaged land 
and for the freedom-loving invaders whose invasion has ravaged it.

And so, on Tuesday night, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 
glibly responded to questions from Jim Lehrer on the PBS 
"NewsHour." And while the historic disrepute of the phrase "light at the 
end of the tunnel" precluded using it in the interview, Gen. Richard 
Myers was close to chirpy. Along the way, he tried to make the war in 
Iraq sound like an uplifting exercise in civic engagement, inevitably 
headed toward triumph.

The general was tap dancing in the footsteps of many who came 
before him -- during another long war based on deception and the 
assumption that the USA must keep killing in order to be credible on 
the world stage. When Defense Secretary Robert McNamara visited 
Vietnam for the first time, he came back and told the press that he'd 
seen "nothing but progress and hopeful indications of further progress 
in the future." McNamara made that statement in May 1962.

More than four years later, in October 1966, McNamara held a news 
conference at Andrews Air Force Base after returning from a trip to 
Vietnam. Again he spoke with enthusiasm about the progress he'd 
seen there. But former Pentagon aide Daniel Ellsberg has recounted 
that McNamara made that presentation to the press "minutes after 
telling me that everything was much worse than the year before."

Of course the commander in chief is not to be outdone. He is, among 
his other duties, the commander of war lies. And so, as with George 
W. Bush today, Lyndon Johnson professed to be grandly optimistic 
when he proclaimed in early 1967: "Peace is more within our reach 
than at any time in this century."

Fifteen months ago, at a turning point when resistance to the 
occupation erupted with fury in a number of Iraqi cities, the response 
from American officials was to put happy-face stickers on the carnage. 
"We have isolated pockets where we are encountering problems," said 
Dan Senor, a spokesperson for the top U.S. manipulator in Iraq, Paul 
Bremer. A week later, on April 13, 2004, President Bush declared: "It's 
not a popular uprising. Most of Iraq is relatively stable."

These kinds of statements may seem like mere pep talks or, in 
retrospect, miscalculations. But they're integral to the war-making 
process -- continually speaking of light that's just over the horizon, 
while corpses pile up in grisly shadows alongside the lies that keep a 
war going on top of the lies that got it started.

On Tuesday night, host Jim Lehrer asked Gen. Myers: "Do you 
consider Iraq a success from your point of view?" The general replied: 
"I do now, I do. I mean I don't know why I said now. I do, absolutely; I 
think it's a success." A couple of minutes later he was exuding 
confidence about the future: "It's going to be a difficult fight, but we're 
going to be successful in this fight."

Washington's warriors insist that Iraq is not Vietnam. Any geographer 
would certainly agree. But imperial wars share similar characteristics -- 
including the profound fact that the people who live in a country are 
more committed to it than the invaders are. This war can't be won for 
reasons that have everything to do with why it's wrong. The occupiers 
are on the lowest moral ground. No amount of fake optimism in 
Washington can change such realities in Iraq.

This article is adapted from Norman Solomon's new book "War Made 
Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." For 
book excerpts and recent interviews, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com

###
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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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