[Mb-civic] Brand USA is in trouble, so take a lesson from Big Mac

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5147118-103677,00.html

Guardian     Monday March 14, 2005

Brand USA is in trouble, so take a lesson from Big Mac

Instead of changing his foreign policy, President Bush is changing the
story


By Naomi Klein

Last Tuesday, George Bush delivered a major address on his plan to fight
terrorism with democracy in the Arab world. On the same day, McDonald's
launched a massive advertising campaign urging Americans to fight obesity
by eating healthily and exercising. Any similarities between McDonald's
"Go Active! American Challenge" and Bush's "Go Democratic! Arabian
Challenge" are purely coincidental.

Sure, there is a certain irony in being urged to get off the couch by the
company that popularised the "drive-thru", helpfully allowing customers to
consume a bagged heart attack without having to get out of the car and
walk to the counter. And there is a similar irony to Bush urging the
people of the Middle East to remove "the mask of fear" because "fear is
the foundation of every dictatorial regime", when that fear is the direct
result of US decisions to install and arm the regimes that have
systematically terrorised for decades. But since both campaigns are
exercises in rebranding, that means facts are besides the point.

The Bush administration has long been enamoured of the idea that it can
solve complex policy challenges by borrowing cutting-edge communications
tools from its heroes in the corporate world. The Irish rock star Bono has
recently been winning unlikely fans in the White House by framing world
poverty as an opportunity for US politicians to become better marketers.
"Brand USA is in trouble ... it's a problem for business," Bono warned at
the World Economic Forum in Davos. The solution is "to redescribe
ourselves to a world that is unsure of our values".

The Bush administration wholeheartedly agrees, as evidenced by the orgy of
redescription that now passes for American foreign policy. Faced with an
Arab world enraged by the US occupation of Iraq and its blind support for
Israel, the solution is not to change these brutal policies: it is to
"change the story".

Brand USA's latest story was launched on January 30, the day of the Iraqi
elections, complete with a catchy tag line ("purple power"), instantly
iconic imagery (purple fingers) and, of course, a new narrative about
America's role in the world, helpfully told and retold by the White
House's unofficial brand manager, the New York Times columnist Thomas
Friedman. "Iraq has been reframed from a story about Iraqi 'insurgents'
trying to liberate their country from American occupiers and their Iraqi
'stooges' to a story of the overwhelming Iraqi majority trying to build a
democracy, with US help, against the wishes of Iraqi Ba'athist fascists
and jihadists."

This new story is so contagious, we are told, that it has set off a domino
effect akin to the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of communism.
(Although in the "Arabian spring" the only wall in sight - Israel's
apartheid wall - pointedly stays up.) As with all branding campaigns, the
power is in the repetition, not in the details. Obvious non sequiturs (is
Bush taking credit for Arafat's death?) and screeching hypocrisies
(occupiers against occupation!) just mean it's time to tell the story
again, only louder and more slowly, obnoxious-tourist style. Even so, with
Bush now claiming that "Iran and other nations have an example in Iraq",
it seems worth focusing on the reality of the Iraqi example.

The state of emergency was just renewed for its fifth month and Human
Rights Watch reports that torture is "systematic" in Iraqi jails. The
Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena's double nightmare provides a window
into the pincer of terror in which average Iraqis are trapped: daily life
is a navigation between the fear of being kidnapped or killed by fellow
Iraqis and the fear of being gunned down at a US checkpoint.

Meanwhile, the ongoing wrangling over who will form Iraq's next
government, despite the United Iraqi Alliance being the clear winner,
points to an electoral system designed by Washington that is less than
democratic. Terrified at the prospect of an Iraq ruled by the majority of
Iraqis, the former chief US envoy, Paul Bremer, wrote election rules that
gave the US-friendly Kurds 27% of the seats in the national assembly, even
though they make up just 15% of the population.

Skewing matters further, the US-authored interim constitution requires
that all major decisions have the support of two-thirds or, in some cases,
three-quarters of the assembly - an absurdly high figure that gives the
Kurds the power to block any call for foreign troop withdrawal, any
attempt to roll back Bremer's economic orders, and any part of a new
constitution.

Iraqi Kurds have a legitimate claim to independence, as well as very real
fears of being ethnically targeted. But through its alliance with the
Kurds, the Bush administration has effectively given itself a veto over
Iraq's democracy - and it appears to be using it to secure a contingency
plan should Iraqis demand an end to occupation.

Talks to form a government are stalled over the Kurdish demand for control
over Kirkuk. If they get it, Kirkuk's huge oil fields would fall under
Kurdish control. That means that if foreign troops are kicked out of Iraq,
Iraqi Kurdistan can be broken off and Washington will still end up with a
dependent, oil-rich regime - even if it's smaller than the one originally
envisioned by the war's architects.

Meanwhile, Bush's freedom triumphalism glossed over the fact that, in the
two years since the invasion, the power of political Islam has increased
exponentially, while Iraq's deep secular traditions have been greatly
eroded. In part, this has to do with the deadly decision to "embed"
secularism and women's rights in the military invasion. Whenever Bremer
needed a good-news hit, he had his picture taken at a newly opened women's
centre, handily equating feminism with the hated occupation. (The women's
centres are now mostly closed, and hundreds of Iraqis who worked with the
coalition in local councils have been executed.) But the problem for
secularism is not just guilt by association. It's also that the Bush
definition of liberation robs democratic forces of their most potent
tools.


The only idea that has ever stood up to kings, tyrants and mullahs in the
Middle East is the promise of economic justice, brought about through
nationalist and socialist policies of agrarian reform and state control
over oil. But there is no room for such ideas in the Bush narrative, in
which free people are only free to choose so-called free trade. That
leaves democrats with little to offer, but empty talk of "human rights" -
a weedy weapon against the powerful swords of ethnic glory and eternal
salvation.

But we shouldn't be surprised that the Bush administration, despite
telling stories about its commitment to freedom, continues to actively
sabotage democracy in the very countries it claims to have liberated.
Rumour has it McDonald's also continues to serve Big Macs.

***


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