Page 177 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

A World of Orwellian Doublethink 167

superpower, its leaders hating war, yet spending over $400 billion dollars a year
on the military, and retaining American military personnel in 80 percent of the
countries throughout the world, and 725 bases in thirty-eight countries (as of
2004), is prevalent in the establishment press and elite intellectual ~ulture.3~
The "war is peace" doctrine has been repeatedly invoked in order to con-
struct the myth of a "peaceful" nation that is forced into war. At the time of the
invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Newsweek ran the headline: "How to Win the
in an Orwellian attempt to portray American militarism and violence
as peaceful endeavors. The use of the "war equals peace" doublethink approach
reappeared in a report from James Cox of USA Today, entitled, "War Machine
under Pressure to Produce Peace and ~ecurity."~~
Numerous other examples follow those given above. In one such incident,
Zidan Khalaf of the Associated Press described the attempts by the American
army to acify Iraqi guerilla groups as part of "the U.S. strategy to restore peace
5'
in Iraq." The Associated Press did not consider this "peace strategy" as en-
compassing U.S. responsibility for the deaths of tens of thousands-and poten-
tially over a hundred thousand-Iraqi men, women, and children, as has been
suggested by a recent study printed in the British Lancet medical journal. The
preoccupation with escalating the violence in the "counterinsurgency" campaign
(at the expense of rebuilding Iraq's shattered infrastructure) was not a primary
consideration when the Associated Press elaborated upon U.S. efforts to "restore
peace" to Iraq. A similar pattern persevered throughout the bombing of Falluja
in November, 2004--In which an estimated between 60 and 70 percent of the
houses and buildings in Falluja were destroyed:' and during the Iraqi elections
of January 2005. CBS News portrayed "the battle of Falluja" as "a turning point
in the struggle by the United States and the Interim Iraqi Government of Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi to consolidate the country and hold peaceful elections"
[emphasis added]
The goal of "bringing peace" to Iraq was not considered compromised by
the widespread destruction visited upon Falluja and other major cities by the
U.S. In the Orwellian tradition, major papers like the New York Times and the
Los Angeles Times attempted to compensate for U.S. responsibility for the de-
struction of Falluja and the collapse of social order throughout Iraq, with such
headlines as "After Leveling City, U.S. Tries to Build Trust" and "In City's Ru-
ins, Military Faces New Mission: Building rust."^^ In "building trust" amongst
those from the city it had just destroyed, the U.S. was said to be concerned with
"maintaining moral superiority in the minds of the populace by stressing that the
fighting was the insurgents' fault," rather than the fault of the u.s.~' Such pro-
war propaganda demonstrated the lengths to which the American media's Or-
wellian language had reached. By focusing on the "hearts and minds" campaign
of Marines in Falluja to woo residents and "build trust,'*' after dispossessing
hundreds of thousands of people, papers like the Los Angeles Times displayed a
masterful stroke of doublethink propaganda, effectively exonerating the U.S. as
the party responsible for destroying the city.
This pattern of Orwellian doublethink continued in the post-2005 election
period. The Washington Post's editorials prescribed that "the new government