Page 93 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

The Media 's War 83

Arab world.'"7 CBS Evening News ran the headline "Fallen Heroes," in honor of
American servicemen and women killed in Iraq, reinforcing the perception that
those who serve are committed to furthering democracy and fighting tyranny.38
Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek reminded readers who might have started to ques-
tion the worth of the war of the long-term goal of "establish[ing] democracy in
Iraq as a way of breaking the tyrannical status quo in the Middle East that has
bred repression and terror."39
Iraqi resistance to the U.S., conversely, was marginalized in order to assist
American forces in retaining legitimacy in the eyes of the American public. Na-
tionalistic pressures in general were also likely to have played a large part in
explaining why many Americans supported the U.S. occupation. The practice of
falling in line in support of government does not apply only to media outlets; it
applies to the American people as well.
Pro-war framing in early and later stages of the occupation focused on the
necessity of crushing resistance cells and organizations so as to enhance the effi-
ciency of the military occupation. On CNN, Lou Dobbs criticized the lack of
success in destroying guerilla forces, asserting: "This insurgency is growing.
Therefore it's successful. What in the world can this country do now, and what
is it going to do to deal with that?. . . at what point does the U.S. get
Dobbs added: "We should, it seems to me, as the dominant world military
power, prevail in any contest, particularly against a Third World insurgency."41
The media preoccupation with military superiority and "pacification" neglected
many of the underlying reasons for the growth of the "insurgency"-most im-
portantly increasing Iraqi anger at the U.S. presence in Iraq. This anger, while
reported occasionally in public opinion polls, was not presented coherently so as
to explain why the U.S. was beginning to face greater resistance in Iraq. As a
result, the question was not asked: is it the escalation of the "pacification" cam-
paign that may be responsible for the increase in attacks and the growing popu-
larity of resistance groups opposing the U.S.?
The primary emphasis of news reporting focused on how to gauge the "pro-
gress against the insurgency," as the New York Times accurately depicted the
mass media's and military's 0bjectives.4~ Progress--or the lack of progress-
was increasingly measured by the number of attacks on American troops, the
number of Americans dead, the success in imposing an interim government and
in facilitating elections, the cost of the war, and in terms of victories in gaining
military control over key regions of the country such as Falluja and Samarra,
where major coalition attacks against guerilla groups took place. On the con-
trary, progress was not typically defined by attempts to end the war and promote
withdrawal prior to the 2007 Congressional turn against the war. The Washing-
ton Post instead editorialized: Bush is "right not to be stampeded by losses or
the growing unpopularity of the war into aborting the Iraqi mission or setting an
arbitrary timetable for ~ithdrawal."~ More important, according to the Los An-
geles Times, was the psychological campaign aimed at the people of Iraq fo-
cused on "maintaining moral superiority" on the part of the U.S. "by stressing
that the fighting was the insurgents' fault," rather than coalition f0rces.4~ It is
under this mindset that the psyche of the Bush administration and the main-