[Peace-discuss] What we can expect

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Norman Solomon has written what seems to me to be some of the
best comments on this war.  --CGE]

    Blaming Antiwar Messengers
    by Norman Solomon; August 17, 2005

        The surge of antiwar voices in U.S. media this month
has coincided with new lows in public approval for what
pollsters call President Bush’s “handling” of the Iraq war.
After more than two years of a military occupation that was
supposed to be a breeze after a cakewalk into Baghdad, the war
has become a clear PR loser. But an unpopular war can continue
for a long time -- and one big reason is that the
military-industrial-media complex often finds ways to blunt
the effectiveness of its most prominent opponents.

        Right now, the pro-war propaganda arsenal of the
world’s only superpower is drawing a bead on Cindy Sheehan,
who now symbolizes the USA’s antiwar grief. She is a moving
target, very difficult to hit.
        But right-wing media sharpshooters are sure to keep
trying.

        The Bush administration’s top officials must be
counting the days until the end of the presidential vacation
brings to a close the Crawford standoff between Camp Casey and
Camp Carnage. But media assaults on Cindy Sheehan are just in
early stages.

        While the president mouths respectful platitudes about
the grieving mother, his henchmen are sharpening their media
knives and starting to slash. Pro-Bush media hit squads are
busily spreading the notions that Sheehan is a dupe of
radicals, naive and/or nutty. But the most promising avenue of
attack is likely to be the one sketched out by Fox News
Channel eminence Bill O’Reilly on Aug. 9, when he declared
that Cindy Sheehan bears some responsibility for “other
American families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq who
feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.”

        That sort of demagoguery is on tap for the duration of
the war.
        Military families will be recruited for media
appearances to dispute the patriotism of antiwar activists --
especially those who speak as relatives of American soldiers
and shatter media stereotypes by publicly urging withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Iraq.

        So far, during this war, President Bush is leaving the
defamation chores to his surrogate media fighters. But loud
noises coming from the right wing today are echoes of key
themes that other presidents eagerly voiced.

        During the mid-1960s, as President Lyndon Johnson
escalated the Vietnam War, he grew accustomed to trashing
Americans who expressed opposition. They were prone to be
shaky and irresolute, he explained -- and might even betray
the nation’s servicemen. “There will be some Nervous Nellies,”
he predicted on May 17, 1966, “and some who will become
frustrated and bothered and break ranks under the strain. And
some will turn on their leaders and on their country and on
our fighting men.”

        Delivering a speech in mid-March 1968, President
Johnson contended that as long as the foe in Vietnam “feels
that he can win something by propaganda in the country -- that
he can undermine the leadership -- that he can bring down the
government -- that he can get something in the Capital that he
can’t get from our men out there -- he is going to keep on
trying.”

        LBJ’s successor Richard Nixon was quick to brandish
similar innuendos. “Let us be united for peace,” Nixon said
early in his presidency. “Let us be united against defeat.
Because let us
        understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate
the United States. Only Americans can do that.”

        Martin Luther King Jr. found that former allies could
become incensed when he went out of his way to challenge the
war. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s
Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, King called the United
States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, he said, the
U.S. was “on the wrong side of a world revolution.” King asked
why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions “of the shirtless and
barefoot people” in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

        That kind of talk drew barbs and denunciations from
media quarters that had applauded his efforts to end racial
segregation. Time magazine called the speech “demagogic
slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The
Washington Post warned that “King has diminished his
usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

        When the Gulf War began, snappy phrases like “blame
America first” were a popular way to vilify dissenters. “What
we cannot be proud of, Mr. Speaker, is the unshaven,
shaggy-haired, drug culture, poor excuses for Americans,
wearing their tiny, round wire-rim glasses, a protester’s
symbol of the blame-America-first crowd, out in front of the
White House burning the American flag,” Representative Gerald
B. H. Solomon said on Jan. 17, 1991.

        During a typical outburst in early 2003 before the
Iraq invasion, Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience: “I want
to say something about these antiwar demonstrators. No, let’s
not mince words, let’s call them what they are --
anti-American demonstrators.” Weeks later, former Congressman
Joe Scarborough, a Republican rising through the ranks of
national TV hosts, said on MSNBC: “These leftist stooges for
anti-American causes are always given a free pass. Isn’t it
time to make them stand up and be counted for their views,
which could hurt American troop morale?”

        Such poisonous sludge is now pouring out of some mass
media -- and we should expect plenty more in response to a
growing antiwar movement.

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