Propaganda, Fascism and the coming war with Iran

I claim no great prescience or brilliance. I was just paying attention, reading and searching for information, using a little historical knowledge and reasoning ability. Stephen Hadley continues to say that the term "civil war" does not apply; of course not: the word is clusterfuck -- unexpurgated. And those of us who were paying attention predicted this.

Now the long-planned hit on Iran is coming. Maybe I will be wrong. There is always a possibility of the Democrats or military leaders stopping the Bush administration. There is even the possibility that they have not been planning on attacking Iran next all along.

The coming months will also put a couple of terms to the test -- for me. I tend to try to avoid using the words propaganda and fascism because I think people have trouble taking them seriously. But the value of words is when they describe reality. So, leaving aside the question of whether it has already been proven that Fox News, for example, is a propaganda outfit and the Bush administration is moving toward (or has embraced) fascism -- using the rigorous definitions of the terms -- I would like to watch (at a distance) the performance of Fox News and the Bush Administration to see how they conform to predictions arising from the strict social scientific and political definitions of propaganda and fascism.

One of the things about history is that we historians don't deal with the future. Unlike true social scientists, our models cannot be tested for their predictive value -- except retroactively, which has its value but .... But we can use analytical terms that have arisen to describe social and historical reality and note tendencies, deriving "lessons learned." That it why I find it useful to compare the Iraq situation to past experiences. The trick is figuring out which stories give us lessons and why. You gotta be flexible, not doctrinaire.

I am not actually trying to do that here; I am not trying to ascertain, for example, whether we are "repeating" the experience of Germany in the 1930s. I am simply laying out my prediction that we will see a textbook propaganda campaign -- but not necessarily one that has made it into the textbooks; expect something different than the run-up to the Iraq War; there will be no presentation to the UN, no attempt to get them to sign on, no attempt really to persuade the American public; an event will transpire that will provide the pretext for action and the President will present it to us as a fait accompli. "We have always been at war with Iran." Of course, this has already begun, and it is not only Fox and their accomplices. As Bob Somerby, Media Matters, Greg Sargeant (google 'em; I'm too lazy to link) and others demonstrate daily, they have plenty of help from the rest of the press playing their roles perfectly.

Similarly, with "creeping fascism." I have a great deal of hope that the Democrats will fight the worst of it. But clearly the party has not caught up to the rest of the American people. I am kinda with Steve Gilliard, who predicts a sudden and early departure for both Bush and Cheney. I would not lay money on it, but I do think something will come out in the trials and investigations that will very quickly tip the scales; Cheney will go, replaced by (no prediction); Bush not long after when the next revelation reveals itself.

This makes the need for more war soon all the more urgent for Bush and Cheney.

"In the past, even presidents were not above the law."

the quaint, good ole days...

January 31, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

Bush Is Not Above the Law

By JAMES BAMFORD

Washington

LAST August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney’s office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought.

But under the Bush Justice Department, no F.B.I. agents were ever dispatched to padlock White House files or knock on doors and no federal prosecutors ever opened a case.

[...]

“Because I told them it had to."

From Think Progress:

“He’s tried this two times — it’s failed twice,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says of President Bush’s escalation plan.

“I asked him at the White House, ‘Mr. President, why do you think this time it’s going to work?’

And he said, ‘Because I told them it had to.‘”

Pelosi reportedly then asked, “Why didn’t you tell them that the other two times?“

What TR said

Glenn Greenwald has a great discussion of the authoritarian Bush cultists and the Federalist Papers that deal with Congress and the military.

He also highlights this quote that Teddy Roosevelt wrote in an editorial for the "Kansas City Star" during World War I.

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

"Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149
May 7, 1918