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WAGING PEACE IN THE AGE OF MEDIA WAR: My Ongoing Conversation With Capt. Paul Chappell, U.S. Army
This entry was posted on 2/27/2009 1:50 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
Last week I did a post entitled, "YOU MAY BE SURPRISED: A Marine Mom and Army Officer Discuss How War Can End."
You can find the post at Huffington Post, TPM Cafe, and my own Blue Inkblots.
This is the second post in a series, based on a conversation I had with Capt. Paul Chappell, whose groundbreaking book, "WILL WAR EVER END? A Soldier's Vision of Peace for the 21st Century," is just out.
Capt. Chappell, who is active-duty and soon to deploy back to the Middle East, is donating all royalties--and the publisher all its profits--to various veteran's groups. The book is slim--less than 85 pages, fascinating and easy to read, and at the price of $9.99, affordable. You can find it at the Amazon.com link above, or on Capt. Chappell's website
In our first segment, we discussed how to handle friends, relatives--or blog commenters, for that matter--who tend to glorify war, particularly if they, themselves have never, ahem, been shot at.
We also touched lightly on my second question to Capt. Chappell--What do we do about an enabling media that often acts, in effect, like a propaganda arm of the government?
Not only do they encourage the glorification of war, through snazzy graphics, action-shot B-roll, war-hero narratives, and other patriotic images, but they also provide platforms to government spokespersons who may or may not be in the pay of defense contractors even as they present themselves as unbiased "experts." (Network and cable news programming directors seem particularly enamored of retired generals.)
Add to this volitile mix the subtle and not-so-subtle implication of peace activists and skeptical war-doubters as being somehow unpatriotic, and the top-heavy loading of "expert" commentary of war proponents to war opponents (four to one in some networks' coverage in the lead-up to the war in Iraq)--and layer it all with a whipped-cream topping of loudmouth I-have-my-own-show-and-nobody-can-dispute-my-word media matinee stars, and that leaves precious little room for persuading the public NOT to go to war.
Depressing, to say the least.
In Capt. Chappell's response to me, he pointed out that war-news reporting has actually improved somewhat since the pre-Nixon days of pretty much giving the president a free pass when it came to "protecting" the country.
But he also pointed out that the nature of war itself has been--and is being--transformed by the presence of a 24-hour a day news cycle:
Today, wars are waged on Al Jazeera, Fox News, and CNN as much as they are fought on the battlefield. It is a war for hearts and minds, a war for popular support and public opinion, a war for the fuel that keeps the machine running. We should not be surprised by this, because the nature of warfare always changes with new technology. This is inevitable. Machine guns fundamentally changed how warfare was waged. So did airplanes and bombs. And mass media is another form of technology that has drastically changed how wars are fought.
This is potentially very dangerous, because most people don't know how the nature of warfare has changed. They haven't realized that portions of our mass media have become an extension of war, a battle for popular support and public opinion that has no regard for asking tough questions, challenging authority, and relentlessly pursuing the truth. So many people in our country turn on their television or radios expecting to hear the truth, but instead they hear deception, because as Sun Tzu said, all warfare is based on deception. That is one thing about warfare that has not changed.
One of my training partners in Mixed Martial Arts once told me that boxing is similar to poker. When you box someone, you are trying to bluff them. You are trying to deceive them. You want to make them think you will throw a right cross, when you intend to throw an uppercut. You want to make them believe you will throw a left hook to their head, when you are really aiming for their body.
In the Art of War, which Sun Tzu wrote during the 6th century B.C., he said, "All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."[1]
If Sun Tzu were alive today and able to witness the use of mass media as an extension of warfare, he would probably write a tenet saying, "When a foreign country is not an imminent threat, we must make people believe this country is an imminent threat. When a war is not necessary for our survival, we must make people believe that it is more than necessary. When people are not afraid, we must give them every reason to be afraid."
In a true war of self-defense, the last thing we would need is reporters telling us why we must go to war. Could you imagine how most Americans would react if a foreign army landed on our soil tomorrow, and enemy soldiers began killing American civilians and ransacking our homes in an attempt to occupy this country? To quote the outspoken anti-war activist, author of War is a Racket, and two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor, Major General Smedley Butler:
"If, through some serried of unforeseen circumstances and disasters, an enemy army did succeed in landing on our shores – the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific – the entire man power of this nation would spring to arms. Every American, every man and boy, would be ready, without conscription, without pleading – every American would be ready to grasp a rifle and rush forth to defend his home and his country… History shows it. I know it from the experience of my own forefathers, who were FRIENDS [Quakers]."[2]
Smedley Butler is pointing out the obvious after all. Therefore, when the mass media makes a strong argument that urges American citizens to choose war, the citizenry should become very skeptical, because a true war of self-defense would not require such an argument. As Smedley Butler said, "Every man and boy, would be ready, without conscription, without pleading."
When politicians say we must go to war in a foreign country, it is time for hard questions, and the press should be asking those hard questions. For example, if Bill Clinton had wanted to intervene militarily in order to stop the Rwandan genocide, the press should make him prove his case to the American people, rather than beat the war drum. A military intervention to stop the Rwandan genocide might have been absolutely necessary, but only hard questions aimed at finding the truth can help us make such an important decision.
Which begs the question:
How do we do that? Because most of us who opposed the Iraq war WERE speaking out.
It's just that nobody was listening.
In fact, congresspeople who WERE opposing the war were viciously attacked in their home districts with distorting ads aimed to paint them not only as unpatriotic, but as damn near evil. Many of them were defeated at the polls. Small wonder, then, that so many "liberal" politicians voted for the war.
Capt. Chappell offers four steps to help with that.
Step 1 – Never mistake an entertainer or propagandist for a real reporter.
Our country has many excellent reporters who do a fantastic job, but how can we tell the difference between an entertainer, propagandist, and a real reporter? At first this can seem tricky, because a person's political views can influence who they perceive as an entertainer, propagandist, and a real reporter. For example, someone might think Rush Limbaugh is a member of the press who asks hard questions, challenges authority, and gives Americans the truth, while another person might think he is a propagandist. But who is correct?
We can begin by quoting Rush Limbaugh, who said in a 2003 interview with Mediaweek Magazine, "This has led to critics saying I am just an entertainer. I'm proud to be an entertainer. This is showbiz."
[...]
One way to distinguish real reporters from propagandists and entertainers is to ask the following question. Does this person rely on investigative journalism for their information? Investigative journalism is challenging work, and its purpose is to uncover facts. Since propagandists do not rely on facts, they have little need for investigative journalism. 60 Minutes and many other news programs offer examples of useful investigative journalism, and for a good example of how investigate journalism can serve America and make our country a better place to live, I suggest you watch an episode from Frontline called "The War Briefing"? Here is a link to this documentary that you can watch online...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warbriefing/Step 2 – Once we can better distinguish between entertainers, propagandists, and real reporters, we can help our friends and family also make this distinction.
When a media outlet beats the war drum prior to war, rather than asking hard questions, challenging authority, and forcing the President and Congress to prove their case to the American people, they have assumed the role of propagandists for the war machine, rather than their more important responsibility as a free press. Sometimes, reporters can become propagandists without even realizing it, because the war machine is so good at the art of deception that it can even lead people to deceive themselves. The Bill Moyers program "Buying the War" is a powerful tool that can help us better understand (this process.)
Step 3 – Help others understand why a free press is necessary to protect our democracy and "support our troops."
Although war is serious business, this is easily forgotten when our mass media portrays the build-up to war with the same enthusiasm as the build-up to a football game, and so much of the entertainment industry portrays war as a game. Soldiers are supposed to have a special bond of trust with the President, Congress, and the American public, because the life of every soldier is in their hands. Our Founding Fathers were students of history, and because they knew that military dictators have a tendency to overthrow democratic governments, they created a remarkable system of governance in our country where the military is subservient to civilian authority.
Our Founding Fathers learned from the mistakes of Rome, which saw its civilian government overthrown by the military dictators Sulla and Julius Caesar. During the past two hundred years, Napoleon and many other military dictators have overthrown democracies, but our civilian leadership has never been overthrown by a military dictator. This did not happen by accident.
Soldiers cannot publically criticize the President or Congress, not because the Founding Fathers were worried about soldiers arguing against war, but arguing for war. In our remarkable system of governance, soldiers have the least amount of power. The American people are supposed to have the most power, followed by the President and Congress, and in order to prevent military coups, soldiers are servants who must obey the orders of their civilian masters. This is why General MacArthur was fired after he criticized Truman's policies, argued that we should bomb China with nuclear weapons, and said publicly that Truman's more diplomatic approach was wrong.
If the President and Congress decide to leave Iraq, the last thing we would want is for a general to stand up and say, "No, we have to stay in Iraq." If the President and Congress decide to not attack a foreign country, the last thing we would want is for a general to stand up and say, "No, we have to invade this foreign country." In an era when soldiers are being replaced by private contractors and our country has more civilian contractors than soldiers in Iraq, only the American public can prevent war, which is why popular support and public opinion are so important for the war machine to function.
Because our military is subservient to civilian authority, politicans control the war machine, and it is up to the American people to control their politicans. When the press asks hard questions, challenges authority, and relentlessly pursues the truth, they are "supporting our troops," because they are ensuring that soldiers' lives will not be put in harm's way unless absolutely necessary.
The best way to support our troops is to ensure that politicians never take our soldiers' lives for granted by forcing our elected officials to pursue every feasible option before resorting to war. To maintain the trust between our soldiers and the civilians who have the power to send them to their deaths, we must ensure that military force is used only as a last resort, and that war is never treated by our media like a football game.
Step 4 - By making the press uphold its responsibilities to our country, we can better protect our democracy and "support our troops."
The press does a much better job challenging the government today than it did fifty years ago, not only because people learned that politicians sometimes have devious motives and cannot be naively trusted (as Nixon proved), but because American citizens demanded more from the press. Continuing to improve our media is a challenge today, because mass media is governed more by its interest in profit than its interest in asking hard questions, challenging authority, and relentlessly pursuing the truth. But I have a lot of hope for the future, because the press has become much better at its job during the past fifty years, there are so many excellent reporters working in our country today, and because history shows that when people unite and are determined to solve a problem, they can make monumental shifts toward a better and more peaceful world.
In my e-mail response to Capt. Chappell to his excellent analysis, I mentioned a comment that had been left on TPM Cafe to my previous post by "CVille Dem," who brought up the very real problem of the sheer amount of MONEY that can be made through and by the waging of war and, particularly where the media is concerned--the vested interests a corporate media might have in continuing to see that war machine "prosper."
To this comment, Capt. Chappell replied:
Corporate control of the media is a significant challenge that we can and must overcome, and I have a lot more hope after witnessing how the internet and grass-roots media had a massive impact during President Obama's recent election, which led to his victory.
To put this in tactical terms, we can look at the pike. During the Middle Ages, the nobles and powerful landlords reigned supreme, because heavy cavalry ruled the battlefield. Since a mounted knight with weapons and a full suit of armor was extremely expensive, only nobles and rich landlords were able to afford what amounted to the cutting edge in military technology. But then the pike came along, and it changed warfare.
A pike can be as simple as a long wooden pole with a sharpened tip, and because this weapon is so inexpensive to produce, a group of peasants standing shoulder to shoulder with pikes in hand can stop the thundering charge of heavy cavalry (think of the scene from Braveheart). Accordingly, the pike became known as a "democratic weapon," because it enabled peasants to challenge the status quo.
To break corporate control over the media, I think the internet is also a "democratic weapon." In this way, we can compare corporate CEOs who control the media to wealthy mounted knights. The internet is our pike, our "democratic weapon" that allows us to fight back so that we can reclaim our democracy. To protect our democracy and make America a better place to live, however, we must not only rely on grass-roots media. By using our power as citizens and consumers, we must also ensure that corporate media outlets serve our country, rather than behaving as propagandists who serve only their own profits. In next week's post, Capt. Chappell and I are going to discuss something very near and dear to the hearts of peace activists as well as military personnel everywhere. I asked:
How do we foster greater understanding between peace activists and the military? They each tend to hold stereotypical views of the other, and might be surprised to find how much they have in common.
In his fascinating response, Capt. Chappell draws on history and demonstrates how some very famous peace activists of their day achieved their goals.
I look forward to seeing you then.
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