Excerpt from William Blum‘s Anti-Empire Report, June 13, 2005:
Gee, how can we ever find out why they don’t like us?
The Pentagon awarded three contracts this past week, worth up to $300 million, to companies it hopes will inject more creativity into US psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly their opinion of the American military. “We would like to be able to use cutting-edge types of media,” said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element.
Dan Kuehl, a specialist in information warfare at the National Defense University, added: “There are a billion-plus Muslims that are undecided. How do we move them over to being more supportive of us? If we can do that, we can make progress and improve security.”{1}
And so it goes. And so it has gone since September 11, 2001. The world’s only superpower has felt misunderstood, although co-existing with this feeling at times, and expressed more than once by Bush administration officials, has been oderint dum metuant, a favorite phrase of Roman emperor Caligula, also used by Cicero — “let them hate so long as they fear”.
“How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America?” asked George W. (aka jerkus maximus) a month after 9-11. “I’ll tell you how I respond: I’m amazed. I’m amazed that there’s such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. I am — like most Americans, I just can’t believe it because I know how good we are.”{2}
Psychological operations, information warfare, cutting-edge media … surely there’s a high-tech solution.
But what if it’s not a misunderstanding? What if the problem is that people in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world understand the Pentagon and US foreign policy only too well? In short, what if they don’t know how good we are? What if they — in their foreign ignorance and al-Jazeera brainwashing — have come to the bizarre conclusion that saturation bombing, invasion, occupation, destruction of homes, torture, depleted uranium, killing a hundred thousand, and daily humiliation of men, women and children do not indicate good intentions?
Last week, as well, Zalmay Khalilzad, nominated to be US ambassador to Iraq, appeared before the Senate. “The degree of support for our policies, opinion polls indicate, is not very high,” he said. It has partly “to do with the perception that what we are about in Iraq is occupation, what we’re about is to gain control of Iraqi resources. I think what we need to do is a better job of explaining our goals, the goal of an Iraq that’s self-reliant, an Iraq that’s successful. We want Iraq for the Iraqis, an Iraq that works for the Iraqi people. It’s the insurgents who don’t care about the Iraqi people.”{3}
Yes, it is remarkable indeed how misinformed some people can be.
NOTES
{1} Washington Post, June 11, 2005, p.D1
{2} Boston Globe, October 12, 2001, p.28
{3} Federal News Service, June 7, 2005, Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee)
Not even billions can spin/ignore/bury this:
Six More Secret British Documents Leaked
Updated @0022 6/14/05:
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