|
In
his book 'Don't Go Near the Water', William Brinkley described the
hilarious adventures of a US Navy public relations unit in the Pacific
towards the end of the Second World War. The unit was led (if one can use
the word) by Lt-Commander Clinton T ('Marblehead') Nash, who "had
been commissioned directly from his brokerage office without the
corrupting influence of any intervening naval training". But
Marblehead had his moments, as when he conjured up the idea of sending
hometown newspapers lots of pieces about sailors in the enormous Pacific
Fleet.
With
fiery enthusiasm he planned that "We get up a story on [an] event,
mimeograph it off, then simply fill in the man's name from the ship's
roster, like 'Blank Blank of Blank was aboard the USS Missouri recently
when that ship's sixteen-inchers disabled Yokahama', and fire it back to
the guy's home-town paper. Visualize it! The Missouri alone has 2700 men
aboard, anytime she did anything, just anything atall, this would
automatically mean 2700 stories in papers all over the States . . .
millions of stories . . . From us to the thousands of tanktown papers in
the US . . . Thinking big! . . . It's Joe Blow of Kokomo people want to
hear about!"
In
fact it wasn't that bad an idea (although things did get a bit out of hand
for Marblehead and his merry men), and the technique has attractions. The
problem is that there is a distinct dividing line between news and
propaganda and it is fatal to truth to try to merge one with the other.
But the line has been crossed -- leapt across, indeed -- by the
mind-benders of US forces in Iraq. They are not content with having
"Blank Blank of Blank" being home-town news because of something
his unit had done. Far from it, because it seems they want to convince
home-town folks all over America that US policy in Iraq is fine and dandy
and - by implication, at least - that it's only a bunch of sour-faced left
wing liberal peacenik internationalists who say things are catastrophic.
So the new Marbleheads had a great idea: that it would be splendid for it
to be made known by Joe Blow of Kokomo that "The quality of life and
security for the citizens has been largely restored and we are a large
part of why that has happened" in the area of Kirkuk occupied by the
Second Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment.
Now
: nobody should have any objection to a letter containing such positive
sentiments being sent to a hometown newspaper -- providing, of course, it
was composed by the person who signed it. The Joe Blow letter continued
that "The fruits of our soldiers' efforts are clearly visible in the
streets of Kirkuk today . . . I am proud of the work we're doing here in
Iraq and I hope all of your readers are as well." Great stuff.
Freedom of speech means that Joe Blow of the 503rd can write to the Kokomo
local paper to say things are working out in Iraq just as Bush says they
are.
This
sort of thing isn't quite what I wrote home from Cyprus, Borneo or Vietnam
when I was on active service in these troubled places. Reflecting on such
letters as have survived I find the main themes were that Brigade HQ was
staffed by a bunch of incompetent dickwits, the local authorities were
corrupt, the food was lousy, our equipment was inferior to that possessed
by a poorly-endowed boy scout troop, the enemy was fighting quite well,
all generals and politicians (ours, not theirs) were certifiable cretins,
and the local population (except in Borneo where we were welcomed by
delightful people), thought we were a damn pest or worse. We would have
roared with laughter if any of us Joe Blows had written to a newspaper at
home saying "we're proud of the work we're doing here". What a
joke that would have been. Perhaps things have changed.
But
the problem with the enthusiastic Joe Blow letter from the 503rd was not
so much its content as its origin, as was revealed when the Gannet News
Service investigated the appearance of identical Joe Blow letters in
eleven (so far) local newspapers around the US.
Some
editors sniffed a rat and refused to publish what they regarded as a form
letter, which undoubtedly it was, but others were happy to do so or took
it at face value. According to Gannett (which deserves an award for
exposing this tawdry little scheme), "[one] soldier didn't know about
the letter until his father congratulated him for getting it published in
the local newspaper in Beckley, West Virginia. 'When I told him he wrote
such a good letter, he said 'What letter?' Timothy Deaconson said Friday,
recalling the phone conversation he had with his son, Nick . . . at a
hospital where he was recovering from a grenade explosion that left
shrapnel in both legs." Now if ever there was shabby practice, this
is an example. The letter from Pfc Nick Deaconson didn't mention any
injuries to anyone. The reason, of course, is that Nick hadn't written the
letter. Sergeant Christopher Shelton whose identical letter was published
in the Snohomish Herald was surprised too, but when he was interviewed he
said although he didn't write the letter he agreed with it because
"We've done a really good job." Fair enough; but would Sergeant
Shelton have sent the letter to Snohomish voters without being prodded to
do so? It was, after all, written by his commanding officer, Lt-Colonel
Dominic Caraccilo, who boasted about it to ABC news after the whole affair
blew up.
The
facts are there and can't be denied : a sheet of propaganda was given to
soldiers of the 503rd and they signed it and 500 were sent to hometown
papers which reach thousands of voters. (Home town folks tend to revere
the president -- any president -- and rarely question his doings because
to their minds that would be unpatriotic. We are talking Flag, here, as
well as votes. Norman Rockwell country loves First Family.) The soldiers
who signed the propaganda sheet may well have agreed with the information
they were provided, but they could neither add to it nor subtract from it.
They could not give their own views about the casualties their unit had
taken. We are, in fact, getting dangerously close to propaganda by
omission of dissent ; the lowest form of obscurantism.
After
the letters were placed before the soldiers and they added their
signatures they were taken away and posted (at public expense?) to be read
by recipients who were not their friends, neighbours or relatives, save by
coincidence. The recipients were voters who may, in spite of instinctive
respect for the White House, have formed their own opinions about the war
on Iraq and its outcome. But through the medium of their trusty local
newspaper they could be influenced by official propaganda disguised as
personal -- Joe Blow -- opinion to alter their views. If you live in
Kokomo, which do you trust : The New York Times? (the whut?) or the Kokomo
Courier Despatch that carries letters from hometown boys serving their
courageous commander-in-chief in Iraq?
Which
brings us to the latest Bush initiative of appointing a task force to
supervise "Communications" concerning Iraq in his new
anti-Pentagon 'Iraq Stabilization Group'. This bunch of propaganda
apparatchiks will control the media approach of the White House in
election mode. As reported by Associated Press, Bush declared
"There's a sense that people in America aren't getting the truth . .
. I'm mindful of the filter through which some news travels, and sometimes
you just have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the
people." Just like Lt-Colonel Caraccilo, who is obviously destined
for higher things, Bush is determined to show that his war worked. In
their different ways, both are deceitful, but at least Caraccilo probably
believed in what he was doing. But Joe Blow of Kokomo doesn't benefit one
bit from this affair -- and he won't, either, from the Bush assault on
truth that is only just about to begin.
Brian
Cloughley
writes about defense issues for CounterPunch, the Nation (Pakistan), the
Daily Times of Pakistan and other international publications. His writings
are collected on his website: www.briancloughley.com.
He
can be reached at: beecluff@aol.com
|
|