Article: If all wars are based on lies, truth is our greatest weapon

Although the CIA is only officially authorized to operate outside the US, it has been used since the early Cold War to indoctrinate Americans with the idea that communist threats are everywhere. CIA-vetted propaganda provided the rationale for creating a military-industrial complex so vast that Eisenhower was compelled to warn Americans about it as one of his last acts as President.

The extent of CIA involvement in the generation of propaganda has significantly diminished since it was exposed by the Church Commission but the Agency continues to have significant influence over both US and foreign media in several ways. Former CIA and other intelligence officials have been hired by TV news networks, reporters have had their work vetted by the CIA prior to submission, foreign reporters are enticed into collaborating, and the CIA is widely believed to have been involved in discrediting a reporter who proved too tenacious at detailing its participation in the cocaine trade in the US

Since 1983, the CIA's foreign propaganda function has been carried out largely by the "non-governmental" organization National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is in fact almost entirely funded by Congress as part of the USAID budget. This investment is justified under the premise that it "promotes democracy." In fact, the funds used to influence foreign elections, pay for media access, pay off corrupt unions and in general bolster opposition to targeted governments with the aim of destabilizing them or soften them up for regime change operations. A large proportion of the funds are spent to pay for media, reporting of which is picked up by the international and US press and used to maintain an exaggerated fear of terrorism and authoritarian governments that are no threat to the US, but are used to justify both imperial wars abroad and suspension of civil liberties at home.

Will America learn from the fate of Nazi Germany?

The list of ways this control of the corporate media has influenced American history is too extensive to list here. It has led to coverups of CIA crimes overseas and at home, the creation of a fear-based foreign policy and a bias toward war that has completely transformed American attitudes toward war and other foreign interventions, most of which remain unknown to them. Only now have the war profiteers become so obvious in their plans for corporate world domination that Americans are beginning to appreciate the true costs of war. In stridently opposing US strikes on Iran and Syria, the traditional American reluctance to go to war for corporate Empire may be beginning to reassert itself, but resistance to imperialism must grow much larger and more sustained before it can meaningfully affect the US policy of endless war. That will only happen when enough Americans learn and share the truth of why we have wars that politicians realize it is in their best interests to do the same.

It is possible to end war. That day will only come when enough people reject the self-fulfilling prophecy that it is inevitable.

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