Twenty years ago the Iraq War started—the second Iraq War. Fought based on lies. 7,000 Americans died and at least 150,000 Iraqis. Every justification for the war exposed as a lie. Nothing learned from the experience. I recall how I followed the news. I jotted down the frequent sports metaphors. I hear that some people organized viewing parties in the spirit of the Super Bowl. One of the cleverest propaganda ploys of the US government was a poster with the Iraqi officials targeted for capture arranged as a deck of cards, on top as the ace: Saddam Hussein. Our propaganda ministry knew what fans want: to keep score. But to ask for what purpose or with what justification—that was made to seem as absurd as asking why football teams square off and go at it. Because that’s the game.
During the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan, I recognized another clever propaganda technique: all Fox News broadcasts were preceded or accompanied by a single martial-sounding fanfare. I had once learned about a similar device developed by Propaganda Minister Goebbels on the eve of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. This had to come as a shock to the German people who had been told that the USSR was a friend and ally. How to bridge the transition from peace to Blitzkrieg? Like the Fox News martial theme, Goebbels composed a theme tune for all newscasts from the Eastern Front. Cleverly, they began sounding it several days before the invasion was launched and announced, so that people would have a sense of continuity despite the incongruous shock of a plunge into new depths of destruction.
Signed,
Andrew (Weeks)
Normal Thoughts 