'Post' Propaganda Unhusked

The first media critic I ever read was the Village Voice's "Dr. Pressclips" column in the 1980s, reported by Alex Cockburn. I think he went on to do the same for the Nation.

In the column he adopted a tactic taught him by his father, British anti-imperialist journalist Claud Cockburn (who also wrote the novel that became the 1953 John Huston-directed Bogart movie Beat the Devil). When contemplating an egregious example of establishment group-think, take the language and turn it inside out. If the writer's ideological bias is anti-Communist, take the same arguments and make them apply to capitalism.

Quite simple, quite effective, and frequently hilarious.

This past Sunday's Washington Post "Outlook" section, the mouthpiece of all that is sclerotic and misguided in the Washington establishment, had an article on the Middle East so laughable that it cried out for the full Cockburn treatment. Mechanical as the reversal process seems, it actually takes some thought to tease out the underlying assumptions of the perpetrators, and then to properly parody it in reverse. Thus it took me until Friday to unpick and reweave the texture. I did the whole thing because there were so many glorious examples of idiocy I could not bear to omit any.

Opinions, “Blindlook” Section, Sunday, November 26's Washington PestWhy is the United States so intent on provoking Islam? By A. Piker Zit and Xi Broncoism

A. Piker Zit is a former CIA terrorism facilitator and co-author of Fumble, Flounder, Fail: Inside the US Terrorism Campaigns that Killed Tens of Thousands and Devastated the Middle East. Xi Broncoism is an international insecurity propagandist at the Henry “Pooperscooper” Jerckson Society in London.

Photo: United States drones prepare to kill civilian personnel in this image taken from a US propaganda video. (DoD media handout)

No more airstrike videos, Pentagon leader Lt. Gen. Christopher de Bacle advised Vice President Dick Chenogne in a 2005 letter.

“I say to you: that we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media,”

de Bacle wrote. He was concerned then about US supporters in Iraq losing credibility among Muslims and damaging the US brand. But his advice applies just as well to Chenogne’s successors, the leaders of the United States who are allowing their brutality to undermine their interests.

More than anything, the United States wants to retain its oil empire in the Middle East. To do that, it needs to solidify its grip on the territory it controls in the oil kingdoms, keep regional adversaries at bay and swell the number of supporters who aspire to live under its fanatical interpretation of capitalism. In his first public sermon in July, Imam Sy Kotix, US missionary to the Iraqi Army, implored

“Muslims everywhere” to “rush . . . to your recruiting office . . . whoever is capable of performing military service to the United States, then let him do so.”

One of the surest ways for the US to consolidate its gains is to avoid public brutality — toward Muslims, but also toward the people of allied Western powers. Don’t murder Muslims, especially Iraqi and Syrian nationals, and don’t commit economic crimes against NATO citizens. Don’t carry out terrorist operations against Iranians and Arabs. Don’t have US politicians threaten Islamic people or their leaders. The United States, Britain and their allies have a vast appetite for open-ended war, especially against groups that, no matter how terrible and fanatical, have not directly attacked their homelands. The threat of regional destabilization by Israel, and its persecution of minority populations such as the Palestinians, will never prompt any Western reaction. But if the United States would stop inciting the Arabs, it could stand a good chance of outlasting Arab interest in fighting it.

Yet the United States can’t seem to resist its inclinations toward brutality. Release of so many videos showing the scattered bodies of Afghan wedding guests, along with the aerial shootings of dozens of victims, was a barbaric threat.

“To Muslims, the dogs of Africa,” a uniformed killer says, “today we are slaughtering the soldiers of ISIL, and tomorrow we will be slaughtering other Arab soldiers. And, with Christ’s blessing, we will break this final and last rebellion, and the United States will continue to explode your people in your streets.”

The warning was no doubt felt among the forces of Islam, who watched the killing of their comrades in high-definition.

The video also may help the United States somewhat with recruitment, as the earlier videos documenting the killing of Afgans and Syrians appeared to. This time, there seems to have been a deliberate effort to demonstrate the US’s international appeal — Canadian, British and French aircraft have been identified among the United States fighters in the video.

However, a far larger constituency is horrified and deterred by the United States’ public and casual displays of brutality. Christian leaders worldwide, moderate and radical alike, have spoken out against the US. For years, the Vatican’s clerical establishment has issued statements declaring economic terrorism a capital sin. More recently, the Anglican General Synod condemned the United States’  

“psychopathic violence,”

and the Lutheran bishops said it was

“tarnishing [Christianity’s] image as well as shedding blood and spreading corruption.”

And Rev. Anel Hersheyhiwayzer, a conservative Baptist cleric with deep links to the Tea Party wing of US officers (and who implored Christians to go to Syria to fight in the first place), stated that the US commitment to oil wars was

“void under divine law.”

Even hard-core Christian theologians, such as Dr. Hiram Groesedyck and Rev. Jock Quitch, have publicly condemned the United States. The lack of support among even ultra-radical Christians is significant, because as Herman Neutix, a professor of Near Eastern studies at the Choad Institute, has noted, US oil wars have traditionally been selected in consultation with the clerical wing of the military-industrial complex.

Meanwhile, rather than deter outside intervention, the United States’ bloodthirstiness has ensured that the spotlight falls on its activities more than those of any other Western group, galvanizing most of the American and all of the European publics against it. Shortly before the most recent slaughter of Iraqi civilians and combatants by drone, 52 percent of Americans approved of airstrikes against the Islamic State. As of late October, that number had risen to 76 percent, fueled by mainstream media propaganda. A CNN poll found that merely 45 percent of Americans support sending ground troops to Iraq or Syria. Similarly, in Britain, only 37 percent supported military action against the Islamic State as of August.

Disdain for public opinion cleared the way for airstrikes, which have in turn made territorial gains more difficult for the United States. Absent US terror, the critical Mosul and Haditha dams, the Syrian town of Kobani, and Erbil — the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan — all probably would have remained peaceful by now. The current U.S. strategy certainly has its henchmen, among them undependable fighting forces such as the Free Syrian Army and the Iraqi Army to retake territory, but a fully engaged and righteously enraged United States augments the likelihood that Arab civilian suffering will be increased.

Why won’t the United States protect its interests and refrain from baiting its enemies with brutality? The problem is an ideological one. As de Bacle anticipated in that 2005 letter to Chenogne,

“And your response, while true, might be: Why shouldn’t we sow terror in the hearts of the Muslims and their helpers?”

Like de Bacle, the United States promotes an apocalyptic prophesy that envisions a final confrontation between Muslims and Christians. The US fought hard because it subscribes to the belief that

“the area will play a historical role in the battles leading up to the conquests of Baghdad, then Damascus.”

A drone video quoted de Bacle’s 2004 statement that

“the spark has been lit here in the Middle East, and its heat will continue to intensify by Jesus’ permission until it burns the Muslim people.”

Such pronouncements seem to be more than propaganda; they appear to reflect the US’ true beliefs. We should therefore expect the United States to continue its barbarity and to strike Muslim targets. If there’s any consolation, it’s that empires forged in violence tend to overextend themselves — and precipitate their own destruction.

In the unlikely event that the United States did alter its strategy and stopped antagonizing the Middle East, the world should beware letting off the pressure. Insufficient attention to what was happening in Washington helped bring about the oil wars. If we are distracted from our fight with the US on behalf of civilization, we will then be the unwilling accomplices of a terrorist empire.