Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Sunday, November 14, 2004
The Demons of Falluja
“The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.”
- Aldous Huxley
(The following excerpt from my book “The Seven Deadly Spins” illustrates how wartime spin enables American military forces to justify the slaughter of civilians in places like Falluja.)
As if it were a force of nature, we’re often advised: “war is hell.” Spin is designed to hide exactly who puts the hell in war. On a website dedicated to the television comedy series “Hogan’s Heroes,” a particular episode was described as follows: “Knowing the Allies won’t bomb a POW camp, the Germans stash an experimental rocket-bomb in Stalag 13. London sends an Allied scientist to photograph and sabotage the bomb. To distract Klink, the heroes arrange for him to be named Kommandant of the Year.”
“The Allies won’t bomb a POW camp.”
That statement goes a long way in illustrating the influence of wartime spin. (Then again, so does a popular comedy about a Nazi POW camp.) The writers of “Hogan’s Heroes” took for granted that no one would challenge the proposition that America and its allies fight fair.
Regardless, in every military intervention, we are warned there will be cases when the good guys are left with no choice but to fight fire with fire. Perhaps the most notorious example was an unnamed U.S. major, quoted by Associated Press on February 8, 1968. Asked about the U.S. assault on the Vietnamese town of Bentre, the major explained, “It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.”
Like the reluctant parent who informs their bare-bottomed offspring that the ensuing spanking will hurt them more than the child, the U.S. is sometimes forced to spank those who simply won’t roll over in the face of superior force. The Fifth Deadly Spin tells us: During war, even the U.S. has to sometimes play a little rough and sometimes the good guys get their hands a little dirty...in the name of freedom.
“Here lies the yellow man, killed by a black man, fighting for the white man, who killed all the red men.”
-Malcolm X, summing up the Vietnam War
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
