Propaganda, Plain and Simple

Facing criticism over the recent revelation that the military paid to produce what can only be called propaganda in Iraq, President Bush and the like have expressed indignation over the program and denied any knowledge of it. But as this article in today's NY Times points out, this particular program is only part of a larger effort to "sell" American goals to the Arab and Muslim world:

But the work of the contractor, the Lincoln Group, was not a rogue operation. Hoping to counter anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, the Bush administration has been conducting an information war that is extensive, costly and often hidden, according to documents and interviews with contractors, government officials and military personnel.

What have they been up to you ask?:

• In Iraq and Afghanistan, the focus of most of the activities, the military operates radio stations and newspapers, but does not disclose their American ties. Those outlets produce news material that is at times attributed to the "International Information Center," an untraceable organization.

• Lincoln says it planted more than 1,000 articles in the Iraqi and Arab press and placed editorials on an Iraqi Web site, Pentagon documents show.

• Like the Lincoln Group, Army psychological operations units sometimes pay to deliver their message, offering television stations money to run unattributed segments or contracting with writers of newspaper opinion pieces, military officials said.

• The United States Agency for International Development also masks its role at times. AID finances about 30 radio stations in Afghanistan, but keeps that from listeners. The agency has distributed tens of thousands of iPod-like audio devices in Iraq and Afghanistan that play prepackaged civic messages, but it does so through a contractor that promises "there is no U.S. footprint."

What motivates all this secretive effort?

"We've got to do a better job of making our case," President Bush told reporters after the [9/11] attacks.

This sort of thing just makes me want to hang my head and cry. Look, I'm not naive. I know that in any campaign to win "hearts and minds" (and I mean world opinion of the U.S. in general) you have to get your side of the story out there. But the naive people appear to be the ones in the Bush administration who think this sort of thing really works. This goes back to the old cliche about actions speaking louder then words; if our actions really reflected that we were trying to democratize Iraq and liberate oppressed peoples, while respecting Islam and Islamic tradition, then we wouldn't have to hide the messenger fear that the listeners would just ignore what we have to say. The fact is the rest of the world isn't as stupid as we'd like to hope that they are, and they know good and well that what we're primarily up to is defending our interests overseas. No amount of propoganda is going to change anybody's mind about that. We might as well save ourselves the time, the trouble, and the money.