| Special Feature | Posted May 27, 2010 |
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Propaganda From Afghanistan:
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U.S. planners face difficult choices as they navigate the ongoing transition from being The World's Only Superpower to being just one power in a multipolar world. The nature and consequences of those choices enter our minds as a part of a grand story, or narrative, that orders and shapes our understanding of the events of the day. For the most part, leaders of the Empire have been allowed to define that story, telling us how well they are "succeeding" and—most crucially—defining the very meaning of "success." This propaganda work is proceeding on many different levels, in many places, but I think it is easiest to see in the case of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. It's worth looking closely at that case because, in addition to being a massive humanitarian crisis, the war in Afghanistan is also a symbol and a test case for the U.S. role in the world in the 21st Century. Here, then, is look at how we understand—or misunderstand—that story, and how information is used to obtain support for the massive violence that is needed to maintain an unjust world order. Afghanistan: "Success" In the "War of Perceptions" Back in April the Associated Press reported that the United States and its would-be puppet government in Afghanistan were planning to launch "a long-planned assault on the Taliban's spiritual home in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar" in June. The AP added that, "The two-month offensive will be a major test of President Barack Obama's new strategy in Afghanistan and a bellwether of the war in general." This comment brings to mind an earlier comment, this one from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Speaking about Afghanistan back in February, he said, "This is all a war of perceptions. This is not a physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants." Those words were spoken in Istanbul where, according to the New York Times, McChrystal "joined Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to brief NATO allies just before the offensive began." The Times refers here to the offensive in Marja, Afghanistan, the outcome of which, said TIME Magazine "will reveal the chances of success for President Obama's revamped Afghan strategy." On the very first day of the Marja campaign, the London Telegraph announced that "The first stage of the biggest military offensive ever launched by NATO troops in Afghanistan has been declared a success." That was the early verdict, but later reports agreed that the Marja campaign was a "success" according to the only sources that matter to the U.S. media—U.S. military leaders. Since the media is most people's only source of information about Afghanistan, the media becomes a prime battlefront in the "war of perceptions." Pentagon-Friendly Headlines The battle of Marja—called Operation Moshtarek, or "Together" by the U.S. military—began on February 13th and ended sometime later that month, if it ended at all, which isn't clear.The tone of coverage was set in the first week, as is usually the case. Here are some headlines from that week: "Troops Seize Control of Taliban Territory" (Buffalo News,
NY) The Pentagon couldn't have asked for better headlines than those. "Stiff Resistance" Or Not. On February 14th the Los Angeles Times told us that "U.S. and Afghan commanders reported only scattered resistance from Taliban fighters, who boasted that they were holding off the massive coalition assault, despite evidence that they were retreating." The Grand Rapids Press on the same day said, "On the first full day of operations, much of the expected Taliban resistance failed to materialize." On the other hand, here is the Washington Post on that very same day: "U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers encountered pockets of stiff resistance and extensive minefields..." The Christian Science Monitor headline said that "Marjah Battle as Tough as Fallujah, Say US Troops." (That's the notorious Fallujah, Iraq, scene of fierce fighting and many casualties.) So, was there "stiff resistance"? Or was it more "scattered resistance"? Or did the resistance "fail to materialize" or even "retreat"? It appears to depend on where one lives, and which newspapers one reads. Most likely all of the headlines were accurate, as one can understand
if one understands the nature of guerrilla warfare, which is waged by
a militarily weaker force against a stronger force. In 1961, Ernesto "Ché" Guevara wrote "Guerrilla
Warfare," in which he said, "The great desperation of the
enemy army . . . will be to find something to receive his blows. Instead
he will find a gelatinous mass, in movement, impenetrable, that retreats
and never presents a solid front, though it inflicts wounds from every
side." Not Seeing, But Believing The February 2nd New York Times ran a story with the headline, "In the Taliban, Marines Find Evolving Foes." The article spoke of a military sweep of Karardar Afghanistan, aimed at killing or capturing the "40 to 50 Taliban fighters" that "intelligence reports" had said were there. No luck, though, as the article explained that "the Taliban's fighters had proved elusive again." That's because, the Times concluded, the Taliban has "evolved" into "a canny but mostly unseen force" with "a persistent and cunning presence." Now, skip ahead two weeks to February 16th, in a Times report on the Marja offensive. The headline here was "Half of Afghan Town's Taliban Flee or Are Killed, Allies Say." This was on the front page, as was the February 2nd piece just cited. Not only has "the number of Taliban fighters in the area ... dropped by about half," but "Among the Taliban fighters still in Marja, American and Afghan officials said, morale appears to be eroding fast." The Times continued, quoting Col. Scott Hartsell, who was speaking to "a group of senior officers at a briefing near Marja." He said of the Taliban fighters, "They cannot feed themselves, they cannot sustain themselves—that is what we are hearing. They are calling for help, and they are not getting any. Pretty soon, they are going to run out of gas." That certainly sounds like good news in this "war of perceptions," doesn't it? Well, maybe, unless you can remember as far back as two weeks, when we just saw that the same newspaper told us that the Taliban had become a "mostly unseen force." Apparently, they can't be seen, but they can be counted, or else how would anyone know that "half" of them had fled or been killed? And not only could they apparently be seen, but our leaders have "heard" from someone or other who apparently has "heard" the Taliban "calling for help" and somehow knows that they're "not getting any." It was not surprising to read, later in the article, that "The details of the assessment... could not be independently verified." Could that be because all of the U.S. reporters in Afghanistan are embedded with the U.S. military, so there really is no one to whom they are willing or able to speak who might be considered "independent"? The military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported last August that the embedded reporters who are writing the stories coming out of Afghanistan were being "screened by a controversial Washington-based public relations firm contracted by the Pentagon to determine whether their past coverage has portrayed the U.S. military in a positive light." Reporters who might seek to "independently verify" the propaganda they're being fed might well fail to make the cut. We don't even have to remember two weeks back to be skeptical of all of this seeing and hearing reported in this "assessment, the most extensive made public on the Marja operation." Later in this very article the reporter admits that "Some American officers said they suspected some fighters—especially the local ones—probably just decided not to fight. That is part of the nature of a war like this: if guerrillas decide to stay home, they are unlikely to be discovered." Did it not occur to the reporter to ask, if some fighters "stay home" and remain undiscovered, A) How does anyone know how many fighters there are? and B) How does anyone know how many of that unknown number are dead or have "fled"? As a tribal elder told the Times, "The Taliban have no specific uniform; they are like ordinary people. They can go anywhere, anytime." Again, this is guerrilla warfare; they are not "deciding not to fight." They are deciding when to fight. It would be a few days later, February 20th, that the Times would report that "the [Marja] operation was advertised, almost in neon lights, so far in advance and in such detail that there was none of the element of surprise that combat commanders usually prize." (Pay no attention to the headline cited above: "Surprise Offensive Befuddles Taliban") An offensive announced in neon lights is such a made-to-order unfolding of events for a guerrilla force that it makes one wonder what the real point of this operation was. Skip ahead two months and the message is still the same. The Pentagon released a statement on May 6th saying "Ongoing operations in Marja, Afghanistan, are proving the Obama administration is on the right track in that country, Defense and State Department officials said today." The next day's Los Angeles Times ran a headline echoing the verdict: "U.S. Calls Offensive in Marja a Success." The above account reveals a couple of things about the nature of the reporting of the Marja operation. First of all, reporters who witness standard guerrilla warfare tactics often mistake them for weakness, and then wrongly conclude that the pattern they are seeing is a pattern of the "success" of "President Obama's revamped Afghan strategy." Secondly, what reporters actually see—or don't see—in a war zone often takes a back seat to what they are told by official sources. Pick any news article you like and you'll generally see that virtually all of the sources are official U.S., NATO, or Afghan government sources. So we see comments like this one from the NY Daily News of February 17: "Soon, officials predicted confidently, Kabul will be back in full control of what had been the Taliban's new home base." [Marja, that is.] In sum, the reporting by the U.S. media on the February Marja offensive appeared at every moment to be almost entirely propaganda, passed directly from the mouths of officials hewing to a well-crafted "message" geared to winning the "war of perceptions." Marja: "Still Waiting to See the Outcome" While most corporate media outlets continue to parrot the "success" message, a contrary verdict is beginning to surface. An April 26th New York Times story reported: "Two months after the Marja offensive, Afghan officials acknowledge that the Taliban have in some ways retaken the momentum there... ‘We are still waiting to see the outcome in Marja,' said Shaida Abdali, the deputy Afghan national security adviser. ‘If you are planning for operations in Kandahar, you must show success in Marja. You have to be able to point to something. Now you don't have a good example to point to there.'" Two weeks later, on May 9th, a Washington Post editorial noted that "the senior military official [in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal] cautions that 90 days after the offensive, ‘Marja is a mixed bag,' with parts of the area still controlled by the Taliban and Afghan government performance spotty. A top State Department official agrees: ‘Transfer is not happening' in Marja." A more general assessment appeared in the LA Times on April 29th: "A Pentagon report presented a sobering new assessment Wednesday [April 28] of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, saying that its abilities are expanding and its operations are increasing in sophistication, despite recent major offensives by U.S. forces in the militants' heartland... The report . . . portrays an insurgency with deep roots and broad reach..." Finally, on May 17th the NY Times reported that "Combat operations in Marja ended at the end of February and the military declared the battle won. But much of the local Taliban, including at least four mid-level commanders, never left, stashing their rifles and adopting the quiet farm life." Added the Times, "Taliban fighters have found a way to resume their insurgency, three months after thousands of troops invaded" Marja. All of this is perfectly consistent with expected outcomes in a guerrilla campaign, yet seems to be a surprise to most U.S. reporters. "Totally Unshakable Control of NATO" The German magazine Der Spiegel stated recently that "Obama is creating a new ‘coalition of the willing' [in Afghanistan], a term coined by his predecessor, George W. Bush, with the only difference being that Obama's choice of words is not as bleak." (The term was actually coined by Bill Clinton in 1994; George W. just made it a household word in 2002 regarding Iraq.) The coalition has been in existence for quite some time now, so it's fair to ask if it is a truly international effort, or if it is actually a U.S. occupation in disguise. The latter is more plausible, as we see if we take a look at the command structure. It's true that the entity occupying Afghanistan is, technically, an "international" force. In fact, the occupying force is officially known as the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. But who controls ISAF? As it turns out, ISAF is commanded by NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In addition, fully 97 percent of the ISAF troops come from NATO countries. So, then, who controls NATO? You may have guessed it: The United States. NATO was founded in 1949, officially to "maintain the security of the North Atlantic area," but it was widely understood to really be aimed at the Soviet Union. And, sure enough, a few years later (1955) the Soviet Union formed its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, which was, in turn, widely understood to be largely a response to what they perceived as the threat posed by NATO. Both the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. But NATO lives on, "kept alive and growing," as Diana Johnstone put it in a recent essay, "by entrenched economic interests, institutional inertia and an official mindset resembling paranoia, with think tanks looking around desperately for ‘threats'." Adds Johnstone, "the U.S. has long maintained "totally unshakable ... control of NATO's integrated command." This continues until the present day when, according to scholar/activist Rick Rozoff, "NATO is dominated by the United States." The U.S. has lined up a total of 46 nations to participate in this second "Coalition of the Willing," or COW2. An official NATO paper of April 16 calls them "Troop Contributing Nations." The level of "contributions" by COW2 nations varies widely, ranging from Austria, which is "contributing" 3 people to the effort, up to the United Kingdom, with 9,500 troops in the country. It's worth noting that the NATO paper includes on its list of contributors the Republic of Korea, which contributes "0" troops to COW2. The bar can't be set any lower than that! But it doesn't matter, as even zero or three or nine (Luxembourg) troops provide propaganda value. The larger the "coalition," after all, the easier it is to argue that the occupation is truly supported by "the international community" and is not just a U.S. occupation in disguise. But, 46 "Troop Contributing Nations" or not, is the occupation of Afghanistan truly supported by "the international community?" How "Willing" is this Coalition? There are at least two ways to measure the degree of "international support" for maintaining a military operation in Afghanistan. One is to count the number of "Troop Contributing Nations," which, as we've just seen, the official NATO count puts at 46 nations in all. But here's the thing about military troops: They go where they are told to go by their commanders. So the fact that these countries have troops deployed in Afghanistan tells us only one thing: It tells us which country's political leaders are willing to have their militaries coalesce with other militaries for the purposes of occupying a country in a strategic area of the world. I guess that's a kind of "international support," but it's not the only one. Another way to gauge international support for the military occupation of Afghanistan would be to ask the people in those "Troop Contributing Nations" what they think of the project. That is, do they support the decision to deploy troops to Afghanistan as ordered by their leaders? As it turns out, there have been a number of opinion polls that have probed into this highly-relevant matter. And the results are more-or-less in, and worth looking at. Let's start by identifying the top "Troop Contributing Nations" in Afghanistan and counting the number of troops they are "contributing." On April 16th NATO put out something they call, oddly enough, a "NATO-ISAF Placemat" which "sets out the approximate numbers of forces provided to ISAF by Allied and other contributing nations." From that source we can see the 12 nations that have "provided" at least 1,000 troops: USA: 62.415 troops Going by numbers of troops, these countries may be thought to be the major supporters of the occupation. But are they, really? Let's have a look at public opinion on the subject in those same countries. Shown below is the percentage of each nation's population who oppose and support their nation's troops being in Afghanistan. The surveys are worded differently, with some asking if "troops should be withdrawn" in general, or if they oppose Obama's recent commitment of more troops, or if they specifically oppose the deployment of troops from their own country. But all of them offer a rough gauge of popular support or opposition for membership in the Coalition of the Willing. There are lots of polls; in each case the numbers below come from the most recent and reliable polls I could find. Most are from November of 2009, some are from earlier in 2009, and the U.S. poll is from March 2010. USA: "Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan?"
49 percent oppose; 48 percent favor. Doing the arithmetic we see that, on average, about 57 percent of the populations of the top "Troop Contributing Nations," other than the U.S., oppose their country's involvement in Afghanistan, while 35 percent support it. What is the response of the U.S. government to growing opposition, both in this country and in allied countries? Are our leaders responding by re-thinking the wisdom of the ill-fated decision to militarize our response to so-called Terrorism? Or are our leaders attempting to propagandize the populations of the "Troop Contributing Nations" so that they stay out of the way as the Empire does its work? "Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough" At the beginning of April the whistleblower website Wikileaks published a graphic video of a US military Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad in 2007 that killed 12 civilians, including two journalists. This video has deservedly caused a sensation, as it gave a worldwide audience—including the U.S. audience—a glimpse of a major crime committed by U.S. troops in a theater of war. Something that did not cause a sensation in this country—because it was never reported—was another Wikileaks exposé of a couple of weeks earlier, this one concerning a memo detailing a CIA propaganda effort aimed at countering the growing popular opposition to other, even larger, crimes. The larger crimes to which I refer are the wars themselves. The memo released by Wikileaks gives a hint as to how U.S. leaders plan to deal with the growing opposition to the Imperial occupation, so it's worth a close look. The Wikileaks memo—released on March 26th—is a "recipe for the targeted manipulation of public opinion in two NATO ally countries [Germany and France], written by the CIA." Those two countries are the third- and fourth-largest contributors of troops to the NATO effort, and opposition to the occupation in those countries ranges from 54 percent to as high as 69 percent. "The Netherlands Could Set a Precedent" The story starts with the Netherlands, which up to now has been the eighth-largest contributor of troops to Afghanistan, with about 2,000 troops there. The Dutch originally signed up in 2006 to have their troops there for two years, then extended that commitment another two years, to August of 2010. When NATO pressured the right-of-center prime minister, Jan-Peter Balkenende, to again extend the Dutch commitment in Afghanistan beyond August, "his Labour party coalition partner opposed the extension and walked out of crisis talks on Saturday [February 20], spelling the end of the government two years into its term." Those words are from the London Guardian, which added that the collapse of the Dutch government marked "the first European and NATO administration to fall because of the war in Afghanistan." Within three weeks of the collapse of the Dutch government, the CIA produced a top-secret memo about how to keep the Dutch anti-war virus from spreading. Published secretly and dated March 11, the memo bore the ungainly title "Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission—Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough." Recall that popular opposition in the Netherlands to the presence of Dutch troops in Afghanistan is running at about 58 percent. It's pretty high in Germany and France, too, as the CIA is well aware. What is saving the day at present, in the CIA's way of thinking, is public apathy. That is, while most Europeans may be opposed to their government's participation in the Afghan war, they aren't actively opposing it. And the CIA wants to keep it that way. Here's how the CIA summarizes their memo: "The fall of the Dutch Government over its troop commitment to Afghanistan demonstrates the fragility of European support for the NATO-led ISAF mission. Some NATO states, notably France and Germany, have counted on public apathy about Afghanistan to increase their contributions to the mission, but indifference might turn into active hostility if spring and summer fighting results in an upsurge in military or Afghan civilian casualties and if a Dutch-style debate spills over into other states contributing troops." They continue: "The Afghanistan mission's low public salience has allowed French and German leaders to disregard popular opposition and steadily increase their troop contributions" to ISAF. It's understood that disregard of the public is a good thing. In other words, apathy has been the savior of the NATO mission so far, but the CIA warns that "...a spike in French or German casualties or in Afghan civilian casualties could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal." The CIA, seeing all this, calls for a "strategic communication program across NATO troop contributors" to "provide a buffer if today's apathy becomes tomorrow's opposition to ISAF." This would be done for the purpose of "giving politicians greater scope to support deployments to Afghanistan" despite the opposition of their populations. All of this would be done using the propaganda technique of "tap[ping] into the key concerns of specific Western European audiences." The propaganda thus must focus "on a message that ISAF benefits Afghan civilians." "Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban," says the CIA, adding that "Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences." The London Guardian speculated that "The Netherlands could set a precedent, encouraging other European countries to get cold feet about their presence in Afghanistan." The CIA clearly believed that the Dutch crisis might be a precedent, but they weren't concerned about "cold feet." They were concerned about democracy. The memo notes that the U.S. has been lucky so far, stating that "Berlin and Paris currently maintain the third and fourth highest ISAF troop levels, despite the opposition of 80 percent of German and French respondents to increased ISAF deployments, according to INR [the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research] polling in fall 2009." It doesn't say so in the memo, but the CIA is undoubtedly aware of recent polls in the United States, such as a CNN poll from March 19-21, which asked USAmericans "Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan?" 48 percent said they favored it, while 49 percent were opposed. An Associated Press poll from last December asked the same question and found that 59 percent "oppose the war in Afghanistan," while only 39 percent "favor" it. Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a small glimpse into one plan to propagandize Europe by "tap[ping] into the key concerns of specific Western European audiences." And this needs to be done because U.S. planners know that they cannot pursue the Imperial project if public opposition becomes too strong. Now we're talking about "hearts and minds," the hearts and minds of the only folks who can put a stop to the Imperial project in Afganistan: The people of Afghanistan and the people of the United States and its allies. Militarizing the "Truth" The U.S. government has always had a large propaganda bureaucracy, but it is being increasingly militarized, with information operations migrating from the civilian parts of the government into the hands of the Pentagon. On February 5, 2009, the Associated Press published the results of a yearlong investigation that attempted to "tally the money spent [by the Pentagon] to inform, educate and influence the public in the U.S. and abroad." That's rather polite language, but the report itself was not so polite, as it detailed "the Pentagon's rapidly expanding media empire, which is now bigger in size, money and power than many media companies." The AP reported that "Over the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year." In an indication of the degree to which the propaganda functions of the government have been taken over by the military establishment, the AP notes that "[In 2009] the Pentagon will employ 27,000 people just for recruitment, advertising and public relations—almost as many as the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department." In the world of the military, the overall job of controlling information is known as "Information Operations," or "IO." When the Pentagon talks in public about their IO in the South Asia war zone, they say that the U.S. military's point is to "get its message out to the people of Pakistan and the surrounding region." Lt. Col. Shawn Stroud, who until May 2009 served as director of strategic communication at U.S. Army Combined Arms Center in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, says that the point of IO is to "be first with the truth." The implication of such statements is that the "message" the U.S. is trying to get out is a message of "truth." But that message itself is not entirely true, as we see when we look at some documents on the subject that were produced for internal consumption by the U.S. military. For example, let's have a look at the Army's Information Operations Field Manual of 2003 [FM 3-13 (FM 100-6)], which says that "Information is an element of combat power. Commanders conduct information operations (IO) to apply it." The Army here is talking about information as used in actual battle, where "information superiority" is achieved when our side knows what is going on at all times and "the adversary" does not. In another Field Manual—the "Army Counterinsurgency Field
Manual" of 2006 [FM 3-24, MCWP 3-33.5]—the concept of IO is
broadened, and in this Manual the Army leadership tells its people that
"Information operations (IO) must be aggressively employed to accomplish
the following: The objectives spelled out in these manuals are consistent not with a promotion of "truth," but rather with a desire to prevail in what has been called a "propaganda war" in South Asia which, as TIME Magazine put it last year, "the Taliban is winning." In the Pentagon's quest to "Obtain ... support for COIN operations," what we see is that information becomes simply another tool, and the value of "truth" is measured by its usefulness in "influencing perceptions." Put more bluntly, if the "truth" is seen to undermine support for the occupation, then truth must, and will, be sacrificed. And here is where we get to the essence of the Deep Propaganda that explains the entire criminal enterprise in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and wherever U.S. leaders decide that they must carry on the dirty work of policing the globe. Let's have a look at that essence. "The Inevitability and Rightness" of U.S. "Success" in Afghanistan What I call Propaganda has two levels, which I refer to as "Overt" and "Deep." Overt Propaganda is the specific thing that the propagandist is asking us to believe, while Deep Propaganda is what makes that thing believable. While Overt Propaganda tends to be specific and conscious, Deep Propaganda is usually general and unconscious. Deep Propaganda is found deep within each of us in the form of the assumptions, premises, and unwritten foundations upon which many stories and news reports rest. In terms of the corporate media, we can say that the specific facts of a specific news story are the Overt Propaganda, and the larger story into which these facts fit is the Deep Propaganda. I've been talking about the military operation in Marja, Afghanistan that was conducted in February by (mostly) U.S. troops. That offers a good example of how the two levels of Propaganda look in practice. Recall the news reports which often sounded like this one from the Los Angeles Times: "U.S. and Afghan commanders reported only scattered resistance from Taliban fighters." Let's say these reports were true. What is the larger story that gives meaning to these reports? The story preferred by the U.S. is that the Taliban are cowardly, or weak, or overwhelmed, or for whatever reason are "on the run." Thus the London Telegraph could report that the Marja operation "has been declared a success." As I have said, another story exists, which is the story of an indigenous resistance to occupation, one that utilizes guerrilla tactics. Seen through that lens the "scattered resistance" looks like a strategic retreat, one which denies the occupation forces any good shots at the targets of their offensive while allowing the resistance to survive and fight another day. In this story it is the guerrillas who can "declare a success." So we see that the same facts can be used to support very different stories. Controlling the Narrative Another word for "story" is narrative, and U.S. military propagandists speak quite freely (amongst themselves) about their desire to control the narrative that informs media reports. Recall the 2006 Counterinsurgency [COIN] Field Manual I mentioned earlier. In that manual "narrative" is defined as follows: "A narrative is an organizational scheme expressed in story form," and is "The central mechanism through which ideologies are expressed and absorbed..." On page 193 of that manual we find a section titled, "EXPLOIT A SINGLE NARRATIVE," which gives some helpful hints as to how to do so: "Higher headquarters usually establishes the COIN narrative," says the Manual, adding that, once it's established, "Company-level leaders apply the narrative gradually. They get to know local opinion makers, win their trust, and learn what motivates them. Then they build on this knowledge to find a single narrative that emphasizes the inevitability and rightness of the COIN operation's success. This is art, not science." (I beg to differ on that last point. This is pretty straightforward Public Relations theory, which I consider a science.) While there may be a "single narrative" set by "higher headquarters," that's not the end of it. There are different versions of the narrative that explain what it is, exactly, that is "inevitable and right" about "the COIN operation," and the decision as to which one to invoke will depend on the target audience. There are basically three targets for occupation propaganda: The people in the United States; the people in U.S.-allied nations; and the people who are the subjects of the COIN operation, the Afghan people. The U.S. audience is the audience whose support is most crucial for the continuation of the Global War on Terror (or whatever we're calling it these days). The Pentagon budget for "public affairs," which is what they call information aimed at U.S. audiences, comes to something like $547 million per year, says the Associated Press. For this audience the narrative that will best make the U.S. occupation seem "inevitable and right" is a narrative of self-defense against those who "threaten America and our allies," in Obama's words. The narrative that is aimed at the home audience thus emphasizes "U.S. national security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan," and focuses on "our core goal—to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually destroy extremists and their safe havens within [Afghanistan and Pakistan]," in the words of the White House's "Interagency Policy Group on U.S. Strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan." The second narrative about U.S. activities in Afghanistan is the one aimed at people in nations that are allied with the U.S. The Pentagon spends at least $489 million per year to "disseminate information to large foreign audiences through mass media," in what are known as "psychological operations," or PsyOp. The purpose is "to influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals." I've said that members of the "coalition" in Afghanistan are mostly NATO countries, and not only the Pentagon but also the CIA routinely seek to influence public opinion in those countries. The CIA's plan is to "tap into the key concerns of specific Western European audiences," focusing "on a message that [the occupation of Afghanistan] benefits Afghan civilians." Key concerns differ by country, says the CIA, so they may have to come up with different "tailored messages," such as one that "could tap into acute French concern for civilians and refugees." So we can expect to see the CIA and/or the Pentagon placing stories into the French media about how hard we try to kill only the right people, and how sorry we are when we kill the wrong people (e.g, this February 17 NY Times headline: "Marines Join in Sorrow After Afghan Casualties"). The narrative: The occupation is being carried out by good people, just trying to help, but who sometimes make mistakes. Convincing the Victims: The Afghan Audience While "company-level leaders apply the narrative gradually" to the Afghan people within their specific theaters of operation, there is a wider audience, inside of Afghanistan and in the larger non-allied world, that also needs to be targeted. A little-reported meeting concerning Afghanistan's fate was held in London back in January. High-ranking representatives of 70 nations attended the Conference—including Afghan President Hamid Karzai—and they together issued a "communiqué" that summed up the narrative intended for the Afghan audience. It spoke of a "mutual commitment" by the Afghan government and "the international community... towards helping Afghanistan emerge as a secure, prosperous, and democratic nation." And the "international community re-affirmed its support" for "upholding the security, stability and prosperity of Afghanistan." This is the message that is promoted in Afghanistan by Pentagon propagandists—and that forms the unspoken basis for many of the news stories about the occupation that we see. The London Guardian, in an August 28th 2009 article, stated the message about as simply as it can be stated, casually referring to "the U.S. message that U.S. action will ultimately improve the lives of Afghan citizens." The Army's Field Manual explains how "the U.S. message" will get to people in Afghanistan (and beyond), saying, "Command themes and messages based on policy should be distributed simultaneously or as soon as possible using all available media. Radio, television, newspapers, flyers, billboards, and the Internet are all useful dissemination means. Polling and analysis should be conducted to determine which media allow the widest dissemination of themes to the desired audiences at the local, regional, national, and international levels." Exactly how the U.S. military arranges to "use...all available media" is not addressed in this declassified document, nor should we expect it to be addressed. The Associated Press last year cited Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, director of strategic communications for the U.S. Central Command, who reminds us that "psychological operations must be secret to be effective." The "available media" used by the Pentagon is increasingly global and interdependent, blurring whatever lines may have existed in the past between foreign and domestic audiences. The same Gregory Smith, according to the AP, "says that in the 21st century, it is probably not possible to win the information battle with insurgents without exposing American citizens to secret U.S. propaganda." That's a problem, since it is technically illegal to propagandize the U.S. public. And so it is that consumers of the U.S. media see a constant stream of articles that discuss how the U.S. promotes things like "development" and "civilian capacity-building" and "a more responsible government" in Afghanistan. It will be a rare news source that will discuss other possible reasons for U.S. behavior in Afghanistan, reasons that, if widely known, would fatally erode what little political support remains for the occupation. Doubts About Kandahar If the Marja offensive has been "the largest American-led military operation in Afghanistan" so far, the next big NATO offensive, the one in Kandahar, "is expected to be the make-or-break offensive of the nearly 9-year-old war." It was scheduled to begin in June but, as the shine on the Marja offensive fades, it begins to look less and less likely that the Pentagon will be able to produce a "success" in Kandahar despite their impressive propaganda budget. Even the U.S. media is beginning to express some doubts. For instance, the McClatchy News Service (now called McClatchy-Tribune Information Services) began a May 14th article with these words: "Although it is just beginning, the U.S.-led effort to pacify the Taliban's spiritual capital [in Kandahar] already appears to be faltering. Key military operations have been delayed until the fall, efforts to improve local government are having little effect and a Taliban assassination campaign has brought a sense of dread to Kandahar's dusty streets." That sense of dread is not due only to the Taliban, apparently. The Canadian press reports that people living in Kandahar "are living in fear of a forthcoming NATO offensive planned for Kandahar and its outskirts this summer." The prospect of another major offensive by NATO and its Afghan partners is sufficiently unpopular that the U.S. has decided it might be best not to talk about it. Or, if we must talk about it, let's talk about how it will be different than the other offensives. When Afghan president Hamid Karzai was in Washington for four days earlier this month, he and the Obama administration "went to some lengths to depict a looming coalition offensive around Kandahar as not a full-fledged military assault." Those words are from a The New York Times story about the Karzai visit headlined: "Karzai and Clinton Put Different Face on Afghan Drive." Gen. McChrystal, for example, told reporters in a May 13 press conference that "We're not using the term operation or major operations [in relation to Kandahar], because that often brings to mind in people's psyche the idea of a D-Day and an H-hour and an attack. To which a well-trained reporter—don't know her name—responded "You're not using the word ‘operation,' because I know the Afghans are very sensitive about that word." (I say "well-trained" because the idea that Afghans are "sensitive" to "that word" is entirely consistent with the "U.S. message" that we are the Good Guys and any problems the Afghans have with the occupation must be the result of us not explaining ourselves well. A less-well trained journalist who entertained an alternative explanation—that Afghans are "sensitive" not about words, but about dying at the hands of an occupying army—would likely be judged unfit to question the General.) On the same day that McChrystal spoke, President Karzai told reporters that "the effort in Kandahar and the surrounding area has to be explained better, and the morality of it has to be explained better. So we are not calling it an operation." Some media apparently didn't get the memo. It was the very next day, May 14th, that Radio Free Europe reported that "The U.S.-led campaign to root out terrorist pockets in the southern city of Kandahar is expected to begin in June and last through August." And five days after that (May 19) the NY Times told the world that "Afghan leaders and NATO commanders are preparing to launch a major offensive in the southern city of Kandahar." The success of the Marjah offensive was expected to build political support for the Kandahar offensive, much as the reported success of the "surge" in Iraq has been used to propel the ongoing "surge" in Afghanistan. What to do now that the illusion of success in Marja is breaking down? The U.S. Army's social science program, the Human Terrain System, conducted a survey in Afghanistan in March that was virtually unreported in this country. Even after taking into consideration the fact that Afghans were responding to a survey conducted by an occupying army (it's not clear to me that respondents were told who was running the survey), Afghans told the poll-takers that it is "better to negotiate with the Taliban" than to "continue fighting"—94 percent said this. 85 percent said that "The Taliban are our Afghan brothers." And 81 percent said that "Most Taliban would stop fighting if given jobs." Regardless of the wishes of the Afghan people, the U.S. response appears to be to not only continue, but to escalate, the fighting, and to call it something else. A huge budget for propaganda aimed at "obtaining local, regional, and international support" for the occupation means that every attempt will be made by the U.S. to put a positive spin on the behavior of the occupation forces, in Kandahar and elsewhere. Virtually all of the reporters who are actually in Afghanistan are "embedded" with U.S. troops, and hopelessly dependent on official sources, making the job of the spinmeisters that much easier. Consistent with the pattern, the news that a milestone was reached on May 18th, when the number of USAmericans killed in Afghanistan reached 1,000, merited not a single front-page story in a major newspaper in this country. Even more telling is the fact that the number of innocent Afghans who have been killed as a result of the U.S. occupation remains largely unreported on any page, and thus largely unknown, in this country. An effective resistance to Empire requires that we challenge not only the Overt Propaganda that appears every day in the corporate media, but also the Deep Propaganda that makes those daily stories believable. If we can replace the Master Narrative—of a benevolent Superpower trying to bring democracy to a benighted world—with a democratic People's Narrative, we can begin writing a new story of resistance and human liberation. |
