Hijacking Catastrophe
The Wolfowitz doctrine, which George W. Bush has made into official U.S. foreign policy, envisions a “New American Century” of one world, under God [as Christian fundamentalists view him], indivisible from the One Superpower, with liberty and justice for all who are for us (not for those against us). Pre-emptive war is now an accepted military strategy, having been tested in Iraq.
Conspiracy theorists have to look no further than documents written by the neoconservative group who have spent the last twenty years putting their plans for a New World Order into place. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz have worked in the executive branch since Ronald Reagan appointed them in the 1980s, with an eight year break during the Clinton era. They haven’t been totally secretive about their goals, inasmuch as they have managed to recreate mainstream talk radio, cable TV news, and the Republican party in their own image. Why cover up their plans, when the American voter can be convinced to adopt them through the likes of skilled propagandists such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Oliver North, Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch, Tom Delay, and Karl Rove?
Documents written long before September 11, 2001 reveal regime change in Iraq as a critical first step towards this New American Century of global dominance. One document warns that such radical changes in U.S. foreign policy would be hard to bring about quickly, unless an unforeseen catastrophe presented an opportunity. A year after that was written, the events of 9/11 provided just the right opportunity.
The rhetoric about the so-called “changed world,” assuring Americans that there’s no going back to the days before Terrorism struck citizens on U. S. soil, was aimed at getting the world to brace itself for dramatic new changes. Within two years, Iraq had been invaded, Saddam was soon to be captured, and the world had been polarized into those nations who were “with us,” and those not cooperating with our plans who thus were demonized as “against us,” and as those who help terrorists.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, a previous war-time president taught us. That lesson is being forgotten, as the neocons replace it with terror alerts, escalation of the perception of threat beyond the middle east to the entire globe, and a reluctance to ever declare the war on terror over. Fear and secrecy have become the chief tools used to manipulate public opinion and keep the neocon agenda hidden.
Not even the administration of Richard Nixon, famous for his hatred of the press and borderline paranoid devotion to secretiveness, can match George W. Bush’s use of the cloak of confidentiality. Using “national security” as an excuse for avoiding accountability is not a newfound flaw of the power of the presidency, but it has risen to new heights in the Bush White House.
“Shock and Awe” as a military doctrine was authored in 1996 by the National Defense University. The basis of this doctrine is massive, sudden force, the kind which inflicts “deep psychological injury” in order to “scare and terrorize potential rivals into submission.” The use of a bombing campaign to open the Iraq war in 2003 was designed to be seen by the entire world, not simply to make Saddam Hussein tremble. Coupled with the aggressive speeches by Bush and Cheney which inevitably bounced around the media echo chamber, the world quickly got the picture: if the U. S. wants to control you, we will stop at nothing to force ourselves onto you.
Worldwide protests attempting to prevent the war went unnoticed and unanswered by the belligerent new Superpower’s commander-in-chief, flush with the adoration of the American conservative media. Protests against war soon gave way to a new anti-Americanism across the globe. It became clear that this presidency was not listening to any voices except its own. The world settled down to wait, thanking God for constitutional term limits, and praying for relief.
The high priests of cable media delivered wartime images to the worshiping masses, views of weaponry, stories of victories and heroism, the play-by-play in the style of sportscasters narrating a story crafted to pull the watchers into line unquestioningly behind their leader’s decisions. Patriotism became the highest goal; doubts about the wisdom or morality of American actions would never be allowed anywhere near the official nationwide conversation about war which was controlled by a conservative media parroting the press releases of the neoconservative overlords.
The advertising and public relations industries of our current age—the age of the 24 hour news cycle, of podcasts, infomercials, edutainment, weblogs, and pop-up ads—have matured far beyond what they could do for Adolf Hitler’s right hand man, Hermann Goering. At the Nuremburg tribunal which found him guilty of war crimes, Goering said,
“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
The industry then its infancy enabled Hitler to convince the otherwise good and intelligent people of the German homeland that they must fall in step with their leader to bring about a new fascist world order. And they did. Waving their flag patriotically, tearfully singing anthems, celebrating German leaders and thinkers of the past, they began to feel it was their destiny to become a superpower in the world.
The American public is being subjected to highly developed psychological manipulation in the form of a new union of the media, multi-national corporations, and neoconservative politicians. Patriotism is being elevated to the level of religious sacredness, and anti-corporate sentiments are as taboo as Communism was fifty years ago.
From the more than 725 US military installations outside our national borders, the message pours forth every day: It’s America’s turn to have a world empire.
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Sources:
Hijacking Catastrophe, a film by Jeremy Earp and Sut Jhally and the Media Education Foundation (mediaed.org).
Sorrows of Empire, by Chalmers Johnson.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/