Invasion As
Marketing Problem
By Noam Chomsky
17 November, 2003
Establishment
critics of the war on Iraq restricted their comments regarding the attack
to the administration arguments they took to be seriously intended:
disarmament, deterrence, and links to terrorism.
They scarcely made
reference to liberation, democratization of the Middle East, and other
matters that would render irrelevant the weapons inspections and indeed
everything that took place at the Security Council or within governmental
domains.
The reason, perhaps,
is that they recognized that lofty rhetoric is the obligatory accompaniment
of virtually any resort to force and therefore carries no information.
The rhetoric is doubly hard to take seriously in the light of the display
of contempt for democracy that accompanied it, not to speak of the past
record and current practices.
Critics are also
aware that nothing has been heard from the present incumbents -- with
their alleged concern for Iraqi democracy -- to indicate that they have
any regrets for their previous support for Saddam Hussein (or others
like him, still continuing) nor have they shown any signs of contrition
for having helped him develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when
he really was a serious danger.
Nor has the current
leadership explained when, or why, they abandoned their 1991 view that
"the best of all worlds" would be "an iron-fisted Iraqi
junta without Saddam Hussein" that would rule as Saddam did but
not make the error of judgment in August 1990 that ruined Saddam's record.
At the time, the
incumbents' British allies were in the opposition and therefore more
free than the Thatcherites to speak out against Saddam's British-backed
crimes. Their names are noteworthy by their absence from the parliamentary
record of protests against these crimes, including Tony Blair, Jack
Straw, Geoff Hoon, and other leading figures of New Labour.
In December 2002,
Jack Straw, then foreign minister, released a dossier of Saddam's crimes.
It was drawn almost entirely from the period of firm US-UK support,
a fact overlooked with the usual display of moral integrity. The timing
and quality of the dossier raised many questions, but those aside, Straw
failed to provide an explanation for his very recent conversion to skepticism
about Saddam Hussein's good character and behavior.
When Straw was home
secretary in 2001, an Iraqi who fled to England after detention and
torture requested asylum. Straw denied his request. The Home Office
explained that Straw "is aware that Iraq, and in particular the
Iraqi security forces, would only convict and sentence a person in the
courts with the provision of proper jurisdiction," so that "you
could expect to receive a fair trial under an independent and properly
constituted judiciary."
Straw's conversion
must, then, have been rather similar to President Clinton's discovery,
sometime between September 8 and 11, 1999, that Indonesia had done some
unpleasant things in East Timor in the past twenty-five years when it
enjoyed decisive support from the US and Britain.
Attitudes toward
democracy were revealed with unusual clarity during the mobilization
for war in the fall of 2002, as it became necessary to deal somehow
with the overwhelming popular opposition.
Within the "coalition
of the willing," the US public was at least partially controlled
by the propaganda campaign unleashed in September. In Britain, the population
was split roughly fifty-fifty on the war, but the government maintained
the stance of "junior partner" it had accepted reluctantly
after World War II and had kept to even in the face of the contemptuous
dismissal of British concerns by US leaders at moments when the country's
very survival was at stake.
Outside the two
full members of the coalition, problems were more serious. In the two
major European countries, Germany and France, the official government
stands corresponded to the views of the large majority of their populations,
which unequivocally opposed the war. That led to bitter condemnation
by Washington and many commentators.
Donald Rumsfeld
dismissed the offending nations as just the "Old Europe,"
of no concern because of their reluctance to toe Washington's line.
The "New Europe" is symbolized by Italy, whose prime minister,
Silvio Berlusconi, was visiting the White House. It was, evidently,
unproblematic that public opinion in Italy was overwhelmingly opposed
to the war.
The governments
of Old and New Europe were distinguished by a simple criterion: a government
joined Old Europe in its iniquity if and only if it took the same position
as the vast majority of its population and refused to follow orders
from Washington.
Recall that the
self-appointed rulers of the world -- Bush, Powell, and the rest --
had declared forthrightly that they intended to carry out their war
whether or not the United Nations (UN) or anyone else "catches
up" and "becomes relevant." Old Europe, mired in irrelevance,
did not catch up. Neither did New Europe, at least if people are part
of their countries.
Poll results available
from Gallup International, as well as local sources for most of Europe,
West and East, showed that support for a war carried out "unilaterally
by America and its allies" did not rise above 11 percent in any
country. Support for a war if mandated by the UN ranged from 13 percent
(Spain) to 51 percent (Netherlands).
Particularly interesting
are the eight countries whose leaders declared themselves to be the
New Europe, to much acclaim for their courage and integrity. Their declaration
took the form of a statement calling on the Security Council to ensure
"full compliance with its resolutions," without specifying
the means.
Their announcement
threatened "to isolate the Germans and French," the press
reported triumphantly, though the positions of New and Old Europe were
in fact scarcely different. To ensure that Germany and France would
be "isolated," they were not invited to sign the bold pronouncement
of New Europe -- apparently for fear that they would do so, it was later
quietly indicated.
The standard interpretation
is that the exciting and promising New Europe stood behind Washington,
thus demonstrating that "many Europeans supported the United States'
view, even if France and Germany did not."
Who were these "many
Europeans"? Checking polls, we find that in New Europe, opposition
to "the United States' view" was for the most part even higher
than in France and Germany, particularly in Italy and Spain, which were
singled out for praise for their leadership of New Europe.
Happily for Washington,
former communist countries too joined New Europe. Within them, support
for the "United States' view," as defined by Powell -- namely,
war by the "coalition of the willing" without UN authorization
-- ranged from 4 percent (Macedonia) to 11 percent (Romania).
Support for a war
even with a UN mandate was also very low. Latvia's former foreign minister
explained that we have to "salute and shout, 'Yes sir.' . . . We
have to please America no matter what the cost."
In brief, in journals
that regard democracy as a significant value, headlines would have read
that Old Europe in fact included the vast majority of Europeans, East
and West, while New Europe consisted of a few leaders who chose to line
up (ambiguously) with Washington, disregarding the overwhelming opinion
of their own populations.
But actual reporting
was mostly scattered and oblique, depicting opposition to the war as
a marketing problem for Washington.
Toward the liberal
end of the spectrum, Richard Holbrooke stressed the "very important
point [that] if you add up the population of [the eight countries of
the original New Europe], it was larger than the population of those
countries not signing the letter." True enough, though something
is omitted: the populations were overwhelmingly opposed to the war,
mostly even more so than in those countries dismissed as Old Europe.
At the other extreme
of the spectrum, the editors of the Wall Street Journal applauded the
statement of the eight original signers for "exposing as fraudulent
the conventional wisdom that France and Germany speak for all of Europe,
and that all of Europe is now anti-American."
The eight honorable
New European leaders showed that "the views of the Continent's
pro-American majority weren't being heard," apart from the editorial
pages of the Journal, now vindicated. The editors blasted the media
to their "left" -- a rather substantial segment -- which "peddled
as true" the ridiculous idea that France and Germany spoke for
Europe, when they were clearly a pitiful minority, and peddled these
lies "because they served the political purposes of those, both
in Europe and America, who oppose President Bush on Iraq."
This conclusion
does hold if we exclude Europeans from Europe, rejecting the radical
left doctrine that people have some kind of role in democratic societies.