Message force multipliers

Nice expose in today’s NYT on the links between the US media networks so-called “independent” military analysts (almost all ex-mil) and Rumsfeld’s Dept of Defense. Wading through thousands of pages of declassified documents, NYT reporters have found that these independent analysts were given extraordinary access to top officials (right up to Rumsfeld), access to top secret material, and flown to military facilities. More damningly still, the independent analysts collaborated - and “collaborared” is precisely the right word - with DOD officials in producing talking points they could use to respond on the air to criticisms of DOD policy on GWOT and Iraq. Not very independent that.

The NYT also offers a fine interactive case study of these “message force multipliers” (as the DOD called them) in action, in neutralising the revolt of the generals in the Spring of 2006.

So often we in KOW fret about the appalling job that the British govt is doing in explaining our purpose in Afghanistan. We worry that the Taliban are far more agile, and hence effective, in the media war than ISAF. And yet, surely there is a right way and a wrong way to sell a war to the public. Nothing wrong with a bit of propaganda: the govt sells all manner of domestic policy problems. But civil society must be allowed to provide independent criticism of govt programmes. And especially when it comes to war, the public have a right to expect debate. Alastair Campbell missed this crucial point, when he complained that the British media were siding with the Serbs in the Kosovo War.

Likewise Rumsfeld, when he went one step further in deploying his message force multipliers. In so doing, he denied the American public a fair shake of the dice. Hardly surprising perhaps, for a man who makes light of the US constitution (as he explicitly does in the minutes of a meeting w/ his message force multipliers).

Post 9/11 is often compared to post-WII, in terms of being a transformative time in US foreign policy. In the 1940s-1950s, America had giants of men leading the country - FDR, Truman and Ike. We’ve had Bush Jr. since 2001. And within the administration in the early Cold War period were men of great judgment and integrity - like Acheson, Marshall, and Dulles. Men able to make tough choices without compromising the constitution or the values of liberal democracy. Under Bush, DOD won over State, and Rumsfeld and Cheney have been calling the shots: this is the crowd that brought us redition, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib, as well as spying on Americans in America.* Am I the only one to think that these past seven years, we’ve been lumbered with the B team.

* On this, the magazine in Saturday’s Guardian had a fascinating extract from Philippe Sand’s new book, Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty and the Compromise of Law.