"‘Group-Thinking’ the World into a New War"-- Demonizing "Bad Guys"
Published on
Saturday, January 31, 2015
by
Consortium News
Group-Thinking the World into a New War
by
Robert Parry
If you wonder how the lethal group think on Iraq took shape in 2002, you might want to study whats happening today with Ukraine. A misguided consensus has grabbed hold of Official Washington and has pulled in everyone who matters and tossed out almost anyone who disagrees.
Part of the problem, in both cases, has been that neocon propagandists understand that in the modern American media the personal is the political, that is, you dont deal with the larger context of a dispute, you make it about some easily demonized figure. So, instead of understanding the complexities of Iraq, you focus on the unsavory Saddam Hussein.
This approach has been part of the neocon playbook at least since the 1980s when many of todays leading neocons such as Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan were entering government and cut their teeth as propagandists for the Reagan administration. Back then, the game was to put, say, Nicaraguas President Daniel Ortega into the demon suit, with accusations about him wearing designer glasses. Later, it was Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and then, of course, Saddam Hussein.
Instead of Americans coming to grips with the painful history of Central America, where the U.S. government has caused much of the violence and dysfunction, or in Iraq, where Western nations dont have clean hands either, the story was made personal about the demonized leader and anyone who provided a fuller context was denounced as an Ortega apologist or a Noriega apologist or a Saddam apologist.
So, American skeptics were silenced and the U.S. government got to do what it wanted without serious debate. In Iraq, for instance, the American people would have benefited from a thorough airing of the complexities of Iraqi society such as the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shiite and the potential risks of invading under the dubious rationale of WMD.
-----snip
Anyone who dares protest the unrelentingly one-sided coverage is deemed a Putin apologist or a stooge of Moscow. So, most Americans in a position to influence public knowledge but who want to stay employable stay silent, just as they did during the Iraq War stampede.
One of the ugly but sadly typical cases relates to Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen, who has been denounced by some of the usual neocon suspects for deviating from the group think that blames the entire Ukraine crisis on Putin. The New Republic, which has gotten pretty much every major issue wrong during my 37 years in Washington, smeared Cohen as Putins American toady.
Continued at........
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/31/group-thinking-world-new-war
2naSalit
(86,646 posts)the term "group-think" is coming back into use. It is such a dangerous activity that despots rely on to gain power and do evil things.
swilton
(5,069 posts)Robert Parry does an excellent job in dismantling 'group think' and especially for taking Thomas Friedman to task for leading the charge to war not just in Iraq but similarly in Ukraine. Washintonians' careers depend upon going along with the crowd. in most cases they are chicken-hawks who advocate wars as long as their offspring don't have to do the fighting.
I originally thought that just the foreign policy establishment (Defense, State, Intelligence) was politicized but the group think disease afflicts EPA, CDC, FDA, USDA, the entire establishment. It is an understatement to call it group think and to say that they are out of touch.
newthinking
(3,982 posts)Good read.
Things are only going to get dicier since both Russia and China (and South America, India, etc) are making moves toward a secondary economic system.