The big lie, here at home

It has been noted that no nation’s inhabitants everbelieve that they have started a war, at least not untilconsiderably after the fact.

In 1898, public support for the Spanish-American War wasachieved in the United States by the direct accusation that theexplosion of the battleship Maine was the work of Spanish agents.It seemed to make no difference that this accusation made nological sense whatsoever. The Spanish government had nothing togain and, in fact, had a great deal to lose by doing anything toirk the Americans.

The explosion was almost certainly an accident and if, in fact,people were involved then the perpetrators would surely have beenrogue terrorists following their own agenda.

Despite the pleas of many notable Americans who urged theirfellow citizens to listen to reason, the public fell behind thewar, urged on by a vapid and jingoist corporate press.

The Spaniards put up a fight, but their imperial days were longover, and after the ensuing violence, the United States duly took aposition of prominence among the great imperialist powers.

American history is riddled with this sort of thing. Sometimesthe nation was drawn into a full-scale war, such as in the aboveexample and some others.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to dramatically increasedAmerican involvement in Vietnam, is probably the most notorious.Other occasions didn’t go as far, but the deception was stillessentially the same.

It seems like history is repeating itself, inexorably andhorrifyingly. According to a Washington Post poll released lastweek, it seems that some 69 percent of Americans believe thatSaddam Hussein was somehow involved in the terrorist attacks ofSept. 11, 2001.

Polls such as this are always a little suspect, but in anyevent, this is a completely ridiculous figure.

The Post also acknowledged that there was no evidence of such alink, and it quoted Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitzadmitting as much.

If it’s been said once, it’s been said a thousandtimes: Saddam Hussein was a secular ruler. Despite all the horriblethings he did during his fascist reign, it’s highly importantto remember that he was not a religious fundamentalist of any sort.Islamic fundamentalists were among those who suffered from histyranny, and in return, Saddam was execrated throughout theregion.

During the 1980s, the theocratic government of Iran took toreferring to the United States as the “Great Satan,”but there were also several “Lesser Satans,” includingFrance, Israel and Saddam Hussein. When the attacks came on theUnited States in September 2001, Saddam was certainly shedding notears for the United States, but it’s safe to say that hedidn’t feel too badly about anything that happened to themembers of al-Qaida, who routinely damned him as a “falsegod.”

Right after the attacks, surveys indicated that hardly anyone inthe United States believed that Saddam was responsible. Over themonths that followed, however, the Bush administration beganrepeatedly insinuating, and in some cases stating directly, thatthere was some connection between Osama bin Laden and SaddamHussein. One thing led to another, until the poll numbers startedto look something like they do today.

Saddam was despised virtually worldwide, nowhere more so thanamong his neighbors, but it seemed obvious almost everywhere but inthe United States that he had neither the capacity nor the desireto attack any of his neighbors, let alone the United States.

In case anyone still doubts the servile and quiescent nature ofour so-called “liberal media,” keep in mind that theyhave had ample opportunity to challenge the Bush administration onthese lies and largely chose not to do so.

The portent is, in a word, ominous. When people in other FirstWorld countries (and even in some of the freer places in the ThirdWorld) saw articles in the New York Times that featured quotes fromAmericans claiming that they were willing to go to war because they”remembered 9/11,” they could conclude that Americanswere either so racist as to blame anybody Arab or Muslim for theattacks, or that the United States was so awash in propaganda thatthe public was severely, if not hopelessly, confused. The secondconclusion is much more accurate, but not much moreencouraging.