This Week: The Pledge Drive Heats Up

AND

Propaganda from Afghanistan; Reporting on War Crimes – Parts 2 and 3

"Quote" of the Week

Propaganda from Afghanistan Part 2: Quibbling

Propaganda from Afghanistan Part 3: Obscure the Issue, Blame the Enemy

Greetings,

This week the Propaganda from Afghanistan series continues, and I didn't have room for all of Part Three. So, the second part of the third part will appear next week. How confusing! For those of you who read Nygaard Notes in email form, or online, you may not appreciate the fact that every edition of Nygaard Notes also appears in paper form that gets mailed through the U.S. Postal Service. That's why every issue is either 2,000 words long or (when a double issue) 3,500 words long. Back in the early days the length of each issue would vary wildly, depending on time and mood.

Anyhow, enough of the nostalgia! Let's get back to looking at the issue of Propaganda. And here's a little clarifying note for those of you who notice things like capital letters. Sometimes Nygaard Notes capitalizes the word Propaganda and sometimes it doesn't. Why is that? When I refer to propaganda as most people use it—that is, as a conscious incident, or campaign of trying to influence the public—it has a small "p." When it refers to Propaganda as I define it—which is a larger system that takes in all of the specific incidents and which shapes virtually all of the information that we receive through various official and commercial channels—then it gets capitalized.

New readers: Please send in your Pledge TODAY! Thanks,

Nygaard

PLEASE SEND IN YOUR PLEDGE OF SUPPORT TODAY
We haven't reached the goal yet of FIVE new Pledgers.

PLEASE SEND IN YOUR PLEDGE OF SUPPORT TODAY
Nygaard Notes has NO advertising, NO grant money, NO public money. Only YOU.

PLEASE SEND IN YOUR PLEDGE OF SUPPORT TODAY
I would very much like to reach this VERY MODEST goal by the end of July – or sooner!

Many of you have already renewed your Nygaard Notes pledge for 2009. I am really grateful to you. I couldn't do this without you!

Some of you have taken a hiatus due to unemployment, reduced earnings, or general tough times. I totally understand, and I know you'll make a Pledge when you are able.

But I really need some of you who have NEVER made a Pledge to step up at this time and fill in the gaps left by those who can't step up in 2009. I hear from many of you, and you tell me that you find the Notes useful, that you find information, humor, even wisdom in these pages that you don't find elsewhere. Readers tell me that "I read the newspapers differently after I read Nygaard Notes." I know you forward the Notes to friends and family, and that you print it out and take it to work, or to church, or to wherever you go to encourage people to get active.

If you have had any of these thoughts, or done any of these things, then the ONLY other thing you need to do in order to keep this project going at the level to which you are accustomed is to...

MAKE A PLEDGE OF SUPPORT! NOW! MAIL IT, USE YOUR CREDIT CARD, DELIVER IT IN PERSON!

Send a check through the mail, payable to "NYGAARD NOTES" at

NYGAARD NOTES
P.O. Box 14354
Minneapolis, MN 55414.

Donate electronically by going to the NYGAARD NOTES website at http://www.nygaardnotes.org/ Or...

If you know where the office is, or if you see me at an event or on the street, I take cash or check.

As soon as FIVE new Pledges are received, I will stop bugging everybody and get back to the "regular" Nygaard Notes. The sooner the better – it's up to YOU!

"Quote" of the Week:

A July 2nd press release from the large and respectable International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) began with these words:

"Life on Earth is under serious threat."

This statement was released to accompany the latest edition of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The authors explained the alarming statement above by saying, in part, that "a minimum of 16,928 species are threatened with extinction. Considering that only 2.7 percent of the 1.8 million described species have been analyzed, this number is a gross underestimate, but it does provide a useful snapshot of what is happening to all forms of life on Earth."

And, adds IUCN, "All the plants and animals that make up Earth's amazing wildlife have a specific role and contribute to essentials like food, medicine, oxygen, pure water, crop pollination, carbon storage and soil fertilization. Economies are utterly dependent on species diversity. We need them all, in large numbers. We quite literally cannot afford to lose them."

The report failed to make the front page of a single U.S. newspaper. (Only four newspapers bothered to even mention the release.) To learn more, go to the IUCN website and click on "Wildlife crisis worse than economic crisis – IUCN" Or, you could just read the full 184-page report in PDF format by pasting this address into your web browser: http://data.iucn.org/dbtw-wpd/edocs/RL-2009-001.pdf

Propaganda from Afghanistan Part 2: Quibbling

The first goal of Propaganda is to get the public to affirmatively support U.S. policies and actions. When that is not possible, the second-best thing is to get people to be passive, which can be achieved by a number of means, including inducing confusion, inducing cynicism, or simply by getting people to believe that they do not, and cannot, know what is really happening. "Leave it to our leaders, they know best!"

In the passivity-inducing category we see Propaganda Option #2, which comes into play if the propagandists perceive that nobody is buying Option #1, which you'll recall is the complete denial of the killing of innocents by "allied" forces. Option #2 is to quibble about the numbers. "We didn't kill 10, we only killed 5!" Part of the effect of this quibbling—maybe it's the intent—is to get people to be suspicious of any and all reports of bad things done by "The Good Guys."

The best example of quibbling has occurred in the past couple of months, in the wake of a massive U.S. attack in Western Afghanistan on May 4th that killed.... well, the dispute about how many were killed is exactly what I'm talking about. This attack has been reported so broadly that I'll use a "headlines-only" approach. Here are some typical headlines that appeared in the wake of the May 4 incident, in chronological order:

Associated Press (AP) May 5: "Afghans Allege Dozens of Civilian Deaths"

Voice of America May 6: "US Commander: Afghan Civilian Casualties Not from US Forces" (Lead paragraph: "The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan said he has a ‘distinctly different' version of the incident..." Different than the version given by witnesses and victims, he means.)

AP May 7: "Afghan Official: 147 Dead in Fighting" (other reports say "more than 100")

Grand Rapids (Mich) Press May 9: "U.S. Calls 147 Deaths ‘Over-exaggerated'"

AP May 9: "US Denies 147 Civilians Killed in Afghan Violence" (Lead Quibble: "The U.S. military does not contest that civilians died but called ‘extremely over-exaggerated' a report by an Afghan official that as many as 147 were killed."

AP May 9: "US Report Blames Taliban for Civilian Deaths"

AP May 20: "US Disputes Afghan Casualty Figures" (US: "between 20 and 30 civilians and about 60 insurgents")

New York Times May 21: "U.S. Counts Civilian Toll At Far Below Afghan Tally"

LAT May 21: "Afghan Deaths Still in Dispute; the U.S. Military Now Says Airstrikes this Month May Have Killed 20 to 30 Civilians. Kabul Says 140 Died."

The previous record for number of innocents killed by the "Good Guys" in Afghanistan was an attack on August 22nd 2008. As in the May 2009 case, the exact number is disputed, but witnesses and UN investigators came up with some pretty big numbers. Have a look at some more headlines:

NY Times August 24, 2008: "Afghan President Assails U.S.-Led Airstrike That He Says Killed 95."

AP August 30th: "Joint Afghan-US-UN Probe Launched into Deadly Raid."

Facts on File, August 28: "Afghanistan; U.N. Report: 90 Civilians Killed in U.S. Strike"

AP September 2: "US Probe Finds Fewer Afghan Deaths than UN Claimed"

A brief companion piece to that last story summarized the two versions of results of the joint investigation. Headlined "UN, US Reports on Civilian Deaths in Afghan Raid," it said: "REPORT BY U.N. INVESTIGATORS: ‘Convincing evidence' based on testimony of eyewitnesses indicated 90 civilians killed: 60 children, 15 women and 15 men." And then it said: "REPORT OF U.S. MILITARY INQUIRY: 30 to 35 Taliban militants killed, including known commander, Mullah Sadiq. Five to seven civilians killed."

Despite the quibbling, many voters in the U.S. are bound to believe that at least some innocent people in Afghanistan are being killed by U.S. forces. What's a propagandist to do then? Well, that's where Afghanistan War Propaganda Option #3 comes in, as I explain in the next essay.

Propaganda from Afghanistan Part 3: Obscure the Issue, Blame the Enemy

"Deep Propaganda" is the Nygaard Notes term for the big ideas that form the basis for other, smaller ideas. Deep Propaganda is the foundation upon which Overt Propaganda rests.

Permeating the official presentation of the U.S. occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan is a widely-held Deep Propaganda idea. And that is the idea that the U.S. forces are "good" and the enemy is "evil." Once one accepts this idea, then any claim that U.S. forces are killing innocent people can be placed by the propagandist into the following context:

The U.S. military is eager to help the people of [name the country]. However, the enemy's propaganda has succeeded in getting these people to be resentful and bitter toward their military helpers. No one who hasn't actually been there knows what is going on. So, in order to know what is going on, we have to rely on the Good Guys who are there.

We can see this dynamic at work in a March 2nd Washington Post story from Afghanistan, which referred to the "wide gulf... between the resentful residents and the eager-to-help soldiers..."

Media workers in the U.S. cling so tenaciously to the Deep Propaganda that U.S. forces are the Good Guys that it appears to be literally impossible for many of them to believe that U.S. forces may actually be killing innocent people on a regular basis. Still, these reports keep coming in, complete with eyewitnesses and official corroboration. How can this be explained? It's Bad Guy Propaganda!

In many of these incidents, as reporters acknowledge, there is no way to know what actually happened. The U.S. officials upon which U.S. journalists typically rely don't know, either, but whatever is happening, they tell reporters, we can trust that they would never intentionally kill anyone who is innocent. So, they logically argue, any reports to the contrary must be due to enemy propaganda. (It's extremely rare to see a reference to U.S. propaganda, other than in stories about the U.S. defending itself against a Taliban "propaganda war.") Consider the following five examples:

1. The general point was made on February 27th by the Associated Press (AP). In a story headlined "Afghans Protest Alleged NATO Gunshots in Mosque," the AP noted the accounts of the two sides, the victims and the perpetrators, and assigned equal credibility to each. "It is often difficult in Afghanistan's turbulent south," the AP opined in what was purportedly a news story, "to separate actual incidents from Taliban propaganda..." Or, they might have added, from U.S. propaganda.

2. On June 15th the AP ran a story headlined "Pentagon Struggling to Explain Bombing Incident," in reference to the killing of 140 civilians (or a fraction of that total, according to U.S. officials) by U.S. airstrikes on May 4th. The AP stated that "U.S. officials have acknowledged, however, that actual casualty numbers may never be known because bodies were buried before the investigation and because of Taliban propaganda."

3. A story in the "Style" section of The Washington Post on February 18th bemoaned "Taliban propaganda that portrays Western soldiers as occupiers." Imagine that.

4. A McClatchy News Service story on February 17th was headlined "Embittered Afghans Blame U.S. for Civilian Deaths," and quoted unnamed "officials" who "say that the Taliban have manipulated the issue of civilian casualties to the point that the truth matters less than perception. Even when militants are killed, Afghans often choose to believe Taliban propaganda that the international forces are killing only civilians."

One such person who believes this, according to the story, is a man named Ghazi Gul who, along with "others from his village of Galoch. . . blame the U.S." for a January 24th raid that killed 16 people. "They say that ... only civilians were killed. Afghan officials also say the dead were all civilians." There's that propaganda again, backed up by those pesky witnesses.

5. The March 2nd Washington Post story that I mentioned in the first paragraph was headlined "Tactical Success, Strategic Defeat; Afghan Outrage at U.S. Raid Highlights Challenges Facing New Military Push." The article told of a midnight raid on February 20th in which U.S. soldiers "surrounded a mud-walled compound, shouting commands, and then kicked down the gate as cries of protest erupted within." Soon, "shots were fired and a man inside fell dead. Four other men were grabbed and arrested. Then the soldiers departed, leaving the women to calm the frightened children and the rumors to spread in the dark."

"Tactically," said the Post, the raid "was a success. U.S. military officials said the dead man and an accomplice now in custody were bombmakers." But "Strategically. . . the incident was a disaster," due to the "version" of the event that was "colored by villagers' grief and anger, possibly twisted by Taliban propaganda and magnified by the growing influence of independent Afghan TV."

The Post went on to cite U.S. Lt. Col. Daniel Goldthorpe, who "acknowledged that the fallout from the raid in Bagh-i-Soltan was a surprising setback for the U.S. forces' image here... But he attributed the public unrest to superior Taliban propaganda efforts and strongly denied that any misconduct occurred during the raid."

In this story we have layers of explanations for an incident seen as a "strategic disaster:" Not only do we have the grief and anger of the victims, plus "independent" media in the partially-occupied country, but also the "possible" twisting of the whole story by "Taliban propaganda" which is "superior" to something, presumably U.S. propaganda, which is never called propaganda.

Another variation on the Blame The Enemy option is to admit that U.S. forces did kill innocent people, but then to insist that the enemy made us do it. We'll pick up there next week.