| Number 455 | May 11, 2010 |
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This Week: Afghanistan, Apathy, and Propaganda
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Greetings, Oh, for heaven's sake! The last issue's Editor's Note included a correction to a mistake in issue #453. This week I have to offer another correction; this one from #454. In talking about the Twins baseball stadium, I said that "naming rights" to the field were sold to Target Corporation for an estimated $125 million for 10 years. That's about $6 million per year." In fact, the exact amount on the naming rights doesn't seem to be public, and I conflated two different reports. One report said it was $125 million for multiple years, the other one said "about $6 million/year." As you see, what I finally published was a mixed-up combination of both, and incorrect in any case. Again, it doesn't change my point, but it's still incorrect, and more evidence that my lack of proofreading services is a real problem! Thanks to reader Dann for spotting this and rightly castigating me. I said in the last issue that I would explain why I am so sure that the coming offensive in Kandahar, Afghanistan would be reported as a "success." I now see that I can only begin to explain it this week. The rest of the explanation will appear in the next issue. So, there ya go. Nygaard |
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The German magazine Der Spiegel stated recently that "Obama is creating a new ‘coalition of the willing' [in Afghanistan], a term coined by his predecessor, George W. Bush, with the only difference being that Obama's choice of words is not as bleak." (It was actually coined by Bill Clinton in 1994; George W. just made it a household word in 2002 regarding Iraq.) If the force occupying Afghanistan is really a "coalition," then why, readers may wonder, do I keep referring to something called "the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan"? It will take about three paragraphs to explain. It's true that the entity occupying Afghanistan is, technically, an "international" force. In fact, the occupying force is officially known as the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. But who controls ISAF? As it turns out, ISAF is commanded by NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In addition, fully 97 percent of the ISAF troops come from NATO countries. So, then, who controls NATO? You may have guessed it: The United States. NATO was founded in 1949, officially to "maintain the security of the North Atlantic area," but it was widely understood to really be aimed at the Soviet Union. And, sure enough, a few years later (1955) the Soviet Union formed its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, which was, in turn, widely understood to be largely a response to what they perceived as the threat posed by NATO. Both the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. But NATO lives on, "kept alive and growing," as Diana Johnstone put it in a recent essay, "by entrenched economic interests, institutional inertia and an official mindset resembling paranoia, with think tanks looking around desperately for ‘threats'." Adds Johnstone, "the U.S. has long maintained "totally unshakable ... control of NATO's integrated command." This continues until the present day when, according to scholar/activist Rick Rozoff, "NATO is dominated by the United States." (Check out Rozoff's excellent blog "Stop NATO: Opposition to Global Militarism.") The U.S. has lined up a total of 46 nations to participate in this second "Coalition of the Willing." An official NATO paper of April 16 calls them "Troop Contributing Nations." The level of "contributions" by COW2 nations varies widely, ranging from Austria, which is "contributing" 3 people to the effort, up to the United Kingdom, with 9,500 troops in the country. It's worth noting that the NATO paper includes on its list of contributors the Republic of Korea, which contributes "0" troops to COW2. The bar can't be set any lower than that! But it doesn't matter, as even zero or three or nine (Luxembourg) troops provide propaganda value. The larger the "coalition," after all, the easier it is to argue that the occupation is truly supported by "the international community" and is not just a case of the United States acting like a rogue superpower. But, 46 "Troop Contributing Nations" or not, is the occupation of Afghanistan truly supported by "the international community?" Let's have a look. |
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There are at least two ways to measure the degree of "international support" for maintaining a military operation in Afghanistan. One is to count the number of "Troop Contributing Nations," which, as we've just seen, the official NATO count puts at 46 nations in all. But here's the thing about military troops: They go where they are told to go by their commanders. So the fact that these countries have troops deployed in Afghanistan tells us only one thing: It tells us which country's political leaders are willing to have their militaries coalesce with other militaries for the purposes of occupying a country in a strategic area of the world. I guess that's a kind of "international support," but it's not the only one. Another way to gauge international support for the military occupation of Afghanistan would be to ask the people in those "Troop Contributing Nations" what they think of the project. That is, do they support the decision to deploy troops to Afghanistan as ordered by their leaders? As it turns out, there have been a number of opinion polls that have probed into this highly-relevant matter. And the results are more-or-less in, and worth looking at. Let's start by identifying the top "Troop Contributing Nations" in Afghanistan and counting the number of troops they are "contributing." On April 16th NATO put out something they call, oddly enough, a "NATO-ISAF Placemat" which "sets out the approximate numbers of forces provided to ISAF by Allied and other contributing nations." From that source we can see the 12 nations that have "provided" at least 1,000 troops: USA: 62.415 troops Going by numbers of troops, these countries may be thought to be the major supporters of the occupation. But are they, really? Let's have a look at public opinion on the subject in those same countries. Shown below is the percentage of each nation's population who oppose and support their nation's troops being in Afghanistan. The surveys are worded differently, with some asking if "troops should be withdrawn" in general, or if they oppose Obama's recent commitment of more troops, or if they specifically oppose the deployment of troops from their own country. But all of them offer a rough gauge of popular support or opposition for membership in the Coalition of the Willing. There are lots of polls; in each case the numbers below come from the most recent and reliable polls I could find. Most are from November of 2009, some are from earlier in 2009, and the U.S. poll is from March 2010. USA: "Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan?"
49 percent oppose; 48 percent favor. If you do the arithmetic you'll see that, on average, about 57 percent of the populations of the top "Troop Contributing Nations," other than the U.S., oppose their country's involvement in Afghanistan, while 35 percent support it. What is the response of the U.S. government to growing opposition, both in this country and in allied countries? Are our leaders responding by re-thinking the wisdom of the ill-fated decision to militarize our response to so-called Terrorism? Or are our leaders attempting to propagandize the populations of the "Troop Contributing Nations" so that they stay out of the way as the Empire does its work? The next article gives evidence that Option 2 is the preferred option for U.S. planners. |
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At the beginning of April the whistleblower website Wikileaks published a graphic video of a US military Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad in 2007 that killed 12 civilians, including two journalists. This video has deservedly caused a sensation, as it gave a worldwide audience—including the U.S. audience—a glimpse of a major crime committed by U.S. troops in a theater of war. Something that did not cause a sensation in this country—because it was never reported—was another Wikileaks exposé of a couple of weeks earlier, this one concerning a memo detailing a CIA propaganda effort aimed at countering the growing popular opposition to other, even larger, crimes. The larger crimes to which I refer are the wars themselves. The memo released by Wikileaks gives a hint as to how U.S. leaders plan to deal with the growing opposition to the Imperial occupation, so it's worth a close look. The previous essay chronicled the high degree of public opposition to the Afghan occupation among the populations of the "willing" allies. The memo to which I refer here—released on March 26th by Wikileaks—is a "recipe for the targeted manipulation of public opinion in two NATO ally countries [Germany and France], written by the CIA." Those two countries are the third- and fourth-largest contributors of troops to the NATO effort, and opposition to the occupation in those countries ranges from 54 percent to as high as 69 percent. "The Netherlands Could Set a Precedent" The story starts with the Netherlands, which up to now has been the eighth-largest contributor of troops to Afghanistan, with about 2,000 troops there. The Dutch originally signed up in 2006 to have their troops there for two years, then extended that commitment another two years, to August of 2010. When NATO pressured the right-of-center prime minister, Jan-Peter Balkenende, to again extend the Dutch commitment in Afghanistan beyond August, "his Labour party coalition partner opposed the extension and walked out of crisis talks on Saturday [February 20], spelling the end of the government two years into its term." Those words are from the London Guardian, which added that the collapse of the Dutch government marked "the first European and NATO administration to fall because of the war in Afghanistan." Within three weeks of the collapse of the Dutch government, the CIA produced a top-secret memo about how to keep the Dutch anti-war virus from spreading. Published secretly and dated March 11, the memo bore the ungainly title "Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission—Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough." Recall that popular opposition in the Netherlands to the presence of Dutch troops in Afghanistan is running at about 58 percent. It's pretty high in Germany and France, too, as the CIA is well aware. What is saving the day at present, in the CIA's way of thinking, is public apathy. That is, while most Europeans may be opposed to their government's participation in the Afghan war, they aren't actively opposing it. And the CIA wants to keep it that way. Here's how the CIA summarizes their memo: "The fall of the Dutch Government over its troop commitment to Afghanistan demonstrates the fragility of European support for the NATO-led ISAF mission. Some NATO states, notably France and Germany, have counted on public apathy about Afghanistan to increase their contributions to the mission, but indifference might turn into active hostility if spring and summer fighting results in an upsurge in military or Afghan civilian casualties and if a Dutch-style debate spills over into other states contributing troops." They continue: "The Afghanistan mission's low public salience has allowed French and German leaders to disregard popular opposition and steadily increase their troop contributions" to ISAF. It's understood that disregard of the public is a good thing. In other words, apathy has been the savior of the NATO mission so far, but the CIA warns that "...a spike in French or German casualties or in Afghan civilian casualties could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal." The CIA, seeing all this, calls for a "strategic communication program across NATO troop contributors" to "provide a buffer if today's apathy becomes tomorrow's opposition to ISAF." This would be done for the purpose of "giving politicians greater scope to support deployments to Afghanistan" despite the opposition of their populations. All of this would be done using the propaganda technique of "tap[ping] into the key concerns of specific Western European audiences." The propaganda thus must focus "on a message that ISAF benefits Afghan civilians." "Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban," says the CIA, adding that "Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences." The London Guardian speculated that "The Netherlands could set a precedent, encouraging other European countries to get cold feet about their presence in Afghanistan." The CIA clearly believed that the Dutch crisis might be a precedent, but they weren't concerned about "cold feet." They were concerned about democracy. The memo notes that the U.S. has been lucky so far, stating that "Berlin and Paris currently maintain the third and fourth highest ISAF troop levels, despite the opposition of 80 percent of German and French respondents to increased ISAF deployments, according to INR [the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research] polling in fall 2009." It doesn't say so in the memo, but the CIA is undoubtedly aware of recent polls in the United States, such as a CNN poll from March 19-21, which asked USAmericans "Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan?" 48 percent said they favored it, while 49 percent were opposed. An Associated Press poll from last December asked the same question and found that 59 percent "oppose the war in Afghanistan," while only 39 percent "favor" it. Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a small glimpse into one plan to propagandize Europe by "tap[ping] into the key concerns of specific Western European audiences." And this needs to be done because U.S. planners know that they cannot pursue the Imperial project if public opposition becomes too strong. Now we're talking about "hearts and minds," the hearts and minds of the only folks who can put a stop to the Imperial project in Afganistan: The people of Afghanistan and the people of the United States. In the next Nygaard Notes I'll talk about the propaganda aimed at the populations in both the United States and in Afghanistan itself. |
