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• Sunday, May 11, 2008 08:42 PM

  The Larger Frame(s)

  I have always believed that the narrative of framing the War as a matter of execution of tactics is in and of itself a form of distraction and a psy-op, because it assumes the entire war on terror premise as a given. That's why Power of Nightmares, encouragingly mentioned here, cannot be shown in the US. Get the public fascinated with the tactical details and metics of execution, and that expensive technology which we have to pay other countries to take because of its dubious cost benefit, vulnerability, and inappropriateness to insurgency. Show them ribbons and for god's sake hope they never ask about the hero of the war they assassinated because he was a liberal.

  The counter to this is not to play into their hands by putting critics of tactics against the Pentagon's shills. It is to hammer on the real war of black budgets and mercenaries, Israeli spies and teenage Zionist sweetheart arms deals for dangerous junk. Sy Hersch should set the agenda, not Murdoch and Co.

  Which brings me to the second point. Glenn, we need to put a human face on "the media". The jingoist press is a few individuals, much as the British press lords. Morris points out in Pax Brittanica Trilogy, as we should, that the average Briton did not benefit from the Empire flogged by a few press lords with financial stakes. The doings of these people, not their hired help, ought to be opened up to minute examination, with particular attention to foreign ownership. Rather than CNN or ABC we ought to be talking about the biography and associations of the owners and their financial and social relationships to Neoconservative agendas.

  —The5thW Read The5thW's other letters
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