Norman Solomon's "War Made Easy" Documents How Presidents and Media Collude in Waging War

“War Made Easy” Documents How Presidents and Media Collude In Waging War

by Dan Bacher

Sacramento for Democracy recently hosted the Sacramento movie premiere of Norman Solomon’s “War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" at the Crest Theatre in downtown Sacramento to a big and enthusiastic crowd.

Assemblyman Mark Leno and Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, original author of AJR 36, the bill to bring the CA National Guard home from Iraq, joined Solomon for a lively panel discussion after the film. Christine Craft, who until recently hosted a progressive radio talk show host on 1240 Talk City AM, moderated the discussion.

This was the second time I had seen the film; I previously had a watched a “rough cut” of the movie during an appearance by Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan and Norman Solomon in Sacramento this spring.

The movie exposes how the corporate media and U.S. presidents over the past 50 years have been partners in propaganda and disinformation campaigns to promote a series of bloody, costly and unnecessary wars, including interventions in Vietnam, Central America, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and a host of other countries.

The film is based on Solomon’s 2005 book, “War Made Easy,” that exposes the manner in which US presidents manage to sell war, through the same fallacious and Orwellian arguments, largely with the help of a compliant media. This year the Media Education Foundation's Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp adapted Solomon's book into a documentary film.

Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable and revealing archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of one administration after another.

The movie documents, in a darkly humorous matter, how one administration after another claims that it is seeking only peace, not conflict - at the same time that they are bombing and massacring thousands of civilians. The film features very illuminating quotes from U.S. presidents about the Orwellian nature of the U.S. corporate state’s constant drive for war.

"We still seek no wider war," said President Lyndon Johnson as he proceeded to escalate a war in Vietnam that resulted in the deaths of 3 million Vietnamese and over 58,000 U.S. soldiers.

"The United States does not start fights," said President Ronald Reagan, who engineered a war of genocide against the Mayan population of Guatemala that resulted in the wiping out of 636 Mayan villages, along with military interventions in Nicaragua, El Salvador and other countries. These interventions resulted in thousands of deaths, a massive exodus of refugees and the destruction of the countries’ infrastructure,

"America does not seek conflict," argued George H.W. Bush, the engineer of Operation Desert Storm and the invasion of Panama, who was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq.

"I don't like to use military force," said Bill Clinton, who repeatedly bombed Yugoslavia and Iraq and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly children, though his campaign of economic sanctions against Iraq.

"Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly," says George W. Bush, who has advanced the notion of “preventive war” by illegally invading Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the neo-con “Project for the New American Century.”

The movie dispels the myth of the “liberal media” advanced by right wing pundits by demonstrating how news reporters and commentators, ranging from ABC News to Fox News, advance the imperial agenda, promoting endless war in a manner than Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, would be proud of.

Solomon said that when the news media finally starts entertaining the notion that the war was based on lies, it is already too late for the millions of people wounded and killed by the U.S. military.

"News media, down the road, will point out that there were lies about the Gulf of Tonkin or about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," said Solomon in the film. "But that doesn't bring back any of the people who have died. When it comes to life and death, the truth comes out too late."

Reaction to the movie was very favorable during the panel discussion. “This film should be shown in every high school in America,” said Christine Craft.

Loni Hancock commented, “The propaganda techniques to wage war have been the same throughout our history. The question is how we inoculate our children against the propaganda.”

Unfortunately, Hancock’s bill to urge the Governor to asks the president to bring CA. Guard troops home didn’t pass through the Assembly Rules Committee, due to the failure of two Democratic Assembly Members, Joe Canciamilla and Jenny Oropeza, to show up to the committee hearing.

Solomon is encouraging screenings of the film throughout the country to revive and strengthen the anti-war movement among the grass roots. “In my 40 years as a journalist and activist, I have learned that it is important to see grassroots activity as central and not as peripheral" noted Soloman.

“Norman wanted to revive the discussion of getting our CA National Guard back home where they belong,” said Bill Lachemacher of Sacramento for Democracy, in explaining the group’s reason for sponsoring the event. “I believe we need them here so they can protect us, the citizens of California, not the multi-national oil corporations in Iraq.”

As a media activist, I completely agree with Solomon's portrayal of the corporate media. Although the corporate media will at times cover local anti-war events and protests fairly, the overwhelming agenda of editorial boards, publishers and "news" department heads is to serve as propaganda agencies for the war machine and the U.S. empire. This is why it is so important to strengthen and support alternative media as an antidote to the poison and lies that spew forth constantly from the corporate media.

For more information about this excellent documentary, go to http://www.warmadeeasythemovie.org/