-Caveat Lector-
http://www.sfgate.com/comics/meyer/archive/index.shtml
The Salt Lake Tribune Friday, February 22, 2002
Commentary
The Pentagon's 'Ministry of Truth'
BY CHRIS MATHEWS
CHICAGO TRIBUNE SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- Wasn't this "Ministry of Truth" and "War is Peace"
stuff was supposed to arrive 20 years ago?
George Orwell predicted a government stamping lies as truth and
fighting a war so endless as to assume the monotony of peace. Writing
against the early Cold War backdrop, he predicted this grim world to
arrive in 1984.
Well, worse late than never. The Orwellian fears of post-World War
II are taking form in early 21st-century Washington.
The prophesied "Ministry of Truth" is the Pentagon's new Office of
Strategic Influence.
"The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly
even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new
effort to influence public sentiment and policymakers in both friendly
and unfriendly countries, military officials said," The New York Times
reported this week.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the Pentagon is merely
doing in 2002 what countries did in past wars: fool the enemy. The
World War II allies protected the Normandy Invasion using a feint
toward Calais instead of its actual location, the Cotentin peninsula.
If that fooled the Germans, it also saved lots of American, British
and Canadian lives. We've got to be just as sneaky, Rumsfeld argues,
in fighting the terrorists and terror-backing countries today.
Is this the extent of the lies the Pentagon will tell? Tactical
stuff about operations that puts the bin Laden crowd off the trail? If
so, who could complain?
But if the new Pentagon operation goes further and pumps out big,
"strategic" lies, a mission its name clearly implies, we are crossing
a line that used to separate the good guys -- us -- from the bad guys
like Josef Goebbels.
If this new Office of Strategic Influence plans to broadcast lies
"with a global reach," to use an anti-terrorist standard of measure,
lets kill this thing before it gets going. How can we possibly win the
hearts and minds of the Islamic and Arab world with an American
propaganda mill already labeled as such by the American media?
That other feature of 1984, the notion of endless war, is more
troubling.
President Bush makes the case daily for a new kind of open-ended
conflict.
First, it was al-Qaeda we were after. Then, it was the government
in Afghanistan that protected al-Qaeda.
Next, it was the groups associated with al-Qaeda. Then, it was the
list of governments that allow such groups to reside in their country.
Then, it was the "Axis of Evil" that makes weapons and may or may not
be working with terrorist groups.
Where do we stop? How many countries are we talking about here?
The "Ministry of Truth" is a gruesome enough prospect. But, what
about the dull and throbbing reality that, as long as we are on this
Earth, the United States military will be fighting someone somewhere?
To borrow a favorite Orwellian phrase we are now bent on being "down
and out" in Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang and each and every one of
the world's other "evil" capitals for the rest of our lives. We ain't
ever coming home.
Note: Winston Smith, the hero of 1984, works at the Ministry of
Truth. His job is to "rewrite and alter" newspaper stories to conform
to government purposes. Sounds like the excellent work somebody has in
mind for the Pentagon.
© Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune
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