Manufacturing consent on Iraq

There are many things I disagree with Noam Chomsky about. I'll say that by way of prelude. Yet it's beyond me to devise easy ripostes to questions posed by a mind so labyrinthine, so brilliant, so retentive. I think he may be one of those geniuses who lose all sense of context when they're talking about the everyday world. In his war against hypocrisy, in his determination to apply absolutely uniform rules to any nation or people under consideration, he reaches jarring conclusions that don't seem to jibe with common sense. "The United States is the world's greatest sponsor of state-supported terrorism." That kind of thing. In the terms he discusses, accepting his definitions and the intellectually arid conditions of his analysis, you can see how he gets there. His unflinching radicalism (reminiscent of Trotsky) permits no other conclusion.

Yet his analysis suggests the creation of a world that actual humans could never sustain. He seems terribly impatient with human foibles, and rejects reality, which is that we're always accepting one evil in the hope of avoiding a greater one. Unquestionably, the United States does bad things, and shares this proclivity with other powerful nations in world history. Yet overall, it's probably true that the USA commits evil-doing in the pursuit of living standards that the world community, in general, considers desirable and good, which is why world opinion (until Bush) cut us so much slack. Much more than Noam Chomsky cuts us.

I don't know if his view is Utopian, precisely, because I've never been able to descry what he really proposes as a way people should organize themselves politically and socially. He seems to say everything is bad, all polities are flawed, but that certain places (East Timor, Nicaragua, etc.) achieve a kind of temporary virtue on their way from subjugation toward social maturity. I think what he's really saying (whether he ever says it or not) is that human beings are bad news, and in this (ultimately trivial) observation he has a great deal of philosophical company. We know that, Noam; how many more books do you need to write reminding us?

Yet on his way to describing the corrupt senescence of an old body politic like the United States, he sometimes illuminates our predicament with lightning bolt brilliance. I think it's fair to say that it was Chomsky who first pointed out the illusion of believing that the mass media were "value neutral." The mass media, which shape political discourse and set the parameters of "acceptable alternatives," are owned by large corporate organizations with a vested interest in a certain kind of pro-business status quo. There is only so much time and space to discuss the political landscape, and stories are chosen, edited and presented based on such factors as entertainment value and the ways in which they fit into a narrative which serves the business interests of the medium presenting them. Information is owned by a relative handful of large business organizations in the United States. They don't broadcast just anything. They are not dedicated in some idealistic way to the dissemination of any and all opinions, as if free speech were their first and only priority. Not at all.

The limitations of the narrative, thus defined, Chomsky called "manufacturing consent." These limitations establish the bandwidth of acceptable discourse. "Responsible" opinion-makers cannot venture outside these boundaries. In the case of Iraq, we have a playing field which has a right hand boundary defined by Bush's determination to keep pouring men and money into the middle of Iraq's disintegrating Hell. The left hand boundary is marked by Congress, which by a certain majority prefers to express its "disagreement" with Bush's ideas through "nonbinding resolutions," which is a way to do absolutely nothing while appearing to be powerful.

That's it. There's your government in action, and it makes you, really, somewhat more sympathetic to Chomsky, when you're done thinking about it, than when you began. You share his frustration and rage. Within this manufactured debate are certain "truths" which are considered self-evident, but which are not only not self-evident but are not true at all. These include the following illusions:

1. Iraq's "failure" would result from an American withdrawal.
2. The suspension of funding for the war would leave American troops helplessly trapped in Baghdad.
3. America's enemies would be emboldened by America's "defeat."

These statements are all unequivocally false. They are used by both sides of the "debate" in order to avoid discussing reality. America's presence in Iraq at this point is solely to ensure disproportionate access to Iraq's huge oil reserves, and to satisy the insatiable desire of American business for the spoils of war. This, however, cannot be openly discussed, for it is the hidden agenda of the business conglomerations who control Congress, the President and the mass media.

The truth is that the disintegration of Iraq followed immediately from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It was a tripartite schism waiting to happen, and when Bush declared "Mission Accomplished!" he was almost right. Full accomplishment had to await the capture of Saddam, at which point the deal was done. Iraq as a coherent state was finished. It had "failed." This was not foreseen by the Bush Administration because they don't read books or understand history.

Cutting off funding for the war, which is Congress's clear and immediate responsibility, would not result in U.S. casualties. It would at first reduce them, then eliminate them altogether. The oft-repeated misrepresentation to the contrary, by the likes of La Diva, Mr. Mumbles and now Dianne Feinstein, is to create the impression that their pro-war proclivities (which serve, in Feinstein's case, her military contracting constituency in California) are in some way inevitable or the result of statesmanship. For the next two years, Bush has asked for $245 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, above and beyond the basic Pentagon budget, for which he also asks an 11% increase. Say no to these supplements, Congress. Tell Bush he can use the Pentagon budget to extract the troops.

Finally, the Muslim world understands much better than the typical American viewer of "Survivor" or "American Idol" why Iraq disintegrated, because the Muslim world knows why sectarian violence exists in Iraq. The USA's persistence in believing that Iraq's factions can be held together by an army simply demonstrates that America is stupid, willfully ignorant, or completely corrupted by its lust for oil. Leaving Iraq would offer evidence that we learned something, and would tend to quell anti-American hostility caused by the presence of an occupying force.

A few Senators and Representatives who operate outside the boundaries of manufactured consent will point these things out (Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold). They will not carry the day. Bush will escalate, the Congress will "disagree," and the war will go on, while the cash registers ring and the latest abduction in Aruba occupies center stage.