Far too many people are unclear on the concept of propaganda. In their minds, propaganda is equated with intentional lies spread by governments. This is wrong. From Merriam-Webster we learn that propaganda is:

2 : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3 : ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect

Propaganda is not a problem, it is what that propaganda is used for that is a problem.

So, when the Left villifies the use of propaganda in furthering the goal of winning the war in Iraq, they are a) unaware of how to use the term properly, b) unaware that all armies--by definition--must engage in the spread of propaganda because facts are meaningless without some context, c) are hypocritically comfortable with a Marine killing a terrorist but not with a Marine paying a newspaper to say that the terrorist is bad, or d) are only comfortable when propaganda is prepared by them--in which case they don't believe the propaganda is really propaganda, because we all know that the objective truth is whatever the Left says it is--in which case we return to (a) since this means that they are unclear on the definition of propaganda.

Earlier today a Leftist reader e-mailed me a story from the L.A. Times which claims the U.S. pays Iraqi newspapers to publish stories favorable to the U.S. By definition this is propaganda. What is vexing, though, is why any one would have any objections to this unless they are making any of mistakes a-d listed above?

Jeff Goldstein is always a good man to go to in a pinch when semantics are at issue.

I’m not so sure I see “largely factual” pro-American “propaganda” as too much of a problem if it helps to burnish the image of Americans in the eyes of skeptical Iraqis long under the boot heel of a tyranical dictator—and in doing so, helps save soldiers lives and expedites the victory on the ground and the establishment of a strong and viable Iraqi government.

Also, it bears noting here the the US military is working with willing Iraqi newspapers in an effort to thwart the insurgency by defeating them not just on the battlefield, but in the sphere of public perception.

Questions: have we used these same techniques in other wars? Certainly. Should we? Absolutely—particularly if it could save US soldiers’ lives and help end the insurgency. [READ THE REST]

Except, of course, the news isn't "fake." Biased? Yes, but it's supposed to be - it's part of the propaganda campaign. Propaganda is important in any war, but it's vital in a media war.

That's not fascism; that's fighting a battle where no one gets shot at and no one gets killed.

What made the Nazi propaganda of Josef Goebells and Tokyo Rose so wrong (and why both were legitimate military targets) was not that it was propaganda but that it was propaganda meant to undermine the victory of the United States millitary.

Propaganda is a weapon in war. When any weapon is in the hands of our military, it is an asset. Weapons are bad only when they are in the hands of the enemy.

Which makes one wonder why Leftists, so-called 'moderates', or even some on the Right, would consider a weapon in the hands of the U.S. military a bad thing? Unless, of course, they considered the real enemy to be.......

Not that I would ever question anyone's patriotism....

(via Glenn, who I'll hat tip even though I would have got to Steve and Jeff's post had not "I" come before "P" and "V" in my RSS reader)

More below if you're really into the philosophy of contextualized and hierarchical rights in a state of war. Here's a slight refresher course from Jawa 101. Old readers will be familiar with it, newer readers might benefit from it.

From Censorship In a State of War
------------------------

From Hobbes' Leviathan:

Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. For war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace.

The state of war is the medium in which all of our lives are lived. We are the fish, it is the water. All of our actions must be constructed with this in mind. We cannot escape the state of war by somehow denying we are in it. Can the fish suddenly sprout lungs and breathe simply because it does not recognize that his environment is water, not air?

That larger war, is all around us. The media does not understand this concept. They think there is a war 'over there' but not here. That somehow Iraq is separate from the larger war, which is all around us. This is why they believe it is ok to publish pictures of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, because the 'war' is over there. Here, there is peace. But as Hobbes rightly observes the "nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary."

It may seem like an unimportant and abstract distinction. What does it matter whether or not a 'state of war' exists everywhere or only in Iraq? But distinctions, even when they are only made by assumption, are absolutely critical to the way we think. The distinction between war and peace is very crucial, because moral actions depend on context. If the context is peace, then moral beings are compelled by conscience to behave in one way. If the context is war, then the same moral being must act in another way. The same is true of the press.

A free-press cannot be maintained in a state of war. Even from a Lockean perspective we cannot understand our liberties as anything but ordered. The inconveniences of living without order makes man:

willing to quit this condition which, however free, is full of fears and continual dangers; and it is not without reason that he seeks out and is willing to join in society with others who are already united, or have a mind to unite for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name- property. (Second Treatise IX:123)

Although I love the right to speak and cherish the liberty of the press, such liberty is meaningless without life. All of my rights and liberties are secondary to the need to protect my life. Governments are not founded to protect speech, rather, governments are instituted to protect life.

Free speech is an instrumental value--or it is a means to an end. We want freedom of speech and press because these things are necessary to a functioning democracy. However, a functioning democracy is secondary to some amount of order so that neighbors do not settle disputes on their own--a state of War according to Hobbes and an inconvenient state of Nature according to Locke.

When the secondary value of free speech conflicts with the primary value of protecting life, the secondary must be discarded. We ought not discard such things lightly, but sometimes they must be sacrificed. We do not let the body die to save the limb.

In a state of war, people die. In a state of peace, it is tacitly understood that you can say anything so long as your words are not a "clear and present danger" (See Schenck v. United States, 1919). Holmes' maxim seems to me a simple attempt at putting to words what we all kind of know deep down: only sticks and stones may break your bones, but words sometimes do hurt you.

You cannot say something that will incite someone to kill me. In a state of peace, people aren't normally incited to murder. In fact, yelling fire in a crowded theater rarely yields a riot. However, change the context and the result changes. In a state of war since some amount of anarchy is already present and there is an understanding that it is o.k. to kill, then the likelihood for words to lead to death is greatly multiplied.

Loose lips in times of peace are meaningless. In war, loose lips sink ships.

Did CBS's decision to air the photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib cause the brutal murder of Nick Berg? No. Of course not. Al Qaida rarely needs an excuse to commit an atrocity. Did such images contribute to his death? Probably not. He was a dead man walking from the moment he was captured.

However, such images do reinforce the preexisting notion in the Muslim world that the US is just another oppressive power. As such, these images mean that fence-sitters are more likely to join the opposition. Those not actually engaged in fighting will be less inclined to cooperate with us. Having a population less inclined to cooperate with us means terrorists will have an easier climate in which to operate. They will no longer have to fear their neighbor turning them in to Coalition forces. They can operate with near impunity. Chaos continues. People die. This all in one small field of one battle in the larger War on Terror.

For the larger war the images are even worse. They reinforce what the traitors Said and Chomsky have been saying for years: America is bad, mmm-kay. They ensure that hostility towards us will find increasing justification.

As moral beings, people tend to want to do good. I know, we all are sinful and all that, but that tells us little more than that men are selfish. Even the selfish man tries to find some justification for his actions. He is entitled to the money, everybody else does it, it's not as bad as some other worse thing, etc. The point is that we all need to feel that what we are doing is right.

Hence, the murderers and terrorists tell themselves stories that make their actions justifiable. The US is bad. So bad that they need to be stopped. So bad, that killing an American, even a civilian, is justified. So bad, that beheading him is the only way to let the Americans know that we mean business. America is a virus, and viruses need to be killed.

Our media's hyper-self-criticism is fodder for the fire. By making our minor flaws out to be something horrific, we give our enemies the moral justification they need to sleep at night after a day of mass-murder.

The images also remind us that propaganda works. The military had already begun investigating the abuses long before the images were available. But it was seeing the images, not the abuse that made so many furious. In a similar fashion, I had known that Nick Berg was beheaded and it pissed me off. But it was only when I saw the images that I went Mad Max.

Without the images the reality does not exist in the same way. When the media chose to run pictures of our abuse, they gave the enemy something else to throw in our faces. The great Satan is just as bad as Saddam Hussein---see, they are here to humiliate you---see, take up arms against the great Satan!!

More of our men are sure to die. There will be more Nick Bergs because of this.

Some of them would have died, with or without the images, but others' lives would have been spared. Some would have escaped, as did Thomas Hamil, because killing a hostage isn't always the priority. But if the US is a country of unreasonable barbarians, then there is no use in keeping hostages alive. Kill them all!

As long as we are in a state of war, the media must act in ways consistent with winning and bringing back a state of peace. If they cannot do it themselves, they must be forcibly censored.

Many of you may not know this, but during WWII the government had an actual censorship board. All broadcast and print media were censored for content that could hinder speedy victory. All pro-Japanese and pro-German publications were shut down. Leaders of the German-American Bund were rounded up and locked away.

All of the nation's propaganda might were aimed at winning the war. Pearl Harbor woke our population up, but a concerted effort at keeping our citizens ever aware of the war kept us awake. The event gave us the emotional will to begin the war, but it was propaganda that gave us the stomach to see it through to the end. The free-press gave way to the more immediate need of protecting lives.

For those of you who know my true identity, much of this may seem shocking. I am a civil libertarian, and if my state would allow it I would be a registered Libertarian. The main objection to regulating the press is the notion that somehow we will devolve into a state of fascism. In truth, it is the kind of 9/10 rhetoric I would have also used. But it is just rhetoric and nothing else.

Worse, it is a slippery slope argument that has no real basis in historical fact. As much as I love Nozick and Locke, epistemologically I must agree with Burke: societies and people do not spring forth from some imagined state of nature where rights exist, but are molded by culture and tradition.

The civil libertarian argument has much merit, but all arguements must be made in some context and with reference to actual social conditions. The context of the here and now is war; and the social condition of our nation is that of a people generally dedicated to limited government. We are a country and a people molded after Cincinnatus, not Caesar.

To think that content censorship would continue after we have defeated the threat of Islamofascism is to overlook WWI and WWII. In both cases we had direct censorship. In both cases the censorship eventually ended.

In sum, I call on Congress to recognize that the War on Terror must be handled as TOTAL WAR. All of the Nation's resources and will must be turned to that aim. From time to time events shock our conscience and reawaken us to the fact that our enemies want us dead. Between these times there must be a concerted effort by the entire nation to constantly remind us that war is a fact.

We do not fight war for its own sake, but to restore the state of peace. When we have won, then let us quibble about the merits of prancing prisoners around in underwear. Let us not focus on the mote in our own eye when the beam in our enemy's is strapped with TNT and he is eager to kill us.

Posted by: Rusty at 02:23 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
Post contains 2758 words, total size 16 kb.

1 the trap of depending on propaganda is that it seems to validate the lie that the deception that the will is free and within that 'freedom' the emotions of another can be manipulated for the desired result: more words as 'info'/'intel' as grist for the mill of a supposed 'free' will intelligence community. Which is merely a set up for worse evils down the road.. the 'propaganda' on-going in the US as policy both secretly and openly is the anti-Christ that Islam is real faith and not an outight deception/lie. The US is psy-oping itself with a lie and all other 'propaganda' proceed from that one lie. Proverbs 10:24 The fear of a wicked man , it shall come upon him; but the desire of the righteous shall be granted. In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Posted by: here and there at November 30, 2005 03:39 PM (6krEN)

2 My RSS reader lets me sort unread items by date. Which is usually good, except that a lot of feeds out there don't have proper dates!

Posted by: IO ERROR at November 30, 2005 03:46 PM (iQUq8)

3 From one Burkean libertarian to another: outstanding. Imagine what the left, or Reason magazine, would have had to say about Abe Lincoln, who simply closed presses and locked editors in prison. That all ended when the Civil War did, and appears to have been necessary at the time. War has its own imperatives, and we are at war. Again, superb post.

Posted by: Mona at November 30, 2005 03:48 PM (FUJZ7)

4 Good point Mona; Lincoln understood that the freedom of the press means freedom to express opinion and report fact, but not advocate for the enemy.

Posted by: Improbulus Maximus at November 30, 2005 03:57 PM (0yYS2)

5 While I agree with your philosophy here, more than you can know, the idea of censorship is an much larger hurdle today. Why? The Internet.

Posted by: Oyster at November 30, 2005 03:57 PM (fl6E1)

6 I tell you, Rusty, you have attracted some 'dandies' with these posts on the CPT hostages. Whoa! And that 'here and there' guy is more there than here, if you know what I mean.

Posted by: jesusland joe at November 30, 2005 04:00 PM (rUyw4)

7 Joe, I was gonna say that. I don't understand what it is he's trying to say: What's that, Lassie? There's a rabbit trapped in the well?

Posted by: Oyster at November 30, 2005 04:57 PM (YudAC)

8 Yeah, I just figure incoherent comments like here and there's are kinda par for the course.

Posted by: Rusty at November 30, 2005 05:00 PM (JQjhA)

9 Rusty: The idiosyncratic use of the term "propaganda" by the left is entirely consistent with the doctrinaire Marxist use of the term "ideology." In Marxist parlance, "ideology" is strictly something that the ruling class uses to pull the wool over the eyes of the unsuspecting proletariat, creating what Marx called "false consciousness." Thus, the term "ideology" can't be used to refer to Marxism, since it is simply the truth, and is about the reinstatement of "true consciousness." So it isn't that the don't understand the term, it's that they have a very idiosyncratic meaning of which they are well aware, provided they're well schooled in their own basic principles.

Posted by: Demosophist at November 30, 2005 06:04 PM (7sM+R)

10 Not that I would ever question anyone's patriotism ... Whyever not? Surely by refusing to even consider the possibility, you are ceding the playing field to those who define 'patriotism' rather loosely. There is nothing wrong with questioning someone's patriotism. There is something wrong in not defining what you mean by the term and then accusing others of not measuring up. For example I think the LA Times story was un-patriotic in the most fundamental sense as it deliberately undermined its own Nation in a time of conflict. And for no good reason to boot.

Posted by: dougf at November 30, 2005 08:44 PM (STFua)

11 Agent Smith says beware of anyone who finishes any statement that ends with "in the name of Jesus". Agent Jones says, "including Agent Smith".

Posted by: Agent Smith at December 01, 2005 06:45 AM (Ww5es)

12 Agent Jones in a "Frenchman Moment" discovered this in an article from Salon.com: "The notion that reporting on the guerrilla war in Iraq abets terrorism is typical of the logic of any extreme right-wing political movement. All censorship by all military regimes in the Middle East has been imposed on the grounds that journalists' speech is dangerous to society and could cause public turmoil (fitna). Rumsfeld's reasoning in this regard would be instantly recognizable to any Arab journalist from their experience with their own governments." http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/113005Q.shtml

Posted by: Agent Smith at December 01, 2005 06:55 AM (Ww5es)

13 "The notion that reporting on the guerrilla war in Iraq abets terrorism is typical of the logic of any extreme right-wing political movement." (For one thing, let's look at the author, Juan Cole. Partisan extraordinaire.) It's horsesh*t and you know it. It's not the reporting. It's the one-sided reporting that abets them. Nice how you bought into that so quickly and used it as an argument. That's so "typical of the logic of any extreme left-wing political movement". But I'm not questioning your patriotism ...

Posted by: Oyster at December 01, 2005 07:35 AM (YudAC)

14 There is a compelling argument for propaganda during war, but Bob Steele makes an even more compelling counter argument for modern information operations which is the following: "Modern IO is not about the old messages of PSYOP, but rather about empowering billions of people with both information tools and access to truthful information. It is about education, not manipulation. It is about sharing, not secrecy. It is about human understanding to create wealth and stabilize societies, not about the threat of violence and the delivery of precision munitions. IO substitutes information for violence." Education would be to accurately represent the merits and disadvantages of BOTH sides of any argument. You don't get this with Propaganda. You only highlight the benefits of your idea and the disadvantages of the other idea while suppressing the disadvantages of your idea and the advantages of the other ideas. And so it is an issue of proportionality and emphasis that makes propaganda deceptive and manipulative. So while you may be able to gain some short-term advantage with propaganda as a communications strategy, in the long-run it's a losing battle in winning the hearts and minds of the people as well as empowering them with the critical thinking skills necessary to be able to govern themselves as a viable democracy. There's also a lack of transparency that eventually makes your strategic message less credible as soon as people realize that they are being propagandized and not educated. In war, you could make an argument that the benefits of that short-term time period are critical to the mission. And that may be true. But as soon as you reach a critical mass of Iraqi citizens who realize that they're not getting a full picture of reality, then the messenger really starts to loose credibility. In an online draft of his book called "INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time" Bob Steele advocates that Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) should be the backbone to any type of Information Operations (IO) -- and that Strategic Communications has to be based upon this "ground truth." "IO content can be thought of in two parts: Strategic Communication (the message) and OSINT (the reality). The first cannot be effective without the second. It is not possible to craft the right message, nor to deliver that message to the right person at the right time in the right context, without first understanding “ground truth” at a sub-state level of granularity (tribes, villages, neighborhoods). OSINT is the horse seeing the path, Strategic Communication is the cart carrying the message. One before the other." The problem with propaganda is that is prioritizes strategic communication above and beyond the ground reality.

Posted by: Kent Bye at December 01, 2005 10:45 AM (IOLlO)

15 I understand the argument, but it's all just pie in the sky stuff. As long as there are those who use propaganda nefariously, ie laced with lies or half truths, then being honest more often just gets lost in the wind. Plus, people hear what they want to hear and have no problem with refuting absolute truths. And I hope no one is criticizing the propaganda we employ in Iraq without knowing any of the content. Oh wait ... of course they are. Even though, I suspect any propaganda we use is simply to counter what has been wrongly portrayed already.

Posted by: Oyster at December 01, 2005 02:04 PM (fl6E1)

16 Rusty wrote:As long as we are in a state of war, the media must act in ways consistent with winning and bringing back a state of peace. If they cannot do it themselves, they must be forcibly censored... To think that content censorship would continue after we have defeated the threat of Islamofascism is to overlook WWI and WWII. In both cases we had direct censorship. In both cases the censorship eventually ended. Of course that brings us back to the fact that this war, unlike any other war the U.S. has ever waged, could drag on for decades or even several generations, which still leaves the Left with the same argument it uses against detaining captured enemy combatants until the war is over - specifically, that we're talking about holding these prisoners, and curtailing the media's free speech, for, well, decades or even several generations on end. The problem is that the American public is likely to be a good deal more sympathetic to the Left's argument when applied to free speech in wartime, than they are to the same argument applied to enemy prisoners. In other words, most Americans probably couldn't care less that we might let a bunch of Islamofascists rot in Gitmo or wherever for 50 or 100 years, if the war drags on for that long - but they won't necessarily put up with restrictions on speech/media for the same 50 or 100 years, even if those restrictions are geared toward the same goal. If the war doesn't end until after everyone alive today has passed on (a very strong possibility), then any wartime restriction of speech/media enacted today would not be merely a temporary measure; it would, for all intents and purposes, be permanent, at least from the perspective of everyone alive today. It would also have an unpredictable effect on the attitudes of not-yet-born children who would grow up, and quite possibly live out their entire lives, in an America that pays lip service to a free press, but does not practice it due to the ongoing war. And when the war does finally end, will the American people really be that anxious to restore those press freedoms when they've never known what it's like to have them in the first place? Mind you, this is not an attack on Rusty's position, with which I otherwise have no argument whatsoever; rather it's to point out that there's a good deal more to consider than just the role of the press in time of war when the war is likely to replace peace as the new "normal" state of American life for the foreseeable future.

Posted by: Joshua at December 01, 2005 02:39 PM (2c7xL)

17 I totally agree with Joshua. And I concede to Oyster that I haven't seen the actual propaganda being used in Iraq. And you could argue that it's a realist perspective to say that "being honest more often just gets lost in the wind" -- but isn't this what democracy is supposed to be about? I mean, I know our own politicians have rationalized themselves into corner by valuing spin and perception over truth, but can't we do better than this rather cynical take on the truth? I also think that only focusing on violent conflict resolution as being rather short-sighted as well. Again, I quote Robert Davis Steele who has been pushing for Open Source Intelligence for the last 17 years. "In an era when information converted into intelligence and knowledge is a substitute for wealth, violence, energy, water, and everything else, only the: the United States of America has the power to execute this practical vision. DoD is the catalyst for its achievement." Steele argues that we're at a strategic dead in that: "the United States of America finds itself with a military optimized for force-on-force confrontations between nation-states, and a national intelligence community optimized for stealing secrets through technical means, with an extremely narrow range of focus and almost no flexibility." So Steele is advocating for a complete paradigm shift in how we resolve conflict with what he calls information peacekeeping -- and with information operations (IO). "Modern IO is the seed crystal for a total transformation of the American way of war, a new American way that practices information peacekeeping, and reflects a new commitment by America to stabilize the world intelligently rather than violently. It is a holistic mission that must be accomplished by the J-3 using a civil affairs mind-set, with the J-2 limited to internal validation and support. There are not enough guns on the planet to force our will upon other or to protect our quality of life for future generations. IO is the new way of war, and of peace." At the root of IO is open source intelligence and a grounding in truth and education. So even though there may be some compelling arguments here in this thread for using Propaganda within the context of a traditional war, I don't think that this it's a winning strategy for the long-term challenges that we're facing. It's the 21st century, and we're in the information age now. It's time for our political culture and defense strategy to start catching up with the technical innovation and new media revolution.

Posted by: Kent Bye at December 01, 2005 04:54 PM (IOLlO)

18 Hrrmmm.... Gee Rusty, I hope you won't call me a "Lefty" for this, but I keep reading your post and every time I get to the implicit "There's nothing really *wrong* with paying news sites to lie for you in a Good Cause", this little voice in the back of my head has a *cough cough* bulllshit! *cough cough* moment. Ah'm jest sayin', is all. I've heard of "surrendering the Moral High Ground", but it's been a long time since I've seen so many bloggers leap to their deaths from it. It's almost as amusing as Pajamas Media. ;]

Posted by: Ironbear at December 04, 2005 12:04 AM (2qhVP)

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