In
the period leading up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush
administration and its media accomplices waged a relentless propaganda campaign
to win political support for what turned out to be one of the most disastrous
foreign policy mistakes in American history.
Nearly two decades later,
with perhaps a million dead Iraqis and
thousands of dead American soldiers, we are still paying for that mistake.
Vice President Dick Cheney,
Attorney General John Ashcroft, Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, and
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were key players behind the propaganda—which
we can define as purposeful use of information and misinformation to manipulate
public opinion in favor of state action. Iraq and its president Saddam
Hussein were the ostensible focus, but their greater goal was to make the
case for a broader and open-ended “War on Terror.”
So
they created a narrative using a mélange of half-truths, faintly plausible
fabrications, and outright lies:
- Iraq and
the nefarious Saddam Hussein were “behind,” i.e., backing, the Saudi
terrorists responsible for 9-11 attacks on the US;
- Hussein
and his government were stockpiling yellowcake uranium in an
effort to develop nuclear capability;
- Hussein
was connected with al-Qaeda
- Iran
was lurking in the background as a state sponsor of terrorism,
coordinating and facilitating attacks against the US in coordination with
Hamas;
- Hezbollah,
al-Qaeda, and other terror groups were working against the US across the
Middle East in some kind of murky but coordinated effort;
- We
have to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”;
- The
Iraqis would welcome our troops as liberators.
And
so forth.
But the propaganda “worked” in the most meaningful sense:
Congress voted nearly 3–1 in favor of military action against Iraq, and Gallup
showed 72 percent of Americans supporting the invasion as it commenced
in 2003. Media outlets across the spectrum such as the Washington Post cheered the war. National Review dutifully did its part, labeling Pat
Buchanan, Ron Paul, Justin Raimondo, Lew Rockwell, and other outspoken
opponents of the invasion as “unpatriotic conservatives.”
Tragically, the American people never
placed the burden of proof squarely with the war cheerleaders to justify
their absolutely crazed effort to remake the Middle East. In hindsight,
this is obvious, but at the time propaganda did its job. Disinformation is part
and parcel of the fog of war.
What
will hindsight make clear about our reaction to COVID-19 propaganda? Will
we regret shutting down the economy as much as we ought to regret invading
Iraq?
The cast of characters is
different, of course: Trump, desperately seeking “wartime president” status;
Dr. Anthony Fauci; epidemiologist Neil Ferguson; state governors such as Cuomo,
Whitmer, and Newsom; and a host of media acolytes just itching to force a new
normal down our throats. Like the Iraq War architects, they use COVID-19 as
justification to advance a preexisting agenda,
namely, greater state control over our lives and our economy. Yet because too
many Americans remain stubbornly attached to the old normal, a propaganda
campaign is required.
So we
are faced with a blizzard of new “facts” almost every day, most of which turn
out to be only mildly true, extremely dubious, or plainly false:
- The
virus aerosolizes and floats around, so we all need to be six feet apart
(But why not twenty feet? Why not one mile?);
- The
virus lives on surfaces everywhere, for days;
- Asymptomatic
people can spread it unknowingly;
- Antibodies
may or may not develop naturally;
- People
may become infected more than once;
- Young
healthy people are at great risk not only themselves, but also pose a risk
to their elderly family members;
- PropagandaEdward
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- Thin,
permeable paper masks somehow prevent microscopic viral spores from
being inhaled or exhaled toward others;
- People
are safer inside;
- The
rate of new infected “cases” in the first few weeks of the virus reaching
America would continue or even grow exponentially;
- Social
distancing and quarantines do indeed “save” lives;
- Testing
is key (But what if an individual visits a crowded grocery an hour after
testing negative?);
- A
second wave of infections is nigh; and
- Our
personal and work lives cannot continue without a vaccine, which, by the
way, may be two years away.
Again,
much of this is not true and not even intended to be true—but rather to
influence public behavior and opinions. And again, the overwhelming burden of
proof should lie squarely with those advocating a lockdown of society, who
would risk a modern Great Depression in response to a simple virus.
How much damage will the
lockdown cause? Economics aside, the sheer toll of this self-inflicted
wound will be a matter for historians to document. That toll includes all
the things Americans would have done without the shutdown in their personal and
professional lives, representing a diminution of life itself. Can that be
measured, or distilled into numerical terms? Probably not, but this
group of researchers and academics argues that we have
already suffered more than one million “lost years of life” due to the ravages
of unemployment, missed healthcare, and general malaise.
By
the same token, how do we measure the blood and treasure lost in Iraq? How much
PTSD will soldiers suffer? How many billions of dollars in future VA
medical care will be required? How many children will grow up without fathers?
And how many millions of lives are forever shattered in
that cobbled-together political artifice in the Middle East?
Propaganda kills, but it also works. Politicians of all
stripes will benefit from the coronavirus; the American people will suffer.
Perversely, one of the worst COVID propagandists—the aforementioned
Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York—yesterday rang the bell as the New York Stock
Exchange reopened to floor trading. He now admits that the models were
wrong and that his lockdown did nothing to prevent the Empire State from
suffering the highest per capita deaths from COVID. Like
the architects of the Iraq War, he belongs on a criminal docket. But thanks to
propaganda, he is hailed as presidential.
Note: The
views expressed on Mises.org are
not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
Jeff
Deist [send
him mail] is president of the Mises Institute, a tax attorney, and a
former staffer for Ron Paul.
