Following a string of US "forever wars," a profusion of well-written, often riveting novels, memoirs, and analyses have been published. Talented authors have aimed to promote understanding about the human cost of war.
In the same period, mainstream media sources have continually developed ways to make war appear normal – something necessary, justifiable, or in some cases, "humane."
Norm Solomon’s War Made Invisible erects an edifice of evidence showing deliberate, consistent, coordinated and well-funded efforts to squelch movements opposing the vicious consequences of war.
Solomon asks why people identify more with the bombers rather than the bombed. Then he traces the history of embedded reporters. He shows how the presence of "embeds" (journalists who live among and travel with units of the military) has changed the way wars are covered. The embeds are beholden not only to the military that protect them but also to corporate heads who collude with war profiteers and war planners.
Militarists’ justifications for wars often emphasize the terror wielded by insurgents using bloody tactics. Solomon points out the similarities between suicide bombers causing slaughter on the ground and sophisticated warplanes maiming and killing civilians from the air.
The legendary peace activist Phil Berrigan once likened racism and threats of nuclear war to the many faces of the hydra written of in Greek mythology. Cut off one head and another appears. The many-faced hydra of racism and war now turns to all corners of the globe. Any country refusing to subordinate itself to serving US national interests risks being devastated by US military and economic wars. Increasingly, war planners invoke the nuclear threat.
Authors and orators who challenge the status quo of glorifying and justifying wars face well organized opponents with deep pockets and a vice like grip on mainstream media. Astonishing past efforts, in US history, to outlaw war and denounce the "merchants of death" reached millions of people after the industrial slaughter of World War I.
Eugene Debs, the indefatigable campaigner imprisoned for opposing US foreign policy, ran for president from his jail cell and won nearly a million votes in 1920. The Kellogg Briand pact outlawing war was written into US law in August of 1928. In April of 1935, the New York Times reported that over 60,000 students went on strike, declaring they would never enlist to fight in a foreign war. Former US Representative Jeanette Rankin voted against entering both World War I and World War II. Norm Solomon shares the moral compass and honorable intent of these heroic resisters. His highly worthwhile book invites readers to embrace his clarity, expose the military machine’s human toll, and campaign to end all wars.
Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence..
Let’s hear it for Bill Hartung backing up Norman Solomon in the midst of this hellacious war hysteria.
Those Hartung’s are very good at being in the right place at the right time and delivering the final words of wisdom…!!!!!
I wrote a paper on Charles A Beard (history professor at Columbia) and his 1913 book “An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States” and why his chose to write something that has been found not to be true over the years (in several ways in several books through the years plus the usual papers like mine doing the same via different approaches) and it really damaged his reputation.
It was a look into “historical relatism” (the “why” he did it and a ” how” he did it;-) which in his case was his belief that stories should be told to cause society to do or not do things.
He had a isolationist stance in WW1 and was
raised/educated in Wisconsin which had it’s “wisconsin school” beginnings as he began his career too and helped shape what became the views he wanted society to have too.
The media/government are just continuing that “shaping” of societal’s views that Beard (and his mentor Fredrick Turner who concocted the Western expansion myth against the savage who was better off dead) practiced so well and trained other historians to do whosecwork we read today
The media records events too and they as well believe that they need to tell the story so society will view events properly and demand proper actions to be done by their politicians.It isn’t the who, what, when, and where of pulp fiction novels about newsrooms that are popular mindless entertainment.
Rather we just have a continuation of a Progressive era historian’s views about writing to shape views that used to be isolationist in nature, a antiwar stance that Beard held dearly, instead progressives now write musings glorifying war and shape who are viewed as “terrorists” just as they did in WW1 as they were going after Beard and this site’s Mr. Bourne for their isolationist antiwar stances.
OH, NO….. Is the fix in on EVERYTHING??? Not just our money, but is every lever of power and wealth tied to some string or wire that is the REAL controlling thing. More & more the answer seems to be YES…..!!!!!!