If facts are clear that make you look bad, fuzz or cloud the facts up. Do this by planting alternative facts in the press or by planting alternative explanations (interpretations) even if they do not add a thing to the original facts. Cloud the original facts. Make the planted “facts” specific so as to cause conflicting perceptions among readers.
The American attack on a hospital in Afghanistan is a clear fact and a clear war crime. To cloud this is now the objective of those who did wrong and those who want to protect the wrongdoers and not be held responsible for the crime. Shifting the blame is one way to cloud the fact. Rationalizing the attack is another. Both clouding methods are at work in this news report out of AP. (Thank you, David Krall.) The article, an obvious plant, tries to justify the attack on the ground that the American special forces made an honest mistake: “…they believed it was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity…” Is it okay to bomb a known neutral site because of a suspicion that it harbors a shadowy enemy or suspected enemy who is suspected of something vague like “coordinating” the vague “activity” of a suspected enemy (Taliban) who may not even be near the place? The whole idea of this being a justification is absurd on every count. Nevertheless, this is effective propaganda, even if the story is never verified. It buys time. It delays an accounting. Perhaps the story will die when another story supplants it and grabs headlines.
There is more story-telling in this article. We are told that the American intelligence operatives thought that “the hospital was being used as a Taliban command and control center and may have housed heavy weapons.” Again, we have clouding at work. There is no evidence supporting the allegations. What we know factually is that a lot of innocent people were killed. We do not know that some Taliban may have taken refuge in the hospital. There is no evidence that they did, from any surviving witnesses. The allegation of a “command and control center” is an obviously trumped up bureaucratic phrase and so is the phrase “heavy weapons”. This language is designed to make one possibility much more than what it may have been or may not have been, which is that some Taliban took refuge or that some wounded Taliban were being treated, which is not unlikely.
As frosting on this propaganda cake, we have the further notion that the raid was successful: “They concluded that the Pakistani, believed to have been working for his country’s Inter-Service Intelligence directorate, had been killed.”
In other words: “We thought bad guys were in there. We bombed the place. We killed ’em. We did the right thing.” This is out of Hillary Clinton’s playbook: “We came. We saw. He died.”
This entire AP article and rationalization doesn’t change the facts. Americans knew that the hospital was off limits, that it was neutral turf, and that intentional destruction of it is a war crime. They can trump up all the explanations they can think of suggesting that the end justifies the means, but in this case no suggested end justifies the means.
Let’s even go back to the League of Nations in 1938 to understand that this kind of bombing has very clearly been made a war crime. I quote
“1) The intentional bombing of civilian populations is illegal;
2) Objectives aimed at from the air must be legitimate military objectives and must be identifiable;
3) Any attack on legitimate military objectives must be carried out in such a way that civilian populations in the neighbourhood are not bombed through negligence…”
Americans intentionally bombed civilians. There were no identifiable military objectives in that hospital; not a shred of evidence supports the hospital as being a legitimate target. Even if Taliban or a Pakistani operative were legitimate targets, the entire place was bombed beyond negligence. It was bombed intentionally!
Let’s turn to the opposite propaganda technique.
The opposite propaganda technique also works. If there is a fuzz of facts or a situation is foggy and conflicted, plant a very stark and specific fact or interpretation that supports your case. What you plant may be a big lie, but its clarity is what brings support to your case.
The Bush propaganda campaign preceding the attack on Iraq in 2003 began with a conflicted view of Iraq, a fuzzy and cloudy set of perceptions. Bush administration figures planted one specific “fact” after another in the press. They were lies, but they gained Bush some cover for the attack. They erected a false view of the reality, attached to WMD. They narrowed perceptions down. Even as each story was rebutted, a new one was planted. All the stories were limbs from the basic trunk, which was the danger of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, his “arsenal of terror.”
12:14 pm on October 16, 2015
