Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GLOBAL 'WAR' ON TERROR (GWOT) Years 1 and 2, ie 9/11-2003
Shaping the Global Information Space in the 'war' against International Terrorism by Prof Taylor This paper is being published in an Italian journal SHAPING THE GLOBAL INFORMATION SPACE IN THE WAR AGAINST INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM Philip M. Taylor University of Leeds Many people continue to ask the question: has the world really changed since September 11th 2001? The very fact that they ask such a question suggests a perception at odds with the proclamations of certain government leaders, especially in the United States and Britain, that it has. Others - in Germany, France and Belgium for example - have not accepted this or, if they have, they are rejecting the transformation of the international world order into what has been seen by some as a Project for the New American Century or Pax Americana. This, in turn, is imposing severe strains on international institutions that were created to deal largely with the east-west confrontation during the Cold War, and especially the UN, NATO and the EU. As the world's only surviving superpower, the US has reacted to 9/11 in a manner which often confounds many of its traditional allies and alarms some of them still more. 'You are either with us, or against us in the fight against terror', announced President George W. Bush in November 2001 - ironically in a joint press conference with French President Jacques Chirac. Fifteen months later, in the build up to another war against Iraq, plain-speaking American Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described France and Germany as constituting members of the 'Old Europe'. For America's critics, the war against the Taliban and Al Quaeda in Afghanistan was clearly one thing, especially in the aftermath of 9/11 when worldwide sympathy for the United States was widespread. A second war against Saddam Hussein in order to implement 'regime change' was quite another, a departure from history too far. The Bush Doctrine In the United States, President Bush gave the clearest indication of the new American position during his State of the Union speech in January 2002. This 'Bush Doctrine' has three essential strands that do indeed signal a break with American foreign policy of the past. The first is that because its terrorist enemies 'view the entire world as a battlefield', the United States must be proactive in 'pursuing them wherever they are'. This exercise of active American global leadership, especially with the threat of impending proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction, could involve the USA acting pre-emptively. For all the subsequent diplomatic manoeuvres involving UN Resolution 1441 and a possible subsequent resolution justifying military action against Iraq, it was this element of pre-emptive war which found its doubters amongst American allies who appeared concerned that the United States would henceforth act unilaterally not so much in the war against terrorism (where international co-operation amongst the intelligence services was marked) but in so far as the second element of the Bush Doctrine was concerned. This second element was 'regime change'. Traditionally, and indeed since the creation of the state system at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, it was an unspoken but universally held principle of international affairs that one state did not interfere with the internal affairs of another short of war. An interesting twist to the ongoing Iraqi crisis of the 1990s was the puzzlement of why the American led coalition had failed 'to finish the job' after the 1991 Gulf War when military victory had been so decisive in expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Yet that previous conflict was not about regime change in Baghdad; it was about the liberation of Kuwait. There could be no greater indication of how the world had changed since 9/11 than this American shift away from this position. Regime change against a clearly identified 'axis of evil' - Iraq, Iran and North Korea - was a dramatic reversal of centuries of international relations, and indeed from a principle that was enshrined in the UN Charter under Article 2.7, giving rise to further alarm that the era in which Washington would only act multilaterally was over. It certainly stood in stark contrast to the multilateralism of the previous Clinton administrations. Vice President Dick Cheney elaborated on this point in August 2002 when he stated that 'The President has made very clear that there is no neutral ground in the war against terror. Those who harbour terrorists share guilt for the acts they commit. Under the Bush Doctrine, a regime that harbours or supports terrorists will be regarded as hostile to the United States'. This had been the justification for the war in Afghanistan. The third element was the 'non-negotiable' promotion of liberal democratic values as part of the American global mission. This was essentially an overt expression of what had been implicit in American foreign policy during the Cold War, namely the selling of democracy, US-style, to areas where it did not exist. As Cheney again elaborated: 'In the Middle East, where so many have known only poverty and oppression, terror and tyranny, we look to the day when people can live in freedom and dignity and the young can grow up free of the conditions that breed despair, hatred, and violence'. Regime change was not just a political issue; it was an economic, social, cultural, philosophical and psychological aspiration to extend democracy to the non-democratic world. Whereas the public diplomacy of the past had attempted to sell democratic principles and values through persuasion, it would appear now that Americans were considering coercive diplomacy as a better option. The international status quo ante 9/11 was, in other words, not an option. A new propaganda apparatus was required to achieve this. The Office of Global Communications was created in the White House, although an Office of Strategic Influence created by the Pentagon found itself scuppered by a combination of State Department resentment and a press outcry once it was learned that deception of the foreign media was to be part of its remit. Voice of America broadcasts were stepped up, especially in Arabic, although a new station 'Radio Sawa' ('together') - was also created to target younger Arab audiences. 'Our mission is to promote freedom and democracy through the free flow of information', said one of its founders, although critics felt that it was heavily 'influenced by US propaganda aims, with relatively little attention given to events that might embarrass the Bush administration, such as domestic and international protests against war in Iraq'. Because this was to be a 'war' for hearts and minds in order to pre-empt future generations of terrorists, softer techniques such as increased cultural exchanges and educational programmes were introduced, Hollywood executives frequented the White House, and pressure was exerted on certain governments to reform the religious schools which bred anti-American sentiment from an early age. The 'war' against terrorism With such a clear three-pronged strategy, why should people argue with American goals when almost everyone agrees on the evil of terrorism, on the ruthlessness of Saddam Hussein, and on the potential threats posed by non-democratic 'rogue' regimes and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction? The problem lies with the nature of the 'war' against terrorism. Traditionally, wars have been fought between two or more nation states, they normally have clear rules of engagement, and they have become highly visible through the advent of the mass media. The enemy is usually clearly identified and the objective is to defeat him militarily. None of these traditional notions fits easily with the so-called war against a terrorist organisation which is highly elusive, whose members are scattered across scores of nations and which is being fought on 'fronts' that deliberately evade mass media coverage. These fronts include law enforcement, financial, diplomatic and - above all - intelligence. The military elements - such as the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban and their Al Quaida supporters and the war against Iraq - are more highly visible because of media coverage which suggests a traditional type of conflict, but they are in fact only a small element of the overall picture. But the war against international terrorism is no traditional conflict. It is has an analogy, it is more with the Cold War in so far as it will last a very long time and because it is essentially a war of ideas. In so far as the intelligence front is concerned, the problem is that the public are not allowed to see the overall picture because revelation might seriously jeopardise the chances of victory against terrorists, however long that may take. But in a war of ideas, propaganda comes to the centre of the stage. A war fought in the shadows, as with the KGB and the CIA during the Cold War, means that some light is needed to create an open justification for why we should not look too closely into those shadows. The issue of trust is therefore paramount. This creates enormous difficulties for the democracies at war with terrorism, and their ability to conduct an effective propaganda campaign against what appears to be an invisible target. This is where Saddam Hussein comes in. An old 'demon' about whom nearly everyone agrees, 'the butcher of Baghdad' would in theory provide a clearly identifiable enemy against whom everyone could rally. This, however, merely begged the question: what was the connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein? An almost unprecedented level of European public scepticism greeted the build-up to war against Iraq. Previously, democratic governments had only contemplated war if they had majority public support for armed action, usually at levels of around 70% or above. In the early months of 2003, polls indicated opposition levels running at around 70% in many European countries, including those whose governments were supporting Washington, such as Spain, Italy and Britain. Prolonged debates about the reasons for going to war with Iraq detracted from the fact that in the United States itself there was a conviction that they were already at war, and had been since September 11th 2001. There, Iraq was clearly a member of the 'axis of evil', a series of rogue states who supported or encouraged terrorism against the west. To make the connection between Iraq and terrorism for European audiences was therefore a key element of persuading the public to support a 'just war' against Saddam. Other aspects of this attempt to shape the information space included debates about the seventeen Chapter 7 UN Resolutions which Iraq had failed to comply with since 1991, the latest of which was Resolution 1441 concerning the weapons inspectors and their search for weapons of mass destruction which might, one day, be passed on to terrorists. And then there were the highly emotive twin issues of Israel and oil, with Britain and the US standing accused of inconsistency and selectivity on the former and of imperialistic machinations on the latter. The propaganda war was in full flight. Information Warfare Attempts to 'shape the information space' are not new. In fact the phrase is one of the preferred 21st century euphemisms for what is essentially propaganda. It derives from much of the current thinking about new and emerging military doctrines, especially that of Information Warfare (IW) which in turn has evolved into Information Operations (IO). This doctrine embraces the notion of information as a central weapon in the waging of contemporary warfare. The Pentagon's definition is 'actions taken to affect adversary information and information systems while defending one's own information and information systems'. It can essentially be broken down into two interlocking components, namely Computer Network Operations (CNO) and Perception Management, the new euphemism for propaganda. The former tends towards the technical side of military electronic systems that have come increasingly to dominate the eyes and ears of waging modern warfare as a result of the Revolution in Military Affairs. It involves defending one's own computer and communications systems and attacking those of an adversary. So, whereas in the past, the waging of industrialised warfare involved, for example, the bombing of factories and shipyards, information warfare prioritises precision-guided attacks against power stations, radio masts, telephone exchanges and even television transmitters. By taking command and control of the flow of information in the conflict area, the idea is to deafen, dumb and blind the enemy to ease the course of victory. Much of this thinking derived from the first Gulf War of 1991, when the American led coalition was able to disrupt much of Iraq's electronic defences on the opening nights of the war. On the Perception Management side, the coalition's ability to present a desired view of the conflict to the wider world through the mass media was felt to have provided a template for management of the media. This desired view was of a clean, bloodless war fought with high-tech weaponry causing minimal civilian damage. But 'media war' was only one part of the thinking. Another essential ingredient was Psychological Operations, defined by the US as 'planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organisations, groups and individuals'. PSYOPS were deployed to great effect in the Gulf War of 1991 when more than 70,000 Iraqi soldiers deserted, defected or surrendered and earned a renewed reputation as a 'combat force multiplier' through the dissemination of 29 million leaflets and broadcasts from ground and airborne transmitters - all of which were felt to have shaped the information space on the battlefield in the Kuwaiti theatre of operations. The success of this campaign was tempered somewhat by the experience of Kosovo in 1999 when 103 million leaflets were dropped over Serbia but failed to crack the morale of the Yugoslav army or indeed the Serb people. It was an ominous foresight of things to come in the Gulf War of 2003. Perception Management may be an ugly phrase drawn from the Business School of Marketing concept that policies can be sold like any other product. It predates Charlotte Beers, the assistant secretary of state for Public Affairs who was recruited from Madison Avenue to sell the idea of America as 'a force for good in the world'. But pre-emptive war and regime change are tough acts to market to audiences who either don't like the Bush administration for whatever reason or who don't think it is America's business to change regimes which Washington may not care for. The challenge, therefore, is to convince a sceptical global audience that the USA is right about weapons of mass destruction, about terrorists soon acquiring them, and about the complicity of 'axis of evil' rogue states in precipitating this possibility. Propaganda themes in the run up to the second Gulf War In an extremely complex crisis and with such an unprecedented foreign policy, there was an even greater need than usual to explain the case for pre-emptive war in clear and convincing terms. Given the extent of public opposition outside the United States to the American position on Iraq, but also increasingly within it, there was a clear failure on this score. Outside the United States, the linkage between Iraq and the war on terrorism was, at best, tenuous. Perhaps the use of the very word 'war' to describe the fight against terrorism was an error because it was such a different type of conflict from the wars of the past. Certainly President George W. Bush's early use of the word 'crusade' was a serious mistake, especially for explaining America's position to the Muslim world. Despite a retraction, this word would come back to haunt Washington, especially when it began to be framed within the context of Samuel Huntingdon's 1996 book, The Clash of Civilisations, as 'evidence' of a new war between the west and Islam. The initial labelling of the campaign as Operation Infinite Justice also sent the wrong message and, although it was quickly relabelled Operation Enduring Freedom, it meant that once again any democratic propaganda tended to be on the defensive. Very little effort was put into countering these notions as they took firmer root in the Islamic psyche, for example by failing to emphasise western support for Muslim communities in Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. When therefore President Bush and Prime Minister Blair started to emphasise that the removal of Saddam Hussein would benefit the people of Iraq, they laid themselves open to charges that, if that was one of the real objectives for a new Gulf War, then twelve years of sanctions had hardly helped the Iraqi people. Indeed, the much vaunted deaths of anything from 0.5 to 1.5 million Iraqi babies caused by these sanctions fitted into a classic atrocity propaganda tradition. It was countered by insistence that Saddam was to blame for these deaths because the 'Food for Oil' provision was supposed to have prevented this while Saddam continued to build lavish presidential palaces. The March 1988 gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabjah was constantly brought up to demonstrate that Saddam was the real enemy of his own people, not the west, and that he had used chemical weapons in the war against Iran. Back came the charge that it had been the west which had sold those chemical weapons to Iraq in the first place because it was backing Saddam against Iran. Similar arguments had been made about Osama bin Laden, supported by the CIA during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan during the 1980s. The ghosts of the Cold War had come back to haunt the justifications for the war against terrorism. 1. The row over the legal justification With the failure to secure a follow up resolution to 1441 in the Security Council on 17 March 2003, the British - who had positioned themselves as the nation who was best placed to convince Washington of the need to act multilaterally rather than go into Iraq alone - found themselves out on a limb. They had participated in military action with the USA before without UN approval: in Kosovo in 1999. But on that occasion, NATO had been relatively united, whereas in 2003 the French and the Germans had expressed strong reservations over Iraq. Indeed, when President Chirac appeared on French television on 11 March and declared that under no circumstances would they accept a further resolution until the weapons inspectors had been given more time to disarm Iraq, the British position was completely undermined. Several ministers blamed the French in acrimonious statements that fuelled an already anti-French sentiment in the American media. Former foreign secretary, Robin Cook (the man who had talked of an 'ethical foreign policy' when he served as foreign secretary during the Kosovo conflict) resigned on 17 March. British public opinion was split down the middle, with polls indicating that a second resolution was essential to shift much of the opposition to supporting a war against Iraq. Unusually, the Blair government decided to make public the Attorney General's pronouncements on the legal position. Resolution 1441, adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council on 8 November 2002, accepted that Iraq was 'in material breach' of 16 previous resolutions since 1990 and provided Iraq with 'a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations'. The cat-and-mouse game between the Iraqi authorities and the weapons inspectors led by Dr. Hans Blix in the months that followed formed the backdrop to the mounting diplomatic crisis, not least because the resolution warned that Iraq would face 'serious consequences' if it did not comply. This was not the usual UN language for justifying military action. The accepted convention was 'all necessary means', a phrase contained in resolution 678 of 1990. The Attorney General's statement cited 1441's linkages to earlier resolutions as providing legal justification within a UN context for war against Iraq, although some legal experts pointed out that 678's reference to 'all necessary means' referred to the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait, which had already been achieved in 1991, and was therefore irrelevant in the latest crisis. To some extent, this was all a legacy of the old world order in which the UN had been crucial in identifying aggressors and victims, good guys and bad guys, and just wars and unjust wars. The Bush Doctrine concept of pre-emptive war to a large extent made this redundant because the White House, not the Security Council, decided who were the enemies in the war against terrorism, and those who might one day supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. What is surprising is the extent to which Washington was prepared to go along with London in trying to go through the UN route until the French announcement pre-empted this course of action. This was exemplified by Secretary of State Colin Powell's address to the UN on 5 February 2003 when he attempted to provide 'an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behaviour. The facts on Iraqis' behaviour demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort - no effort - to disarm as required by the international community. Indeed, the facts and Iraq's behaviour show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.' The Office of Global Communications meanwhile had issued its first major fact sheet, entitled 'Apparatus of Lies: Saddam's Disinformation and Propaganda, 1990-2003'. The French, Germans and Russians remained unconvinced. No doubt the legal debate will continue for many years, but the ambiguities highlighted by many lawyers at the time reinforced claims that another war against Iraq was not only immoral but illegal as well. 2. 'A war for Oil' It is ironic that, for almost ten years after the 1991 Gulf War, many people wondered why the US-led coalition 'did not finish the job' by removing Saddam Hussein when it had the chance of doing so after the liberation of Kuwait. The coalition's victory was so complete that marching on to Baghdad was certainly a military option on that occasion, although it was beyond then current UN resolutions and it might have provided many more casualties than the coalition had already sustained. However, this argument missed the fundamental point that the 1991 war was not about removing Saddam Hussein from power; it was about liberating Kuwait. In so far as that conflict was about oil, it was to prevent Iraq from dominating Kuwaiti oil fields, not about securing Iraqi oil reserves. As such, if the later crisis was about oil, then the question must be asked why the west did not seize Iraqi oil when they had the opportunity to do so at an earlier date? Nonetheless, by 2002 the allegation that oil was behind Washington's motives was widespread amongst anti-American protagonists with the Bush family connections in the Texan oil industry being cited as 'proof' of this. The Mirror famously produced a front page which ran as follows: We SHELL not EXXONerate Saddam Hussein for his actions. We will MOBILize to meet this threat to vital interests in the Persia GULF until an AMOCOble solution is reached. Our best strategy is to BP prepared. Failing that, we ARCOming to kick your ass. 'Unfinished family business' If the sins of the fathers are really passed on to the sons, then the assertion that the second Gulf War was about unfinished business rang true amongst many opponents of the George W. Bush administration. The original 'Devil in the White House' had spawned an evil offspring to finish off Saddam Hussein and avenge the Iraqi-backed attempted assassination of Bush Senior in Saudi Arabia in 1993. Despite extraordinary levels of popular support in the US for the elder Bush in 1991 - around 90% - this had failed to secure for him a second term as President. The younger Bush had become President almost ten years later amidst the most controversial election in American history, while many of his opponents argued that he had 'stolen' the Presidency from Al Gore with the assistance of his brother, Jebb Bush, the Governor of Florida. This, together with a smear campaign about George W's intelligence (Iraqi propaganda would call him 'Stupid Bush' orLittle Bush') and the cabal of hawks who surrounded him (Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Richard Perle), found reinforcement in Michael Moore's best selling book, Stupid White Men. George W' approval ratings stood at around 70% at the time of the second Gulf War. The 'stupidcampaign was reminiscent of the Reagan administrations of the 1980s, although history has proved kinder to Reagan' reputation as 'theman who won the Cold War' 4. The connection between 9/11 and Iraq For many people, this was the heart of the problem. No Iraqis were amongst the nineteen 9/11 hijackers, although 16 of them were from Saudi Arabia - a supposed ally of the US. A curious story emerged in the late summer of 2002 when it was alleged that the lead hijacker, Mohmed Atta, was said to have visited Prague on two occasions before 9/11 in order to meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer, thus providing -proof- of a link. This curious story has yet to be fully resolved. A further twist occurred in September 2002 when a New York law firm specialising in aviation disaster litigation brought a law suit on behalf of 1400 families of the victims of 9/11 against Saddam Hussein, claiming that Saddam was involved in a conspiracy with Al Quaeda. The law suit claimed documented evidence for links between Iraqi intelligence and bin Laden. Other elements of this theme referred to allegations that bin Laden in fact loathed the secular regime in Iraq, and that he had even offered to lead an army against Saddam after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Then there claims that the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, with known links to Al Quaeda, was based in Iraq, but then it was pointed out that their base was located in Northern Iraq - an area under Kurdish control rather than under Saddam's. 5. US Imperialism and Israel More and more charges of an American 'empire' had been made since the end of the Cold War, when the USA assumed the status of the sole superpower or 'hyper-power'. To counter the 'axis of evil' rhetoric, critics pointed to the 'real' axis being 'neo-liberal globalization in the form of the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, citing the Enron scandal, Turkish and Argentinean economic collapse and environmental devastation. Many of the old Cold War arguments about American imperialism - coca-colonialism or attempts to 'McDominate' - had been commandeered by the anti-globalization 'movement' of the 1990s and resurfaced in anti-American propaganda over Afghanistan and Iraq. The US was 'hypocritical' and selective in its interventions abroad, especially in its non-condemnation of its imperialist 'lackey' in the Middle East, Israel. Despite assertions from Washington and London that the Iraq issue was not isolated from the problems of the Middle East generally, a supposed 'road-map' of the way ahead had yet to appear at time of writing. 6. Risk of not doing something about Iraq Shortly before the outbreak of war with Iraq on the night of 19-20 March 2003, there had been some attempts to inject a moral dimension into the debates over the rights and wrongs of taking military action. Not to act was the equivalent of appeasement in the 1930s; the risks of doing nothing were greater than the risks of military action; such was the evil of the Ba'athist regime over a prolonged period that it would be morally wrong not to act now. These assertions were informed by atrocity stories about the brutality of Saddam's regime but were challenged by the churches in the UK and by the Pope in the Vatican, which tended to undermine the 'just war' arguments being espoused by the overtly religious leaders of Britain and the United States. For many, these arguments, coming as they did after all the other debates, looked like 'spin' and rang hollow. Besides, the counter argument was that there was no legal case for war and, unlike Kosovo in 1999 when a 'humanitarian intervention' was felt to be more important than international law, it was up to the Iraqi people to sort out who they were governed by, not London nor Washington. 'Shock and Awe' Once the second Gulf War began, with an attempted 'decapitation strike' against Saddam Hussein personally, followed by the 'shock and awe' bombing campaign and the rapid rush to Baghdad, the pre-war debates tended to become subsumed by the media coverage of the military events themselves. Journalists were 'embedded' with the troops on land, at sea and sometimes in the air. In contrast to the previous war, when pools were set up for the journalists, the ground war began after five weeks of bombing, followed by a 100-hour ground war which was over before the journalists could really report the story. The 'embeds' however had technology which enabled them to broadcast from the front line and some of the most spectacular war footage ever seen was captured by them in order to feed the gluttony of the 24/7 broadcasting stations that were now widely available (unlike the 1991 war when there was really only CNN). Moreover, thanks to the arrival of Arab satellite stations like Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi Television, the Arab perspective on events received widespread coverage in the west. This would suggest an open war with unprecedented media access. Despite all the assertions about the 'fog of war', however, the race to be first and the 'tyranny of real-time' saw the American and British forces, with a little help from the Australians and the Poles, reported to have captured Umm Qsar nine times in the first week. A propaganda own goal was scored when a photograph was circulated world-wide of an American flag being raised in this town as an apparent act of triumphalism. Although the flag was quickly taken down by an officer, the damage had already been down. Other cities like Basra and Nasiriya were likewise prematurely reported to have fallen. It was not so much a 'fog' but a snowstorm of information through which it was virtually impossible to see what was happening beyond the snowflake's view of each embedded reporter. The wider picture was the biggest casualty. The propaganda themes coming out of Washington emphasised that this was a war against Saddam Hussein and his evil regime, a war to liberate the Iraqi people from that evil, and a war to bring democracy to the country. Within the first week, almost 30 million leaflets were dropped, supplemented by broadcasts, urging the army and people to help the 'coalition of the willing' to achieve its aims. Iraqi propaganda retaliated by appealing to the nationalism of the people to resist the 'invasion' and in the first two weeks of the war many observers seemed surprised at the level of resistance taking place against an obviously military superior coalition. Part of the problem was that, back in 1991, the Kurds to the north and the Shi'ites to the south had risen up against Saddam, only to be left to their own devices by that earlier American-led coalition. Why believe it now? The Iraqis had also clearly failed to appreciate how much the United States had changed since 9/11. Once again, this suggests a serious failure on the part of perception management. No weapons of mass destruction were found in the early weeks, despite most of Iraq having fallen under coalition control. Media reports that coalition forces had found gas masks in some captured Iraqi facilities failed to provide evidence that the Iraqis intended to use weapons for offence rather than defence. But then came a reminder of the war against terrorism when Iraqi 'irregular' forces began wearing civilian clothes to fool coalition forces. Then at the end of March 2003 four US Marines were killed by a suicide bomber in a taxi outside of Nasiriya, prompting charges that the Iraqis were 'terrorists'. Nervous American soldiers a few days later near Najaf fired on a van carrying women and children, killing seven - an event portrayed as an atrocity in the Arab media. Such micro-propaganda battles aside, the key to the overall success was the combination of military power and the psychological operation to convince Iraqis that this was a war of liberation not invasion. This meant avoiding unnecessary civilian casualties and 'collateral damage', minimal damage to the civil infrastructure of the towns and cities and the promotion of internal uprisings. The centralised co-ordination of the 'hearts and minds' element of the campaign with the military aspects was essential to the credibility of the coalition's stated war aims, although old-fashioned military strategists would have seen this as a hindrance, essentially expecting the coalition to fight with one hand behind its back. Such was the new role of Information Operations within the 'shock and awe' campaign or, to give it its formal title, Effects Based Operations. The war in Iraq brought out much of the new military thinking that had been taking place in recent years but it also disguised many of the features of the wider war against terrorism, at least temporarily. The post-war settlement in Iraq, the next military phase of the war against the 'axis of evil', and the fate of Saddam Hussein are all unknowns at time of writing this article. But it is becoming clearer that 9/11 was more of a watermark than a watershed for the world outside the United States. The second Gulf War may well drive home the realities of what Washington understands to be the real challenge for the 21st century, and of its its resolve to tackle the issues by force if necessary or by persuasion if possible. This will ensure that we are entering an era in which propaganda - however it is termed - will be a central element of US foreign policy. The success of that propaganda will depend upon credibility, as has always been the case, which means that the US will have to mean what it says and says what it means. But it will also need to convince the sceptics that its cause is not only just but legitimate and grounded in a credible reality - and that, to a large extent, depends upon the terrorists who exist to destroy the way of life of the Americans and all who support them. Their success is measured in action, not by having their acts pre-empted or thwarted. We should always remember that, since 1991, Saddam Hussein was a hero to many people because he took on the west, and survived. Osama bin Laden and his followers understood that only too well. Conclusions It is not so much a question of the world having changed since 9/11, but one of recognising how much the United States has. As the Economist pointed out a year afterwards, Anyone who believes the risks [post 9/11] are small should think back to September 11th last year, when the risks also looked small; and should then ask themselves whether the attitudes and perceived grievances that persuaded 19 well educated men to kill themselves and thousands of civilians have meanwhile changed or gone away. The issue, of course, is whether US actions since 9/11, in Afghanistan and Iraq most visibly, have made the likelihood of future terrorist attacks greater than they were on 9/10. Many argue that it has - but they, like the Bush Doctrine itself, deal with a world as it might be rather than as it is. The American dream thus stands in danger of becoming a global nightmare to those who fear the United States more than they accept the dangers of international terrorism and the need for pre-emptive war to defeat it and those who sponsor it. And the problem for the outside observer is that they cannot see what is happening on the highly secret intelligence front where the real war against terrorism is being fought. This is perhaps the greatest propaganda challenge of all, namely how can you shape an information space to your advantage with a vacuum? |