[symple]

Iraqi WMD was believed enough by the public to make it politically infeasible for most Congressmen to vote against authorizing war against Iraq. That the NYT later issued an apology is irrelevant. Iraqi WMD is a great example of manufacturing consent long enough to push through a major policy blunder.

In retrospect the effort was comical enough, in light of the fact that none were found, that the one responsible for it (President Bush) famously joked about looking for WMD under a desk. He received no real political backlash for his joke or for being vile enough to start an unnecessary war that killed hundreds of thousands.

The propaganda surrounding the global war on terror was effective enough that when the U.S. performed terrorist acts on weddings that killed innocents it was labeled “drone strikes” and when the enemy performed acts that killed innocents they were labeled “terrorist attacks”.

People initially believed the b.s. the Pentagon said about Tillman’s death. People largely believed that Chalabi would be the political savior of a new Iraq until our government no longer liked him. There are people who still think we shouldn’t trade with Cuba because they are communist but see no problem trading with China. Criticism of Israel is often times labeled anti-semitism. Do more than a small minority of people understand that Jews aren’t the only semites in the world?

I can’t point to too many specific instances of U.S. media engaged in outright propaganda but there are some clear trends where the collective attitudes on certain topics/beliefs are engineered to be a certain way. The fact that people even ever seriously uttered the phrase “war on christmas” is enough know that opinions are deliberately being manipulated by media.

[the-dude]

Although I agree with your post, the invasion of Iraq can not be seen without taking the US PTSD about 9/11 into account. The WMDs were just a parallel construction.

[mrangle]

There wasn't a 9/11 justification to invade Iraq without the WMD excuse. Which is why they used it.

I know why they invaded Iraq. It has nothing to do with 9/11 PTSD nor oil except as a secondary or tertiary benefit.

Whether or not the actual reason is a good one is another debate. But that doesn't change the fact of the WMD lie, but most importantly that of the observation that the Press is an in-total propaganda arm of at least one sect of the government. Which has a lot of downstream implications for the twenty plus years since.

[ethanbond]

What was the real reason?

[happytiger]

https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=128491&page=1

[ethanbond]

Sheesh, a bit on the nose eh! The memo does seem to still be concerned about WMDs though? Curious if there was an even more ulterior motive under the hood there. The WMD concern, as I mention in other comments, wasn't fully out of left field. But I am curious why it was so top-of-mind for a certain wing of the American political sphere at that time. Presumably not humanitarian concerns?

[symple]

My memory of the events is that pretty much everyone supported the invasion of Afghanistan. Manufactured support was needed for Iraq. Invasion of Iraq was 1.5 years after 9/11 and Iraq wasn’t tied to 9/11.

I think our overreaction to 9/11 is itself an example of manipulation by media. We’ve done 9/11 type events on other nations for decades and those nations didn’t get PTSD from our actions. This leads me to think that our over the top outrage was partially fueled by media narratives.

[ethanbond]

> We’ve done 9/11 type events on other nations for decades

Please name a few examples of US peacetime attacks on civilian populations

[symple]

It’s an easy way to absolve a nation of guilt if you negate any examples done during war. Our bombings in North Vietnam were entirely immoral and are not less so because we were at war. Though no actual declaration of war was made. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was made up to justify enlarging the war. Does McNamara’s Morons count in your mind as an example? Maybe not since that was done to our own people.

Nevertheless, you should read up on the history of our shenanigans in Latin America. One example: while Americans didn’t do the actual killing and torture of Catholic priests and nuns our proxies did. You should also read up on things we funded the Iraqis to do in their war against Iran. Paying someone to do your dirty deeds is just as bad as doing them yourself. We did shoot down an Iranian airliner and later promoted the captain of the ship. We weren’t at war with Cambodia but did terrible things to that country during the Vietnam war. Bay of Pigs.

Look at who we funded and ended up enabling to gain control of Afghanistan during Soviet Union’s involvement there.

[ethanbond]

Regardless of the ultimate moral judgment, it is obviously not the case that a bunch of civilians dying during warfare is the same as an attack committed solely to target civilian populations during peacetime.

Even granting the premise of “paying is equal to doing,” none of your examples are anything like 9/11. The defining characteristics of 9/11 are obviously these: peacetime, intentionally targeted at civilians, killed a large number of civilians.

The best way to absolve a country of guilt is actually to make divorced-from-reality equivocations so that every less than ideal outcome looks equally evil, equally preventable, etc. The US has done plenty of truly atrocious stuff overseas and at home, silly arguments like “the US committed decades of 9/11-style acts” is counterproductive if your mission is accountability.

[symple]

War is the ultimate act of overt violence. Discounting examples from war is strange. What does it matter to the victims if a piece of paper somewhere declares it a war?

I can’t point to a single act that satisfies your criteria. The U.S. does not wage peacetime violence in the same way that terrorist groups do. We prefer to do the damage over time. We prefer to avoid headline capturing violence. But the victims don’t care and the point I made is not diminished by this. Our reaction to 9/11 was an overreaction. Lots of places have been devastated by U.S. actions and those people haven’t had similar overreactions.

2000 people weren’t killed in a single day in Nicaragua in the 80s. We did it over time and in a sustained way. The Nicaraguans don’t obsess about how this changed the whole world or desire to go on a 20 year killing spree in reaction to what we did.