Continuity Über Alles: Massaging the Message in Afghanistan

by Chris Floyd   
Continuity, continuity, in all things, continuity.

This has been the battle cry of Barack Obama's administration, especially when it comes to waging the Terror Wars -- and trying to manipulate public opinion about these intractable conflicts.

As Stars and Stripes reports, Obama is paying millions to a shadowy PR firm to "vet" the political leanings of journalists reporting on his ever-expanding "Af-Pak War." This happens to be the same PR firm used by the Bush-Cheney regime to help mislead the nation into the murderous war of aggression against Iraq: the Rendon Group. S&S:

    As more journalists seek permission to accompany U.S. forces engaged in escalating military operations in Afghanistan, many of them could be screened by a controversial Washington-based public relations firm contracted by the Pentagon to determine whether their past coverage has portrayed the U.S. military in a positive light.
    U.S. public affairs officials in Afghanistan acknowledged to Stars and Stripes that any reporter seeking to embed with U.S. forces is subject to a background profile by The Rendon Group, which gained notoriety in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq for its work helping to create the Iraqi National Congress. That opposition group, reportedly funded by the CIA, furnished much of the false information about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion.
    Rendon examines individual reporters’ recent work and determines whether the coverage was “positive,” “negative” or “neutral” compared to mission objectives, according to Rendon officials.

 

 

Not to worry, though. The Pentagon says it doesn't deny anyone access because of their background; they just use the information to let the relevant commanders know if they've got some nosy pinko commie islamofascist left-wing wacko in their midst. Just so they can be extra careful that, you know, nothing happens to the little American-hating bastard during the visit.

    “We have not denied access to anyone because of what may or may not come out of their biography,” said Air Force Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, a public affairs officer with U.S. Forces Afghanistan in Kabul. “It’s so we know with whom we’re working.”

Yet strangely enough, it seems that the Pentagon is, well, lying about not barring anyone because of their past reporting. Who have they barred? Why, a reporter from Stars and Stripes, just two months ago:

    U.S. Army officials in Iraq engaged in a similar vetting practice two months ago, when they barred a Stars and Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division because the reporter “refused to highlight” good news that military commanders wanted to emphasize.

Of course, Obama's continuity in using the Bush-serving professional manipulators only continues Bush's continuity with the Clinton Administration, which also used the Rendon Group to, among other things, do exactly what George Bush later did: peddle war-fomenting lies about Iraq. Of course, this was simply Bill Clinton's continuity with the policies of his predecessor, the other George Bush. (It sounds confusing, but it's really not; all you have to do is follow the policies -- and the money. The name of whoever happens to be managing the imperial war machine at any given moment hardly matters.) As SourceWatch reports:

    Rendon was also a major player in the CIA's effort to encourage the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In May 1991, then-President George Bush, Sr. signed a presidential finding directing the CIA to create the conditions for Hussein's removal. The hope was that members of the Iraqi military would turn on Hussein and stage a military coup. The CIA did not have the mechanisms in place to make that happen, so they hired the Rendon Group to run a covert anti-Saddam propaganda campaign. Rendon's postwar work involved producing videos and radio skits ridiculing Saddam Hussein, a traveling photo exhibit of Iraqi atrocities, and radio scripts calling on Iraqi army officers to defect.

    A February 1998 report by Peter Jennings cited records obtained by ABC News which showed that the Rendon Group spent more than $23 million dollars in the first year of its contract with the CIA. It worked closely with the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an opposition coalition of 19 Iraqi and Kurdish organizations whose main tasks were to "gather information, distribute propaganda and recruit dissidents." According to ABC, Rendon came up with the name for the Iraqi National Congress and channeled $12 million of covert CIA funding to it between 1992 and 1996. Writing in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh says the Rendon Group was "paid close to a hundred million dollars by the CIA" for its work with the INC.

And those millions keep on rolling in, no matter who sits in the White House. And why not? The group's founder, John Rendon, was a long-time political operative in the top levels of the national Democratic Party, while his eagerness to serve the imperial agenda has endeared him to Republican courtiers as well. SourceWatch again:

    John Rendon began his career as an election campaign consultant to Democratic Party politicians. According to Franklin Foer, "He masterminded Michael Dukakis's gubernatorial campaign in 1974; worked as executive director of the Democratic National Committee in the Jimmy Carter era; managed the 1980 Democratic convention in New York; and subsequently worked as chief scheduler for Carter's reelection campaign." James Bamford reports Rendon and his younger brother Rick went into consulting in 1981.

These guys are wired from way back, and they are wired still. Rendon's Job 1 is to make the destructive and expensive imperial wars appear palatable to the yokels back home, so the rubes will keep sending their sons and daughters off to die -- and to kill, in vast numbers -- for the profit and privilege of the small, bipartisan American elite. Sure, our rulers squabble amongst themselves as they jostle at court and scramble for the choicest bits of roast suckling from the feast table, and it can get pretty vicious. But this is just a matter of personalities and factions. When it comes to actual policy -- militarism, manipulation, domination -- the watchword remains: continuity.

 

 

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Af-Pak Masquerade: The Untold Truths of War     

William Pfaff has the low-down on the empire burlesque going on in Barack Obama's "Af-Pak" war. The whole piece is well worth reading, but below are a few highlights, including the pearl of wisdom in the first sentence:

    The problem with U.S.-sponsored elections in Asia and elsewhere in the non-Western world, as in Afghanistan Aug. 20, is that they are sponsored by the United States primarily to legitimize its own presence in the country.

This is a truth so self-evident that it should not even have to be said; yet such is the impenetrable ignorance and arrogance of the American political class (including most emphatically the corporate media) that it needs to be loudly shouted in every available media, for hours on end, day after day, in the wan hope that it might finally get through to our leaders and "opinion-formers."

And what is the fruit of Obama's "continuity" and expansion of the policy of his imperial predecessors? Back to Pfaff:

    The new administration’s under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, Judith A. McHale, met a group of Pakistani journalists, including Ansar Abbasi, an important commentator critical of U.S. policy. She spoke warmly of U.S.-Pakistani relations, and Abbasi politely listened, thanking her for coming. He then, according to McHale afterward, said, "You should know that we hate all Americans. From the bottom of our souls, we hate you."

    Under Secretary McHale also reported that Abbasi went on to explain that Americans "are no longer human beings because (their) goal was to eliminate other humans." He said that "thousands of innocent people had been killed because (Americans) are trying to find Osama bin Laden."

While Abbasi's reading of Pakistani sentiment might be accurate, he is of course incorrect in his final observation. Of all the many reasons why Americans are killing thousands of innocent people, "trying to find Osama bin Laden" is not one of them. Does anyone believe that if Osama bin Laden was found tomorrow -- dead or alive -- the Terror War would suddenly stop? The Terror Warriors long ago gave up even the pretense that the war in Afghanistan is about "getting" bin Laden. We hear different justifications for the continued churning of the war machine practically every day. As Pfaff notes, the new line, apparently, is that we are killing thousands of innocent people -- and losing handfuls of our own soldiers every month -- in order to build a public health system in Afghanistan and help provide more business opportunities for Pakistanis.

This is the line now being trotted out by Obama's hand-picked high poobah of Af-Pak affairs, Richard Holbrooke. As Pfaff notes:

    Holbrooke ... told an audience in Karachi that the U.S. under President Obama wants to see an improvement in the lives of Pakistanis, and more business opportunities for them as well....

    Twelve days earlier, in Washington, Holbrooke had held another press conference, accompanied by many from his team in Pakistan. The purpose was to explain to the American television audience that the mission in Afghanistan is to kill or capture drug traffickers, help farmers grow food instead of poppies, build a public health system, build "civil society" there, and in general rebuild the country.

What's more, Holbrooke seems to think that our drone missiles, our military bases and our bombings of weddings and funerals are all integral parts of a Muslim Reformation:

    Ambassador Holbrooke expressed the ambition to add a spiritual dimension to his efforts in the region. He said the religiously motivated enemies of the American presence in Asia "present themselves as false messengers of a prophet, which is what they do. And we need to combat it." (Surely he has his theology badly confused?)

But of course the reason why Holbrooke's "theology" is confused here is because he is not trying to make actual sense with his words. He -- like his boss, and all the other servants of Ares in the American elite --is merely making vaguely agreeable noises to obfuscate the blood-and-iron reality of empire in action. They want loot, power, and obedience -- but they can't come out and say it. And so we will continue to hear, from Republican and Democrat, from conservative and progressive, lie after lie after lie about "building" freedom and democracy and rights and law and prosperity and security by "killing thousands of innocent people" in broken and volatile lands.