by pattrice jones

Originally published in Fall 2005 issue of Impact Press.

Review of War Made Easy by Norman Solomon

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

So goes the old saying. But when it comes to war, we’ve been fooled over and over again, with the same tricks serving the same purposes every time.

When does credulity become complicity? That’s the question that arises for me after reading Norman Solomon’s War Made Easy.

People in the United States like to think of themselves as peaceful and friendly lovers of liberty. Despite that innocent and pacific national self-image, the USA always seems seems to be fighting somebody, often by means of torture and treachery. In my lifetime, the United States has invaded Afghanistan, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Iraq, and Panama; bombed civilians in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Lebanon, and Vietnam; and sponsored reactionary paramilitary violence in Afghanistan, Angola, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua and heaven-only-knows where else.

How is it that peace-loving people are so frequently inspired to march to war? How do people who see themselves as guardians of liberty come to confuse occupation with liberation? Why do people who claim to deplore political violence so often use violence to solve real or perceived political problems?

There are two possibilities: (1) US citizens repeatedly have been tricked into supporting violence by war-mongering politicians and their sycophants in the media; or (2) US citizens aren’t really all that committed to peace and freedom after all.

In War Made Easy, Norman Solomon elaborates the first of these hypotheses, examining 17 ways that “presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death.”

As stated by Solomon, the 17 ideas that lead citizens to support military adventures are:

• America is a fair and noble superpower
• Our leaders will do everything they can to avoid war
• Our leaders would never tell us outright lies
• This guy is a modern-day Hitler
• This is about human rights
• This is not about oil or corporate profits
• They are the aggressors, not us
• If this war is wrong, Congress will stop it
• If this war is wrong, the media will tell us
• Media coverage brings war into our living rooms
• Opposing the war means siding with the enemy
• This is a necessary battle in the war on terrorism
• What the U.S. government needs most is better PR
• The Pentagon fights wars as humanely as possible
• Our soldiers are heroes, theirs are inhuman
• America needs the resolve to kick the “Vietnam Syndrome”
• Withdrawal would cripple U.S. credibility

Solomon devotes a rambling chapter to each idea. Some chapters survey the ways that the idea in question has been used to promote different military endeavors while others serve as antidotes by refuting the idea under scrutiny.

Solomon has something interesting to say about each of the 17 problematic propositions but I found myself wishing for a more focused and comprehensive treatment. In which recent wars have each of the ideas been operative? How have they been deployed and to what effect? How do we know what impact they actually have had on the thinking and behavior of United States voters and soldiers?

In contrast to his well-justified cynicism concerning the motivations of politicians, Solomon’s attitude toward the credulous public seems almost naive. Concerning covert operations in Central America in the 1980s, Solomon approvingly quotes journalist Robert Parry’s opinion that “If the American people knew that their tax dollars were being used to arm brutal armies which were butchering political dissidents, killing children and raping young girls, then support for the Reagan-Bush policies would have evaporated.”

That was a reasonable supposition at the time but the truth has come out since and in no way diminished American adoration of Ronald Reagan. More recently, support for Bush’s Iraqi adventure has declined only due to US costs and casualties. Photographs of mutilated Iraqi children and pornographic torture at Abu Ghairb did not reduce public support for “our troops” or their Commander in Chief.

How, then, is Solomon so sure that the public has been tricked? Isn’t it possible that United States citizens know very well what their government is doing and whole-heartedly approve of the use of violence to secure cheap gas for their Hummers? Since the foundation of the United States, haven’t white Christians always approved of the violent appropriation of the lands and lives of darker non-Christians?

A related set of questions concerns the media. A journalist himself, Solomon describes but does not explain the complicity of journalists in pro-war propaganda and disinformation campaigns. He shows how, again and again, journalists fall for and then belatedly discover the deceptions of politicians. But aside from a few tantalizing glimpses into the psyches of sycophants like Dan Rather, Solomon does not help us to understand how men and women who see themselves as seekers and speakers of truth are so easily and repeatedly led to participate in deception.

Reflecting on Solomon’s 17 pro-war propositions, it seems to me that we — journalists and citizens alike — are so easily tricked into criminal violence specifically because we have such a strong belief in our own innocence. Solomon’s portrayal of citizens and, to a lesser extent, journalists as the hapless dupes of duplicitous politicians suggests that he also embraces the myth of American innocence. While the hope that this gives him is heartening, I wonder if his faith might be misplaced.

Nonetheless, this is an important book that should be read by anyone unfamiliar with the rhetoric and reality of recent military engagements. However, the readers who need this book the most might have the hardest time with it.

This book might be difficult for readers without a good grasp of recent US history. While Solomon fully explains the deceptive dynamics of some military interventions (such as Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic) his discussions of some episodes (such as incidences of media bias in its coverage of US-sponsored violence in El Salvador in the 1980s) may not make sense to readers who do not already know what really happened. For such readers, I’d suggest reading Solomon’s book in tandem with the relevant chapters in Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States or Alexander Cockburn’s Corruptions of Empire.