NOW THEY TELL US

June 3, 2003

by Joe Sobran

C.S. Lewis once overheard some soldiers conversing

during wartime. He was startled to discover that they all

casually assumed their government was lying to them. They

weren't the least bit outraged by it; they simply took

for granted that this is what governments always do. It

was putting their lives at stake, yet they didn't trust

it to tell them the truth. Lewis was shocked that they

weren't shocked.

Plain men are pretty hard to fool. The French

observer Jacques Ellul has written that educated men are

far more susceptible to propaganda than the uneducated.

And since most people now go to college, it would seem

that propaganda may now be at the height of its

influence.

Why is this? We like to think that education creates

an immunity to propaganda, a rational, skeptical outlook.

In fact, it may do just the reverse. It may create in us

a disposition to settle for fancy words and high-sounding

slogans instead of results. Colleges are hotbeds of

ideologies. The Baby Boomers, when they reached college

age, exemplified this perfectly. Around the world a whole

generation of Marxists sprang not from the "proletariat"

or "the working classes," but from the campuses.

Marxism was what the French call a false but clear

idea -- the sort of seductive oversimplification, or

intellectual panacea, that a bit of education makes

tempting. Other such ideas, full of mass appeal for the

modestly college-educated, include liberalism, feminism,

Zionism, and neoconservatism.

The war on Iraq was the fruit of neoconservative

propaganda. One of its authors, the hawkish deputy

defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, has now admitted to

VANITY FAIR magazine that Saddam Hussein's supposed

weapons of mass destruction were only a "bureaucratic

reason" for the war, a reason everyone in the Bush

administration could agree on.

Not exactly a lie, perhaps, but a sort of convenient

fiction. Of course no such weapons were used by the

Iraqis during the war, and the victors have been unable

to find them. President Bush still insists they will turn

up sooner or later.

Wolfowitz's admission has caused a stir in this

country, but a real uproar in England, where Prime

Minister Tony Blair may lose his job over it. The

British, even those who favored the war, are taking this

issue very seriously.

The pro-war press in America is trying to play down

the phantom WMDs. As INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY puts it,

"Finding banned weapons to placate the anti-war crowd

should be far, far down the list" of "unfinished tasks in

Iraq." To placate the anti-war crowd?

For months the administration harped on WMDs as the

chief reason for war on Iraq. Remember Colin Powell's

long aria to the United Nations Security Council? That

was supposed to be the moment of truth, the dramatic

moment when the hawks would lay all their big cards on

the table, though it turned out to be a farrago of

dubious sources. It has since transpired that U.S.

intelligence agencies doubted that Saddam Hussein had any

WMDs to speak of.

So now we are told that only nit-pickers of "the

anti-war crowd" ever made an issue of the forbidden

weapons. And wouldn't you just know, they're doing it

again!

The new propaganda line is that Saddam Hussein was

so evil -- as witness the exhumed corpses of his many

victims -- that the war was justified in order to

liberate the Iraqi people from his tyranny. So it had

nothing to do with American defense and national security

after all. Just as "the anti-war crowd" was saying all

along.

Propaganda, like dairy products, should come with an

expiration date. It's usually abandoned once it has

served its purpose. The WMD story worked very well when

it was needed to whip up war fever. It provided a

temporary excuse, disarmed skepticism, isolated critics.

Now it isn't needed anymore and should be discarded

before it becomes too ridiculous.

"The anti-war crowd" were neither a subversive,

Kremlin-funded organization nor an auxiliary of al-Qaeda.

They were merely scattered individuals who tried to keep

a grip on their common sense in the face of what they

recognized to be a lot of hooey from their own

government. So they were right. What's the point of

bickering with them now? They lost.

It's always instructive, and often entertaining, to

compare postwar propaganda with pre-war propaganda. As

the victors tell it, the reasons for war tend to get

nobler and nobler with time, and their more absurd lies

often fall quietly away in the retelling.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Read this column on-line at

"http://www.sobran.com/columns/2003/030603.shtml".

Copyright (c) 2003 by the Griffin Internet

Syndicate, www.griffnews.com. This column may not

be published in print or Internet publications

without express permission of Griffin Internet

Syndicate. You may forward it to interested

individuals if you use this entire page,

including the following disclaimer:

"SOBRAN'S and Joe Sobran's columns are available

by subscription. For details and samples, see

http://www.sobran.com/e-mail.shtml, write

fran@griffnews.com, or call 800-513-5053."