Over the next few weeks and perhaps even months, the propaganda used to vilify Iran will intensify, just as it was prior to the Iraq War.
We will be forced to hear, repeatedly, the evils of the regime, the wicked intentions of the new president and the manufactured threat to our security.
We will be told over and over again how Iran has been a pariah on the world stage, that they overthrew our puppet dictator a few decades back, held America’s embassy hostage, support most of the world’s terrorists...
That they are a tyrannical regime, want to destroy Israel, are a clear and present danger to our national security and, if we are lucky, that they even harbor the bogeymen of the moment, Al-Qaeda.
LEAPFROGGING TOWARDS WAR
Once again America is going on the warpath, getting herself ready for another imperialist offensive preemptive attack, disguised in the full spectrum of colors that are coordinated to hide the real reasons for war.
Thus, the conditioning of the War Culture has for a few months now been set in motion with a media blitzkrieg engineered to prepare the nation’s consciousness for further conflict.
Gently, slowly, systematically and methodically propaganda is being delivered into our comfortable homes on a daily basis that is designed to mold us into hating another nation, another people, using the same mold as before to deceive and manipulate an always gullible citizenry.
The powers that decide the destiny of the nation have very little challenge in brainwashing the American public.
Knowing that Americans have perfected the art of amnesia, easily forgetting yesterday in a haze of distraction and escapism, possessing the attention spans of gnats and the enlightenment existing during the Dark Ages.
The Establishment can recycle long used and recently implemented blueprints to steer the nation towards the acceptance of illegal offensive war and further crimes against humanity.
The warmonger rulers realize that 'the public' has become so dumbed-down that it readily accepts as true everything told them by their government, believing everything their television generates, no lie is too big or outlandish, no deception will ever be rebelled against and no whitewash will ever be questioned.
Using television, which is today but an instrument furthering corporate control of our lives, spewing only what is of interest to the corporatist world, Americans are bombarded with the propaganda that will manufacture an enemy out of Iran.
Without the television, able to reach hundreds of millions of people, able to penetrate our psyches and minds, able to affect our emotions and behaviors, getting our full attention as we sit glued to the set, listening to talking heads and government lackeys, the brainwashing of the masses by the government and the corporatist world would be a much harder endeavor.
With it, however, the mobilization of minds is a relatively easy accomplishment, and the conditioning of hundreds of millions of citizens becomes cheap, efficient and successful.
With the same manual as that used to mobilize us for the war on Iraq, the warmongers begin instilling fear into our minds, repeating lie after lie, over and over again, that the new enemy is a threat to America, our way or life, our freedoms and democracy.
They realize that most people do not want war, so they must be cajoled into supporting what is already a predetermined inevitability.
Thus, exploiting our mammalian emotions and behaviors, using our own animal instincts against us, the warmongers in power envelope us with the fear factor, repeating the perceived threat enough times, in so many different ways and mediums, that most people instinctively begin to believe what their “trusted” leaders are telling them.
With Iraq it was the threat of mushroom clouds, of WMD, of terrorists. Similarly, the mirage that is the Iranian threat has been marketed to penetrate our deepest fears, scaring us into believing that Iran seeks nuclear weapons, with the inherent lie that as our enemy, they would not hesitate to bomb one or more of our cities.
War marketers understand fully that rationality and common sense vanish in the wake of introduced fear and hatred.
Therefore, the use of fear and terror to condition the masses into believing that only through war can their lives be made safer will once again be used, conveniently attaching the illusion of George W. Bush as the one man that will insure their security.
Over the next few weeks and perhaps even months, the propaganda used to vilify Iran will intensify, just as it was prior to the Iraq War.
We will be forced to hear, repeatedly, the evils of the regime, the wicked intentions of the new president and the manufactured threat to our security.
We will be told over and over again how Iran has been a pariah on the world stage, that they overthrew our puppet dictator a few decades back, held America’s embassy hostage, support most of the world’s terrorists...
That they are a tyrannical regime, want to destroy Israel, are a clear and present danger to our national security and, if we are lucky, that they even harbor the bogeymen of the moment, Al-Qaeda.
The newspapers of importance and prestige, those in New York and Washington, will be used to conjure up false intelligence and bogus news reports, most manufactured by the war marketers using cherry-picked intelligence.
The false reporting of reporters with vested interests, concocted documents and reports from foreign intelligence services, and the false accusations by so-called Iranian dissidents and defectors.
These newspapers, whose weight is heavy in the media world, will begin pasting on the front pages articles of deception regarding Iran’s nuclear energy program, making us believe in the imminent threat to our security and that of certain Middle Eastern nation whose interests are well protected by the newspapers’ editors.
Stories unfavorable to Iran will appear, making it look like the member of the Axis of Evil, making it hated in the mind of Americans.
President Ahmadinejad will become the new Osama, Zarqawi and Saddam, a new evildoer extraordinaire, becoming the new poster child for the perpetual, and fictional, war on terror, just the latest incarnation of America’s enemy.
Again, fear and hatred will be used to cloud reason and logic; terror will be introduced to exploit both our emotions and still-fragile post 9/11 psychology.
The lies, deceptions and propaganda first outlined in print will invariably make their way to the televised media, where they will be disseminated far and wide, their content picked apart and dissected by talking heads and media hacks.
Their only purpose in life is to become the stenographers of the corporatists, as always pushing the idea of war into the mind of the viewer.
Partisan talking heads from certain think tanks, many with the interests of foreign nations at heart, will make the rounds, chatting without stop in support of preemption, appearing incessantly in a barrage of subjective opinion and prepared propaganda, as always offering only the views for war and preemptive attack, as always appearing without dissenting views and opinion.
Along with partisan talking heads, certain influential politicians, those carrying the mantra of deceived trust, will also appear incessantly on television, making the case for war and preemption using the same failed logic and manipulated lies used to sell the Iraq war, again without dissenting views present to contradict and debate the push for attack.
Like an advertising campaign, where the entire organization at a company’s disposal is used to sell the product, the push to sell the American people into accepting an attack on Iran will be all-encompassing, reaching hundreds of millions of Americans through the television, radio and printed media.
The public relations campaign run out of the White House will be relentless and assiduous, in the end convincing millions that an American attack is in the best interests of the nation. Already, for example, over 50 percent of the public has made it known that they would have no problem if Bush attacked Iran.
A figure that perhaps reflects the ignorance, mass amnesia and incomprehensible idiocy of half the population.
This figure represents a high percentage favoring attack, even before the campaign of propaganda, lies and deceptions even heats up. The percentage will only rise once the campaign hits its peak.
Iran will be made out to be a lawless nation at odds with the rest of the world. Of course diplomacy will be designed to fail, as it was prior to the Iraq war.
While shouting that the UN must act, thereby being able to claim legitimacy, America will maneuver its vast system of control and inevitably lead the charade of the UN to fail, granting Bush the excuse to attack.
Terror threats will be manufactured, danger to us will be reborn and, in the end, Iran will be attacked and crippled, killing tens of thousands, escalating tensions, creating insecurity, perpetuating an already never-ending war and unleashing human violence upon the globe.
Using the naiveté and ignorance of the citizenry to its advantage, the military industrial energy complex will claim to fight for freedom, democracy and an end to tyranny, again jumping on the fictional war on terror bandwagon to excuse its offensive attacks for imperial aspirations and control of the world’s remaining oil fields.
The threat of nuclear attack by Iran will of course be exaggerated, as will its failure to comply with international law and its use of nuclear technology.
Orwellian newspeak and doubletalk will permeate the airwaves; news reports will be manipulated to fit the predetermined storyline.
Facts and figures will be contorted and altered, their true meanings erased, their mirror image twisted. And it will all be repeated, over and over and over again, designed to manipulate, condition and steer us toward accepting further death and destruction in the Muslim world.
The plethora of broken UN resolutions of a certain Middle Eastern nation will never be mentioned, nor its possession of 200 nuclear missiles, nor the fact that Iran would be committing suicide if it attacked with nuclear weapons either America or Israel.
Nor the fact that any nation under the intense threat faced by Iran will inevitably seek to defend itself through nuclear weapons, nor the fact that every nation is entitled to sovereign creation of civilian nuclear technology for energy purposes.
Nor the fact that Iran possesses roughly thirteen percent of the world’s available fossil fuels, nor the fact that its new oil bourse threatens the stability of the US dollar.
Nor the fact that we are in the age of resource wars, already engaged in clandestine battle with China, Russia, Europe and India, nor the fact that America has over 700 bases worldwide, including four new permanent bases in Iraq, wishing for a few more in the geopolitical treasure that is Iran.
Nor the fact that this rebranded offensive strategy and attack is nothing more than pursuit of strategic oil fields close to Iraq, containment of a very potent rival, control over oil and, as always when America interferes in the Middle East, proxy wars benefiting Israel.
Using the bully pulpit afforded the President, George W. Bush will release the hounds of his administration, parading known liars and immoral miscreants, each shouting loudly the case for war.
Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Goss, Chertoff, Hadley, the nest of neocons festering in Washington and Bush himself will be given a podium and a microphone from which to preach the virtue of offensive warfare, as usual manipulating our instincts and emotions.
As always, resurrecting 9/11 to engender fear, hatred and anger amongst the populace. They will grace our television monitors, given all the airtime they desire, their lies and deceptions heard around the nation, never to be contradicted, always to be believed.
It will not matter that they lied, deceived and manipulated the case for war against Iraq. It will not matter that they took America to war on false pretenses, creating a wasted debacle in Mesopotamia.
It will not matter that their incompetence, arrogance, ignorance and immorality have made us less safe, not more, creating more terrorists, not less, endangering our “way of life” more by their actions at home than by their ineptitude abroad.
It will not matter that their potential actions could engulf an entire region in violence, conflagrating the Eurasian land mass in a very dangerous and long-lasting new Cold War against potent rivals.
It will not matter that with each new attack or act of humiliation upon the Muslim world the fire of hatred continues to boil inside the minds of one billions Muslims, threatening to destabilize the entire planet.
Of course it will not matter that these warmongers seek to perpetuate the vicious cycle of Muslim killing Westerner and Westerner killing Muslim, thereby giving rise to the perpetual war on terror, now remarketed “Long War".
For they have been wishing for this for a very long time, finally giving rise to their “clash of civilizations,” thus birthing their self-fulfilling prophesy. None of the above will matter, for all has been forgotten and disregarded, for we live in the United States of Amnesia.
Manuel Valenzuela @ OpEd News