rev.ed.4.13.05
“War as an ‘Edsel’: the Marketing
and Consumption of Modern
American Wars”
by
Marc W. Herold
Associate Professor of Economic Development
Dept. of Economics
Whittemore School of Business & Economics
University of New Hampshire
Durham, N.H. 03824
Tel.: 603 862-3375
mwherold@cisunix.unh.edu
Keynote Address at “Teaching Peace,” a
conference for New Hampshire teachers, activists,
researchers, and students, held at the Oyster
River High School, Durham, New Hampshire,
Saturday, April 9, 2005
In Henry Kissinger's own words, “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
“History is more or less bunk,” Henry Ford famously once told a
Chicago reporter.
“America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” John
Quincy Adams
“…once you love the smell of Calvin Klein or get the feel of diesel on
your skin you are hooked for life, regardless of your socio-political
affiliations” – Janice Spark (“Brand America at War”)
1
Let me begin with a few words on the curious title of my address. We live in a society
and age where persuasion, rhetoric, talk, symbols and image are central to the making of
truth, understanding and preferences. The signifier (description) is detached from the
signified (the thing described).1 I am going to analyze the marketing and consumption of
war, that is, both the sales effort and subsequent consumer satisfaction with its purchase.
The Bush Administration adopted the model of a marketing campaign to “sell” its wars to
the American public, which comes as no surprise given that corporate power is the
driving force behind U.S. foreign policy and the war in Iraq (as recently restated by John
Kenneth Galbraith).2
I have chosen to mischievously juxtapose a marketing failure and a marketing success in
order to probe this reality. We, who advocate a culture of Peace counter posed to
President Bush’s culture of War, need to spread our message to those who have bought
and are consuming the branded product, the Bush wars or Modern Wars against
Terrorism (MWAT). In all this, constructed imagery – not necessarily Truth - is crucial.3
Let me quickly state for the record that the only acceptable war for me is one of defense,
as against Japan after Pearl Harbor. Let us keep in mind the words of John Quincy
Adams – “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy” – and ponder
that Britain did not bomb Massachusetts and New York when the I.R.A. carried out
attacks in London and Northern Ireland.
A decade ago, two economists posed the question: how much of our economy is
comprised of “sweet talk” that is devoted to persuasion – not information provision or
command giving, but just sweet persuasion.4 They estimated the employment in the
1
further
details
on
this
linguistic
distinction
in
semiotics
at
http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/semiomean/semio1.html
2
J.K. Galbraith, “A Cloud over Civilization. Corporate Power is the Driving Force behind US Foreign
Policy
–
and
the
Slaughter
in
Iraq,”
The
Guardian
(July
15,
2004),
at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0715-06.htm. See also James Ridgeway, “Corporate Colonialism.
Companies…March!,”
Village
Voice
(April
23-29,
2003),
at:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0317,mondo1,43569,6.html
3
the topic of teaching about war and peace is analyzed in a special issue of the Journal of Psychohistory,
“Teaching About War in Bush’s 21st Century,” Journal of Psychohistory 31, 1 (Summer 2003): 2-64
4
Donald McCloskey and Arjo Klamer, “One Quarter of GDP is Persuasion,” American Economic Review
85, 2 (May 1995): 191-195
2
various persuasion professions – from such 100% persuasion occupations like lawyers,
public relations specialists, actors, social-recreational-religious workers, to the 75%
occupations (where persuasion involves 75% of activity) like counselors, editors,
reporters, the big battalions of teachers including professors, etc.., finding that such
persuasion workers accounted for some 26% of person hours employed. A parallel
calculation on the output/product side revealed fully 58% of domestic output was devoted
to persuasion.
For our purposes here - understanding how consumers were persuaded to buy a culture of
War - we must put at center-stage an extended version of Dwight Eisenhower’s MilitaryIndustrial Complex, what I call the Military-Industrial-Media-Information Complex
(MIMIC). This MIMIC complex has “marketed” the MWAT brand to the general
American public, which for almost five years now has been consuming its “services” (or
utility).5 Moreover, MIMIC has functioned as an advertising monopoly (where would
Pepsi be today if it could not match Coke’s advertising?). I argue that we come to
understand war through our postmodern culture of consumption. The power of Big
Media over our lives and choices as consumers is extraordinary.6
In our postmodern world, the parallels between consumers acting upon preferences and
the “news” being increasingly more opinion than “fact” – as most blatantly seen on Fox
News - are indeed striking and compelling.
Indeed, the Fox-inspired style of war
coverage drew heavily from ESPN: data streams, tech talk, retired pros calling the plays,
and the image of battle as a sporting contest, all created a confluence between sports and
5
the selling of the Iraq War to U.S. consumers by savvy marketers, information warriors, and perception
managers is meticulously dissected by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Weapons of Mass Deception.
The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iran (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2003), 176 pp. and by Danny
Schechter, Embedded – Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the Iraq War
(Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2003), 286 pp. See also the terrific bibliography put together by Phil
Taylor, “Propaganda and the ‘war’ against terrorism (incl. the ‘battles’ of Afghanistan & Iraq) 9/11 to
2003)” (Leeds: The Institute of Communication Studies, University of Leeds, no date) at
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vf01.cfm?folder=10&outfit=pmt
6
“Bill
Moyers
on
Big
Media,”
CommonDreams.org
(October
10,
2003),
at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1010-13.htm. The question of consumer choice of private and
collective/public goods is succinctly reviewed in James R. Elliott, “Can Consumers Really Choose?”
Challenge (April 1965): 30-33.
3
combat.7 The multiple connections between violence and professional football – the
most popular American spectator sport – have long been noted.8 Rosa Pegueros got it
right,
“…the victories that really count to the majority of American men are the
victories of pure testosterone. Boxing, the art of half-naked men pummel
each other until one drops, is nicknamed the sweet science. Football, with
its brawny combatants banging heads against each other like so many
stupefied buffaloes, is the national power sport particularly which
American men value…it was of course about football that the late coach
Vince Lombardi declared, ‘Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only
thing’.”9
War as a football match is a very powerful metaphor and the two have been constantly
conflated in the portrayal of MWAT. As Goldstein so admirably put it, “victory is the
ultimate viagra.”10
(Photo 1A and Photo 1B)
As an aside, businesses capitalized on the new culture of War, selling everything from
millions of flags, Christmas ornaments, video games, to a mock Afghan toy home
attacked by U.S. Special Forces, and women’s apparel (‘wearing a touch of conquest’).11
Richard Goldstein, “War is Horny. Victory is the Ultimate Viagra,” Village Voice (April 16-22, 2003), at:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0316,goldstein,43402,1.html
8
as for example in Any Baker, “Marketing Spectator Sports With Violence: the National Football League,”
GSC
Newsletter
(Social
Science
Research
Center)
No.
4
(Spring
2002),
at:
http://www.ssrc.org/gsc/newsletter4/baker.htm
9
Rosa Maria Pegueros, “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely,” CommonDreams,org (November 14,
2004), at: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1119-26.htm
10
Goldstein, op. cit.
11
Goldstein, op. cit.
7
4
But these consumption acts are important for they become part of our culture of War,
e.g., “wear a touch of conquest” or “display a touch of conquest.”
(Photo 2A and Photo 2B)
A critical component in launching a new product or brand is name choice. As you recall,
the post 9/11 MWAT was initially code-named “Operation Infinite Justice.”12 When
warned that the name “Operation Infinite Justice” could alienate Muslims who believe
that only Allah can dispense infinite justice, the Pentagon re-labeled MWAT to a more
sales-worthy “Operation Enduring Freedom.” Words matter. Both enduring and freedom
resonate deeply with the general American public.
Words matter critically in marketing. Ford Motor Company hired advertising legend
Fairfax Cone’s Madison Avenue marketing firm, Foote Cone & Belding, which drew up
a list of 6,000 possible names for its “revolutionary” new car.13 Never mind that the car
was not what Time and Life had stated, namely the first totally new car in twenty years,
and that it instead borrowed heavily from both Ford and Mercury components.14 Ford
even hired poetess, Miss Marianne Moore, to come up with the name for the
“revolutionary” car deemed to be a frontal assault upon market leader General Motors.
She proposed “Utopian Turtletop,” a bit like Operation Infinite Justice.15 Other names she
proposed were Resilient Bullet, Intelligent Whale, and Mongoose Civique.16 Frustrated,
Ford’s president disliked all suggestions and finally said, “how about we call it the
Jim Wolf, “Oops! Pentagon learns that ‘infinite justice’ not so infinite after all,” Reuters (September 21,
2001 at 09.50 EDT)
13
“Proud?” New Zealand Marketing Magazine 18, 9 (October 1999):9 and Sandy McLendon, “A Future
Unforeseen:
Driving
Edsel
Aground,”
Jetsetmodern.com
(January
8,
2005),
at:
http://jetsetmodern.com/edsel.htm
14
for example, Time proclaimed the Edsel represented “the first new ‘Big Three’ car since Ford Brought
out the Mercury in 1938” (“The Newest Car,” Time (September 2, 1957): 64).
15
“The Edsel: Requiem for a Flop,” New York Times (September 4, 1982): 29. See also “Ars Poetica,”
Time (April 22, 1957) which describes the names Miss Moore proposed.
16
Anthony
Young,
“The
Rise
and
Fall
of
the
Edsel,”
at
http://www.theadvocates.org/freeman/8909youn.html
12
5
Edsel?” Edsel it became, in honor of Henry Ford’s only son.17 In 1956-7, Ford Motor
spent over $250 million dollars for tooling and marketing the Edsel. Tellingly, a young
man named Robert McNamara – future architect of the Vietnam War – helped create the
Edsel (as well as the F-111 which critics called the “Flying Edsel”).18 From hindsight, the
Edsel name was ill-conceived. People likened it to ‘weasel’ and ‘pretzel.’
Almost 40 years ago, television and weekly magazines brought the horror and pain into
the living rooms of America and slowly public opinion turned against the Indochinese
wars. The Pentagon learned the lesson well. By the first Gulf War, reporters were
confined to pools and the Pentagon distributed video-game like footage to TV channels
extolling the precision of U.S. weaponry. In September/October 2001, the Bush
Administration hired the public relations firm, Rendon Group19, and also Ms. Charlotte
Beers, former “queen of Madison Avenue” and chairperson of both advertising giants J.
Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather (she had successfully promoted Head &
Shoulders shampoo and Uncle Ben’s Rice), to “explain” the new Bush wars to Muslims
abroad (and the American consumer), creating the new post for her of the State
Department’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy with a half billion dollar
budget.20 According to Colin Powell, Beers was fluent with branding and she was
“from the advertising business. I wanted one of the world’s greatest
advertising experts, because what are we doing? We’re selling. We’re
selling a product. That product we are selling is democracy.”21
details in Susan Fournier and Andrea Wojnicki, “Naming the Edsel,” (Cambridge: Harvard Business
School Cases (November 1, 2001) ). A thorough analysis of the Edsel is made in Thomas E. Bonsall,
Disaster in Dearborn: the Story of the Edsel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 211 pp.
18
Thomas R. Winpenny, “Disaster in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel,” at:
http://www.eh.net/bookreviews/library/0685.shtml . On the checkered experience of the swing-wing F-111,
see “Takeoff for the F-111.” Time (May 19, 1967) and http://www.alor.org/Volume4/Vol4No20.htm
19
Laura Millar and Sheldon Rampton, “The Pentagon’s Information Warrior: Rendon to the Rescue,” PR
Watch 8, 4 (2001), at: http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2001Q4/rendon.html
20
“Charlotte Beers’ Toughest Sell. Can She Market America to Hostile Muslims Abroad?”
Business
Week
Online
(December
17,
2001),
at:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_51/b3762098.htm
21
Heather Wokusch, “Bystander Apathy: The Battle for our Hearts and Minds,” (November 6, 2001), at:
http://www.heatherwokusch.com/columns/column18.html
17
6
Democracy sold abroad, war sold at home. But while the battle for minds abroad led by
Beers and Rendon fared badly in Muslim lands22, the battle on the home front to persuade
the American public led by MIMIC succeeded eminently. The Bush Administration
worked hard to encourage and benefit from a compliant mainstream domestic corporate
media – led by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, Time Warner’s CNN, the Clear Channel
radio network, radio talk shows, and major dailies like the New York Times, the Los
Angles Times, and the Washington Post and journals like Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly
Standard – which served as giant megaphones of State Department and Pentagon
positions on the Bush wars quite like the Communist Party’s Pravda did in the old Soviet
Union.23 Clear Channel, the largest owner of radio stations in the country, has scrapped
even any pretense of objectivity with its sponsorship of pro-war rallies in major cities
throughout the U.S. The mainstream media bosses recognized - led by CNN’s coverage
of Iraq in 1991 – that media flag-waving, fabricated personal story heroics, action-movie
like storytelling, techno reporting could boost TV ratings and profits. So the deal
became (and remains)
“…cover the war in a positive light and get access to the best action
footage. This raw footage was often perceived as live by viewers –
whether it was or not – who thus found it more exciting…CNN quintupled
its advertising rates” (in 1991).24
22
Rampton and Stauber, op. cit.. Beers public relations campaigns in Arab countries turned out to be
miserable failures and she stepped down “for health reasons” amidst a cloud of disgrace in March 2003
(details in Doug Stout, “Official Hired to Improve U.S. Image Resigns,” New York Times (March 3, 2003):
and especially http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/03/state.resignation/ .
23
examined as regards Afghanistan in my “Truth About Afghan Civilian Casualties Comes Only Through
American Lenses for the U.S Corporate Media [our modern-day Didymus]," in Peter Phillips [ed.] and
Project Censored, Censored 2001: The Year's Top 25 Stories [New York: Seven Seas Publishers, 2002].
See also Edward Cone, “When the News is literally the Party Line,” News & Record (March 5, 2005), at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0306-25.htm . Also Christopher Kelley and Maria Teresa
Martinez, “Hitting Camels in the Butt: War Rhetoric and Deliberation in the Aftermath of the September 11
Terrorist Attacks” (paper delivered at 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
August
29-September
1,
2002),
at:
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&requesttimeout=500&folder=10&paper=714.
On
parallels in news spinning between Vietnam and Iraq today, see John R. MacArthur, “Iraq War Coverage
Reminds
Me
of
Vietnam,”
Providence
Journal
(April
5,
2005),
at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0405-31.htm
24
Tyler Hauck, “Media War. The film Weapons of Mass Deception Lays Bare the Networks’ War
Profiteering,” Dollars & Sense No. 258 (March/April 2005): 27-29. The article reviews Danny Schechter’s
important new film, Weapons of Mass Deception.
7
War coverage became a serious investment in entertainment for the media oligopolies,
but with also a high rate of return.
A study released in late January 2002 by the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia
University, noted that
“there is no appreciable difference in the likelihood of CNN to air
viewpoints that dissent from American policy than there is at Fox.”25
Corporate power is compounded because the very same corporations which produce the
weapons of war also own much of Big Media. Should we be surprised than that major
news outlets cheerlead for war? As Amy Goodman recently wrote,
“at
the time of the first Persian Gulf War, CBS was owned by
Westinghouse and NBC by General Electric…..Westinghouse and GE
made most of the parts for many of the weapons in the Persian Gulf War.
It was no surprise, then, that much of the coverage on those networks
looked like a military hardware show.”26
The increasing lack of diversity in media ownership helps explain the lack of diversity in
the news.27 Moreover, while actual demotions or firings like that of Phil Donahue by
MSNBC are relatively rare, “University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen
study may be found at Project for Excellence in Journalism, “Return to Normalcy? How the Media
Covered the War on Terrorism” (New York: Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, January
28, 2002), at: http://www.journalism.org/resources/research/reports/normalcy/default.asp
26
Amy Goodman and David Goodman, “Why Media Ownership Matters,” Seattle Times (April 3, 2005),
at: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0403-25.htm
27
Robert W. McChesney, “The New Global Media,” The Nation (November 29, 1999), at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=19991129&s=mcchesney
and the ownership chart at:
http://www.thenation.com/special/19991129mcchesneychart1.mhtml . A classic study is Ben H. Bagdikian,
The Media Monopoly 6th edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000). See also Anup Shah, “Media
Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership,” at Corporate Ownership in the Media/Global
Issues at http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Corporations/Owners.asp?p=1
25
8
notes that ambitious journalists are made all too aware of how their coverage of the war
could affect their future careers.”28
Roy Brown, designer of the Edsel recalls, “I was told (by Ford), we want a car that is
highly recognizable – front, rear or side – and different from anything on the road.”
Just as the Edsel was conceived of and promoted as being “different” – in order to appeal
to Americans’ fascination with the “new” – so too Secretary Rumsfeld noted such
difference in MWATs of the 21st century:
“what we’re engaged in is something that is very, very different from
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Kosovo, Bosnia, the kinds
of things people think of when they use the word ‘war,’ or ‘campaign,’ or
‘conflict’.”29
He elaborated by emphasizing that fighting a borderless “terrorism” or non-state actor
would take a long time – echoed in the word ‘infinite’ – and involve total mobilization
and sacrifices on the home front.30 Though the direct costs of MWAT in Iraq are less than
0.2% of our GDP – in other words of a qualitatively different magnitude than the Korean
or Second World Wars – the brunt of MWAT costs have involved going into debt and
cutting federal spending in areas affecting ordinary people’s standard of living.31
President Bush added the apocalyptic to the war sales effort in his address of September
20, 2001,
Kari Lydersen, “An Army of Propaganda,” AlterNet (March 31, 2003), at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/15507
29
“Infinite Justice,” at http://www.avitop.com/war
30
explored in Rahul Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance. U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond (New York:
Open Media and Seven Stories Press, 1993)
31
Joseph Stiglitz, “The Myth of the War Economy,” The Guardian (January 23, 2003), at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,879652,00.html
28
9
“every nation in every region now has a decision to make: either you are
with us, or you are with the terrorists…..this is the world’s fight. This is
civilization’s fight.”32
Patriotism was redefined to be unquestionably and resolutely being in support of the
Bush wars, the Patriot Act, etc. To be antiwar was generally equated with being weak or
blatantly un-American. The Bush team appealed to fear and emotions, not logic or
understanding. This was marvelously displayed in National Security Adviser Rice’s scare
tactic comment before the Iraq MWAT “product launch” in September 2002,
“we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”33
The retaliatory/revenge attack upon Afghanistan was launched on October 7, 2001.34
Even conservative columnist of the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer admitted
that the Afghan attack was inspired by revenge.35 Many celebrated the beginning of
MWAT. The parallels with a professional sports event were striking – the marrying of
patriotism, competition/winning, cheerleading - and have continued ever since that fateful
October 7th. Few queried what might have driven 19 angry middle-class, secular, young,
Middle Eastern men to carry out the atrocities on 9/11.36 Those who did – such as 20-yr
“Text of President Bush’s Speech, ‘Declaring War on Terrorism’,” Associated Press (September 20,
2001 at 10:24 PM ET)
33
Matt
Vidal,
op.
cit.
The
comment
by
Ms.
Rice
may
be
read
at
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/08/iraq.debate/
34
“US Primed for Retaliation,” The Guardian (September 20, 2001). The course of events thereafter is
admirably described in Douglas Kellner, “September 11 and Terror War: The Bush Legacy and the Risks
of Unilateralism,” Logos 4, 1 (Fall 2002): 19-41, at: http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_1.4.pdf
35
Tariq Ali wrote, “In the case of Afghanistan, they didn't even make that pretense. It was essentially a
crude war of revenge designed largely to appease the U.S. public. In Canada in mid-November, I was
debating Charles Krauthammer, and I said it was a war of revenge and he said, "Yeah, it was, so what?"
The more hard-line people, who are also more realistic, just accept this” (from “Interview with Tariq Ali,”
The Progressive Interview (January 2002), at: http://www.progressive.org/0901/intv0102.html ).
36
Seumas Milne, “They Can’t See Why They Are Hated. Americans Cannot Ignore What Their
Government
Does
Abroad,”
The
Guardian
(September
13,
2001),
at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,551036,00.html. See also Dafna Linzer, “A Year Later,
the 19 Highjackers Are Still a Tangle of Mystery,” Sun Times (September 8, 2002), at:
http://www.suntimes.com/special_sections/sept11/attacks/thehijackers.html . A classic text exploring the
rise of jihad (qua resistance) is Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld. How Globalism and Tribalism are
Reshaping the World (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995)
32
10
CIA veteran Michael Scherer or Professor Juan Cole37 - were ignored or attacked,
ridiculed, vilified and swamped in tidal waves of national egotism, arrogance, and
narcissism.38 For example, I was viciously attacked by Murdoch’s Weekly Standard in a
pathetic article titled “The Prof Who Can’t Count Straight.”39
We now know that MWAT in Afghanistan in late 2001, was akin to an initiative of test
marketing – an opportunistic step on the road to Baghdad - for the launching of the “real
thing”: the MWAT on Saddam Hussein and Iraq in March 2003.
(Photo 3)
Arundhati Roy noted that Operation Infinite Justice heralded a fight against an unknown
enemy, most likely not to be found which then
“…for the sake of the enraged folks back home, (America) will have to
manufacture one. Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic
and a justification of its own…what we’re witnessing here is the spectacle
of the world’s most powerful country reaching reflexively, angrily, for an
old instinct to fight a new kind of war…”40
37
see Michael Scherer, Imperial Hubris. Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (Washington D.C.:
Brassey’s, Inc. 2004) and Juan Cole, “Bin Laden’s Vision Becoming Reality,” Antiwar.com (September
13, 2004), at: http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=3560
38
Paul Recher, “USA, Narcissism & Follies aux Beaucoup,” (May 31, 2004) at www.nrg.com.au/~recher.
Recher quotes from the Diagnostic Scholastic Manual, 4 th edition, which is the psychiatric bible, noting
nine features of narcissistic personality disorder. To be certified as NPD, a person must meet 5 of the
criteria. The USA scores 9 out of 9. The nine criteria are: a grandiose sense of self-importance;
preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, etc; belief in one’s exceptionalism;
requires excessive adoration; holding a false sense of entitlement; being interpersonally exploitative, i.e.
taking advantage of others to achieve one’s own ends; lacking empathy; being often envious of others or
believing that others are envious; displaying arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes.
39
Joshua Muravchik, “The Prof Who Can’t Count Straight,” The Weekly Standard 7, No. 47 (February 26,
2002), at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/565otmps.asp?pg=1
40
Arundhati Roy, “The Algebra of Infinite Justice,” The Guardian (September 29, 2001), at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4266289,00,html
11
Once the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan had begun, all offers by the Taliban to turn over
Osama Bin Laden – as for example on October 14th - to a third country if evidence were
provided as to Bin Laden’s complicity in 9/11, were flatly rejected by Washington as
momentum was building.41 As we all know, a long list of successive, specious “reasons”
for attacking Afghanistan and Iraq has been paraded out by the Bush Administration.42
(Photo 4)
No matte, in consumer culture, one ad replaces another.
On September 4, 1957, the Edsel was unveiled amidst “a drumbeat of hoopla and fanfare
unmatched in the history of the auto industry.”43 It was heavily promoted as "the newest
thing on wheels."44 Radio spots touted the new car incessantly. There was even a CBS
“Edsel Show” TV Special that enlisted a jaw-dropping amount of star power: Frank
Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby, and Louis Armstrong appeared, with Bob
Hope thrown in for good measure.45
(Photo 5)
Robin Therkauf, “The Smoking Gun. The Taliban Agreed to Extradite Osama Bin Laden to Another
Country,”
Justice
not
Vengeance
(October
8,
2001),
at:
http://www.j-nv.org/AW_briefings/ARROW_briefing005.htm and Jerry White, “Why is Bush Refusing to Negotiate with
the Taliban?” WSWS.org (October 16, 2001), at: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/talio16.shtml
42
well argued in Matt Vidal, “Bush’s Legacy: Dead Bodies, Dead Wrong, Dead Logic,” The Palestine
Chronicle
Weekly
Journal
(April
9,
2005),
at:
http://palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20050408062331642
43
“The Edsel: Requiem for a Flop,” op. cit.
44
see Doug Harley, “Lights, Camera, Edsel!” at: http://lovefords.org/58edsel/default.htm
45
Sandy McLendon, op. cit.. The master film copy and photos can be viewed at “The Edsel Show,” at:
http://www.ev1.pair.com/edsel/edselshow3.html
41
12
But reviewers rather than “seeing” the front vertical grill as evoking the classic look of a
Rolls-Royce or Cord, said it looked like a horse collar.46 A less charitable view was that it
looked like “an Olds sucking a lemon.”47 The lessons of failure included that looks
count. The Edsel was also over-designed and sold at a price the public could not justify.
The price tag matters. Ford had spent years and money carrying out the wrong kind of
market research: instead of hunting for names, it should have been concentrating on
whether there was a market for the “revolutionary” new car in the first place. Knowing
one’s target matters both in business and in war.
The Edsel just like the Bush wars came replete with technical innovations/gizmos, like a
speedometer which rolled around like a gyroscope, a fabled ‘Teletouch Drive’ automatic
transmission (to change gears you simply pushed buttons that were mounted on the
steering column).48 The Edsel ads touted that the touch was so soft, you could change
gears with a toothpick.
Shift image: we can put a laser-guided bomb through a window. The “soft touch” or
“surgical precision” of modern air war – a U.S. pilot could just (only) kill Al Qaeda by
just pushing a button at 35,000 feet in the Afghan shy.
But the Edsel quickly gained a reputation for mechanical problems and the car soon came
to stand for “Every Day Something Else Leaks” (or Edsel). In Gulf War I, subsequent
analyses revealed that less than 30% of U.S projectiles hit their intended target.49
Matt Haig, “If at First You Don’t Succeed,” Brand Strategy (April 2004): 56-57. Examining the Edsel
case, Haig points out that lessons include: hyping an untested product is a mistake; name matters; looks
count; price is important; the right research is important; and quality is important.
47
Jennifer Bott, “Forty Years Later, Ford’s Edsel Still Confers Jokes, Affection,” Detroit Free Press
(August 13, 1998)
48
but Teletouch depended upon primitive 1950s electronics and a diaphragm that tended to generate lots of
problems (McLendon, op. cit.)
49
“After the war was over, the Air Force announced that laser- and radar- guided bombs made up just 7%
of all U.S. explosives dropped on Kuwait and Iraq. The other 93% were conventional "dumb" bombs,
dropped primarily by high flying B-52s from the Vietnam
Era. Ten percent of those "smart" bombs missed their targets, the Air Force said, while 75% of the dumb
bombs were off target. In all, about 62,000 tons - or 70% - missed their targets" (Source: John R.
McArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993):161)
46
13
The Bush wars came with much fanfare about so-called precision weaponry – with their
alleged ability to mostly kill only ‘bad guys’ and spare civilians, thereby making the
Bush wars more palatable, salable and consumable to the American public – like the
Edsel’s soft touch gear shift. “It’s sort of the immaculate approach to warfare,” was how
Professor of Strategy, Col. (ret. U.S Marine) Mackubin Owens at the U.S. Naval War
College (Newport, R.I.) described the U.S military campaign in Afghanistan in
November 2001. British military historian, John Keegan, had earlier chimed in with “air
power and international morality now march in step.”50 Amplifying the sounds from the
Pentagon, the mainstream U.S. press waxed lyrical about “surgical precision” of US
force.51 Such amplification of the Pentagon perspective was carried to new heights by
embedding journalists amongst troops.52
The problem, of course, is that as in all modern wars since Korea, the U.S. military
campaigns against Afghanistan and Iraq killed as many or more civilians than enemy
troops and have in all cases except Grenada resulted in failure (though even the case of
Grenada is questionable, as “food for sex” is rampant there today as is abuse of human
rights).53 As Simon Jenkins brilliantly exposed civilians died in the indiscriminate nature
of earlier U.S. bombing campaigns in Laos, bombing “strategic targets” in Iraq (1991)
and later Yugoslavia.54 Modern air forces forego having low-flying propeller-driven
planes for target control, relying instead upon high altitude bombing guided by laser
beam of GPS. I argue that an implicit despicable trade-off in the valuation of life is made:
John Keegan, “West Claimed Moral High Ground with Air Power,” The Daily Telegraph (January 16,
2001), at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/01/16/wirq116.xml
51
Ann Scott Tyson, “US is Prevailing With Its Most Finely Tuned War,” Christian Science Monitor
(November 21, 2001), at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1121/p1s2-usmi.html
52
Ilana Mercer, “On Pimps and Presstitutes,” WorldNetDaily (April 16, 2003), at:
http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32079
53
Leroy Noel, “Food for Sex Rampant in Grenada,” Caribbean Net News (September 27, 2004) and “The
Tragedy of Grenada Since October 25, 1983,” Bulletin of the Committee for Human Rights in Grenada No.
1 (April/May 1987)
54
Simon Jenkins, “Bombs That Turn our Leaders into Butchers,” The Times (January 17, 2001), at:
http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2001/msg00050.html
50
14
prevent casualties on the attacker side, but cause greater casualties of innocents on the
side of those bombed.55
Clemens and Singer provide estimates of the human cost of war in the Scientific
American.56 They break out soldiers killed in combat and civilians killed (plus soldiers
who died from wounds, accidents, or disease). Since World War II, the Third World has
been the primary battleground. In some of these wars as in Mozambique and Angola
(1965-95), more than three-quarters of the victims were civilian. In the SovietAfghanistan war (1979-89), two-thirds of the deaths were civilian. In the Serbo-CroatianBosnia wars (1991-95), over 80% of the casualties were civilian. In the covert civil war
raging in Colombia during the past ten years, the ratio has been five civilians to every
military death.57 The vicious bombing of Salvadoran peasants with napalm and white
phosphorous bombs, deliberately dropped by Salvadoran Air Force planes upon 'targets'
selected by high-flying U.S reconnaissance aircraft, has been amply documented.58 The
U.S-supplied A-37 fighter bombers had gradually replaced the U.S-trained Salvadoran
death squads by 1984 as the leading agent of civilian deaths in El Salvador. Again,
innocent unarmed civilians were the primary victims of these deadly air assaults, a policy
which flagrantly violated the international rules of war. In the three more recent bombing
campaigns – Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001-2), and Iraq (2003-5) – the percent of
civilian deaths were 36%, 31%, and 66%:
Conflict
Military deaths
Civilian deaths
Total deaths
Yugoslavia (1999)
2,100
1,200
3,300
Afghanistan (2001-2)
8,000
3,600
11,600
Iraq (2003-5)
10,000
20,000
30,000
55
argued and detailed at great length in my forthcoming, Blown Away. The Myth and the Reality of
Precision Bombing in Afghanistan (Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, forthcoming). See
http://www.commoncouragepress.com/index.cfm?action=book&bookid=250
56
from Clemens, Jr., Walter C. and J. David Singer. "The Human Cost of War: A Historical Perspective,"
Scientific American 282, 12 (June, 2000): 56-57.
57
Jan McGirk, "Elite Colombian Troops Fan Out into FARC Stronghold," The Independent [February 23,
2002]. The author cites a figure of 40'000 deaths, one-sixth of which were civilians.
58
Sandy Smith, "Rain of Terror: The Bombing of Civilians in El Salvador," Health & Medicine: Journal of
the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group 3 [Winter 1985]: 21-28.
15
The sparing of innocent civilians proved to be false advertising, a cruel hoax and lie:
3,500 Afghans died directly from U.S. actions (2001-2); and at least 20,000 Iraqi
civilians have similarly perished to-date.59 Another 10-20,000 Afghans died ‘indirectly’
in the countryside and in refugee camps when U.S. bombing prevented delivery of food,
medicines, blankets and the like.60
In 2003, at the centenary of Ford Motor, a reporter for the Detroit Free Press wrote
“What is certain is that Ford is a business that works just as hard at
constructing images as constructing autos. Since its beginning, Ford’s
public façade has been an integral part of its success. ‘Its greatest asset,’
wrote historian David Lewis about the early years of Ford ‘was the vast
amount of goodwill which the industrialist enjoyed among the masses’.
The company’s founder…was a master of public relations, one of the most
skilled self-advertisers of the 20th century. He charmed reporters, often
embellishing or making up anecdotes for them… ‘History is more or less
bunk,’ Ford famously once told a Chicago reporter. But Ford would create
Greenfield Village (Dearborn) to display his version of history, a version
that at times distorted the truth…”61
Teacher of Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush in 2001-5? Recall Henry Ford on history.
As Tariq Ali noted, “people are taught to forget history,” as it is too subversive:
59
numbers on Afghan civilians killed may be found in my compilation at
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold and in Iraq Body Count at http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ . A
collection of detailed stories of individual Afghans killed by U.S. bombs and actions can be found in my
Afghan Victim Memorial Project, also at http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold
60
see my “Rubble Rousers: U.S. Bombing and the Afghan Refugee Crisis,” Cursor.org (March 16, 2002),
at: http://www.cursor.org/stories/rubble.htm. See also Jonathan Steele, “Forgotten Victims. The Full
Human Cost of US Air Strikes Will Never Be Known, But Many More Died Than Those Killed Directly by
Bombs,”
The
Guardian
(May
20,
2002),
at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,3604,718635,00.html
61
Niraj Warikoo, “START THE PARTY: Ford in a Master of Wheels and Image Spin,” Detroit Free Press
(June 13, 2003), at: http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/image13_20030613.htm . More than anything
Edsel seemed star-crossed. When Ford paid big bucks to pre-empt The Ed Sullivan Show with a one-hour
special called “The Edsel Show,” ratings were huge, but as Frank Sinatra tried to open a shiny Edsel's huge
front door on the show the handle came off in his hand. Sadly, it wasn't a fluke. The Edsel program had
been thrown together very rapidly and the build quality of the early Edsels was often abysmal.
16
“in the West, since the collapse of communism…the one discipline both
official and unofficial cultures have united in casting aside has been
history…the past has too much knowledge embedded in it, and therefore
it’s best to forget it and start anew.”62
Such represents a fine illustration of detaching signifier from signified. Logic,
reason and history have been replaced with emotion and opinion.
Table 1. Summary Comparison in the Marketing of the Edsel and the Bush MWAT
Era or age
Marketing agent(s)
Product name
Price tag
Product launch
timing
gizmos
Message of product
differentiation
Product quality
Goal
The Ford “E-car”
The Bush Wars (MWATs)
peak of modernity (1950s)
Foote Cone & Belding (of
NYC)
postmodernity
Charlotte Beers, the Rendon
Group, mainstream media
(MIMIC)
Operation Infinite Justice, but
replaced with Operation Enduring
Freedom
Purposefully hidden, partly
unknown
Excellent – post- 9/11 public
clamor for revenge
Surgical strikes with precision
bombs
Utopian Turtletop, but
replaced by Edsel
Too high for medium-sized
car
Poor – economy going into
recession
‘Teletouch Drive’ touch
transmission
“The newest thing on
wheels”
“The Edsel is Coming”
“Performance with
Elegance”
Largely untested, soon
revealed as poor
Diminish medium-size car
market share of GM’s Buick
and Oldsmobile
A borderless, infinite, civilization
war/clash
Tested in Kosovo-Serbian
conflicts
Capture perpetrators behind the
9/11 attacks “dead or alive,” and
“smoke out the terrorists”63
“Interview with Tariq Ali,” op. cit.
in speech by President Bush on September 17, 2001, at http://www.australianpolitics.com/news/2001/0109-17a.shtml
62
63
17
I turn now to the consumption of war. While consumers rejected the Edsel, they still need
to make their rejection of the culture of War felt in Washington. The Edsel sank link a
stone: instead of selling the expected 200,000 units in the first year, by the time
production ended in November 1958, only 110,800 were ever built.
The difference, of course, is that a private corporation cannot indefinitely loose money,
whereas it takes much longer for the U.S. Government to change course from the
mushrooming federal budget and trade deficits and the U.S. casualties associated with the
consumption of MWATs.
A culture of Peace is the only alternative to: (1). failed wars of intervention; (2). the
overwhelming killing of innocent civilians in MWATs; and (3). degrading the quality of
our civic society.
Let me briefly address each of these three points.
To end war is not the same as to advocate a culture of peace as the experience of the
Vietnam antiwar movement clearly demonstrated. The war ended in 1975 and the
movement evaporated. Five years later, the U.S. was involved in new wars in
Afghanistan and Central America. Since World War II, the United States has bombed 22
countries (according to a widely-cited listing by historian, William Blum, which I have
edited/corrected):
Table 2. Countries Bombed by the U.S. Since World War II
China
1945-6: U.S 1st Marine Div. strafes
Communist-held villages in Chungking64
Korea
1950-53
China
1950-53
64
A part of hidden history is that in October 1945, 10,000 US Marines departed from Okinawa to North
China, to prevent Japanese forces from surrendering to Chinese Communist armies which had been fighting
in the region for over a decade. In subsequent months (1945-6), the Marines and the Japanese engaged in
joint military actions against Chinese revolutionary forces, for the first time (from Mark Selden, “Okinawa
and American Security Imperialism,” in his Remaking Asia. Essays on the American Uses of Power (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1974): 282, and the New York Times (November 17, 1945): 1, which discusses the
order for Marine aircraft to strafe villages in the Chungking area of Manchuria).
18
Guatemala
1954
Indonesia
1958
Cuba
1959-60
Guatemala
1960
Vietnam
1961-73
Congo
1964: U.S. B-26K bombers in support of
Pres. Kasabuvu
Laos
1964-73
Omit - (Peru)
(1965: Peruvian British-made Canberra
bombers hit Guevara-inspired guerrillas in the
Mesa Pelada region)
Guatemala
1967-69
Cambodia
1969-70
Grenada
1983
Libya
1986
El Salvador
1980s
Nicaragua
1980s
Lebanon
1983-84
Panama
1989
Iraq
1991-99
Bosnia
1995
Colombia
1990s-current
Sudan
1998
Afghanistan
1998
former Yugoslavia
1999
Afghanistan
2001-current
Iraq
2003-current
In how many of these instances did a government respectful of human rights and human
diversity occur as a direct result of this U.S. bombing and/or intervention?65
65
A more extensive listing covering a century of U.S. military interventions may be found in Zoltan
Grossman, “A Century of U.S. Military Interventions: From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan,” at
http://zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm
19
Secondly, the failed modern wars of intervention have killed and injured tens of
thousands of innocent civilians as I have documented. The following Table 3 makes one
stark point: precision-guided munitions (PGMs) have not decreased the ratio of civilians
killed per 10,000 tons dropped. The past seven major U.S bombing campaigns fall into
three clusters in terms of resulting civilian deaths. Allied air forces dropped more than 1.2
mn tons on Germany, killing 635'000 civilians during World War II, giving the largest
ratio of 5,000 civilian deaths for every 10,000 tons dropped. The Iraq Gulf War has the
lowest ratio of civilians killed per tonnage dropped, though I am not suggesting it was a
clean air war. The Vietnam and Serbian bombing campaigns are intermediate cases.
Afghanistan fits into a third group with Cambodia and Laos. In each of these campaigns,
PGMs or not, there were over 2,000 civilians killed for every 10'000 tons of bombs
dropped. PGMs were absent during the campaigns against Cambodia and Laos, but
featured in Afghanistan. Yet in every case the ratio of civilian deaths per 10'000 tons
dropped was similar. In this context, it is rational to conclude that PGMs per se in
practice play no role in saving civilian lives.
Table 3. A History of U.S Bombing Campaigns and Resulting Civilian Deaths
Bombed region
Date
Tonnage
dropped
Reported
civilian deaths
Ratio civilians
killed per
10'000 tons of
bombs**
800
Vietnam, Rolling
Thunder campaign
Laos
Cambodia,
Arclight campaign
Christmas
bombing of HanoiHaiphong
Iraq Gulf War
1964-67
650'000
1965-73
1969-73
2'000'000*
540'000
52'000 North
Vietnamese
350 - 500'000
50-150'000
1972
20'000
1'600
800
1991
88'000
NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia
U.S Afghan War
Iraq, March 20April 5
1999
13'000
2001
2003
14'000
6'350
2'500 - 3'200 7'000 - 15'000
500 - 1'200 1'500
1'300 - 3'150
940-1'112
284 - 363 - 795
- 1'705
385 - 923 1'153
929 - 2'250
1'480 - 1'752
1'750 - 2'500
926 - 2'778
20
*the U.S bombing of Laos involved a planeload of bombs being dropped on the tiny country every 8 minutes for nine
years! The campaign in Laos was much more intense than in Afghanistan, yet each bomb killed roughly the same
number of civilians. See "American Genocide of the Laotian People, 1965-1973," at:
Http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/Laos.htm and especially Simon Jenkins, "Bombs That Turn Leaders
into Butchers," The Times [January 17, 2001, at: http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2001/msg00050.html .
**the ranges reflect the figures reported in different studies.
Source: Marc W. Herold, Blown Away. Myth and Reality of U.S. Precision Bombing in Afghanistan (Monroe, Me.:
Common Courage Press, forthcoming 2005)
And yet, the myth, the image, hyperreality persists – heavily promoted by the MIMIC here that modern American air wars are particularly "clean."
Turning now to my third point – the degradation of our civic society as a result of the
culture of War – let me emphasize seven aspects. We might think of these as seven
product characteristics of the Bush wars. Kevin Lancaster argued that a product is simply
a bundle/collection of various characteristics that satisfy a consumer’s need.66
Improving a product – whether an Edsel or MWAT – means enhancing those
characteristics or adding new ones that provide more perceived utility by the consumer.
Assessing consumer satisfaction with Bush wars involves evaluating the product’s seven
bundled characteristics – aside from the largely rejected claims of lower oil prices and
greater home security.67
The consumption of MWAT involves meeting needs of:
economic well-being, health, civil liberties, sociability, expression and respect by others.
More precisely these are: reallocation of state resources; effects upon those furnishing
bodies for the Bush wars; effect upon our civil liberties; effects upon tolerance of our
internal ethnic minorities; effect upon the scope of public policy debates; effect upon
honesty in governance; and effect upon our relations with erstwhile Allies and other
nations.

The consumption of MWAT has necessarily involved a diversion of public
resources to war-making and Homeland Security. Such spending has resulted in:
Kevin J. Lancaster, “A New Approach to Consumer Theory,” The Journal of Political Economy 74, 2
(April 1966): 132-157
67
Al Qaeda has simply been dispersed and decentralized making it far more dangerous in the long-run and
Al Qaeda’s vision is becoming reality (Cole, op. cit.).
66
21
massive federal deficits; greater foreign holding of U.S. Treasury bonds; and a
predicted decline in future real living standards ort a large generational shift of the
debt burden. By mid-2004, the Bush Iraq war had cost $207.5 billions.68 The
estimated cost for New Hampshire citizens was $947.7 millions. Where will your
income tax dollars for fiscal 2006 go? Of total federal funds outlays amounting to
$2,130 billion, a careful recalculation indicates that 48% will be spent on past and
current military items). An analysis by the War Resisters League examines the
distribution of real federal outlays for 2006:

Human resources (34%) at: $ 722 billion

General government (12%) at: $ 261 billion

Physical resources (6%) at: $ 120 billion

Past military (18%) at: $ 384 billion

Off budget military requests (4%) at: $ 85 billion

Current military (26%) at: $ 558 billion.69
MWAT is over-designed and sold at a price the American public can ill afford, e.g.,
about $5-6 billion a month, or about $25 millions a month for the citizens of New
Hampshire. To make just two further observations: 4 million Americans entered the
poverty ranks since President Bush was first elected; and 5 million Americans lost their
health insurance in those years.70

As of January 2005, over 1,600 U.S troops have been killed in MWATs and close
to 10,000 injured, often seriously. Of the dead, well over 1,400 were killed after
Bush advertised “mission accomplished.” As widely documented, military
National
Priorities
Project,
“Local
Costs
of
the
Iraq
War,”
at
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Issues/Military/Iraq/CostOfWar.html
69
“Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes. Total Federal Funds Outlays $ 2,130 billion,” War
Resisters League (New York City), at: www.warresisters.org and http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm
70
Erin Campbell, “Orwell is Alive and Well in the Bush Administration,” CommonDreams,org (April 9,
2005), at: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0409-24.htm
68
22
families have often been devastated. On any one night in America, 250,000 U.S
veterans are homeless and/or in shelters.71

The consumption and implementation of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act
have spawned an Orwellian society of secrecy, surveillance and lying.
For
example, U.S. energy policy is framed behind closed doors by Dick Cheney and
oil executives. The Congressional General Accounting Office reported that $ 8.8
billions were “lost” in Iraq.72 There has been a dramatic increase in the number of
government documents labeled “classified” (and a corresponding rise in FOIA
lawsuits). The invasion of privacy, searches, and imprisonment without charge or
trial have become all too common.

The Bush wars with their bipolar, apocalyptic overtones have encouraged a
resurgence of racism. The stereotyping and ethnic profiling, as well as more
violent hate crimes (against for example turbaned Sikhs) have heightened the
insecurity of some Americans, including even a 16-yr old girl.73 Even I received a
telephone death threat because of my work on the civilian casualties of MWATs.

A bundled characteristic of consuming MWAT involves the silencing of healthy
public debate over policy, squelched by the false banner of patriotism. We live in
a nation of ever-present flags (reminiscent of Berlin in 1938), jingoism,
harassment of critics (including students, teachers and professors), and the
cleansing and outright politicizing of the State Department, the armed services
branches and various intelligence services of career personnel who might be
critical of the Bush wars.

The heavily promoted Bush wars, often employing deceitful messages, have
fostered a culture of lying, distrust and fraud. Stated reasons for MWAT are
71
details at http://www.floridavets.org/facts/homeless.htm
“At least $8.8 billion in Iraqi funds that was given to Iraqi ministries by the former U.S.-led authority
there cannot be accounted for, according to a draft U.S. audit set for release soon. The audit by the
Coalition Provisional Authority's own Inspector General blasts the CPA for not providing adequate
stewardship' of at least $8.8 billion from the Development Fund for Iraq that was given to Iraqi ministries”
[Reuters, 8/19/04]. See also Suzanne Goldenberg, “Audit Reveals Abuse of $9mn Works Funds,” The
Guardian (February 1, 2005), at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1403034,00.html
73
for the latest example, see Nina Bernstein, “Teachers and Classmates Express Outrage at Arrest of Girl,
16,
as
a
Terrorist
Suspect,”
New
York
Times
(April
9,
2005),
at:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0409-05.htm
72
23
shown to be fabrications. The Bush Administration files fake news reports with
tax payer dollars, overpays Halliburton for oil deliveries in occupied Iraq, hires
and plants ringer news reporters (like Jim Guckert74) in order to tame press
conferences, and lies by omission and commission about widespread torture
including rendition.75 The official whitewash covering up malfeasance in the
highest circles continues unabated.76

Lastly, the consumption of unilateralist MWAT has isolated the United States
from erstwhile allies, including such countries I know well, Brazil and
Switzerland. Moreover as has been widely commented upon, U.S. interventions
and MWAT have fuelled a rising anti-Americanism threatening U.S businesses
overseas, discomforting U.S tourists abroad, and even giving rise to boycotts of
U.S. products – Goodbye Coke, Hello Mecca Cola.77 In Britain, Bush’s closest
ally in the MWATs, the decline of American Studies was directly linked to
rejecting “a degree in bullying and self-interest.”78 Janice Spark puts it, “…brand
America is in trouble.” In a sense, The Ugly American of the later 1950’s has
staged a comeback.79
Maybe the simplest way to assess the consumption of the Bush wars is to think of their
real or opportunity costs. The real cost of purchasing a Toyota is measured by the value
foregone by not purchasing the next best alternative. By the end of 2004, the U.S. had
Edward Cone, “When News is Literally the Party Line,” News & Record (March 5, 2005), at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0306-25.htm
75
for extensive details see “Prisoner Abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Elsewhere. Open-Content Project
Managed
by
Derek
Mitchell,
Center
for
Cooperative
Research
at:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=us_torture_abuse
76
see Eric Margolis, “Bush Rewards His Failures. U.S. Commission on Iraq Just Latest Surge in Niagara of
Whitewash,” Toronto Sun (April 10, 2005), at:
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2005/04/09/989932.html
77
Janice
Spark,
“Brand
America
at
War,”
at:
http://www.brandchannel.com/images/papers/BrandAmerica.pdf . Will Hutton, “Goodbye, Coke, Hello,
Mecca Cola,” Washington Post (April 20, 2003): B04. See also Jim Lobe, “US Businesses Overseas
Threatened by Rising Anti-Americanism,” OneWorld.net (December 29, 2004) and Marco R. della Cava,
“Ugly Sentiments Sting American Tourists,” USA Today (March 3, 2003)
78
Polly Toynbee, “A Degree in Bullying and Self-Interest? No Thanks. The decline of American studies
reveals our increasing dislike of the US,” The Guardian (August 25, 2004), at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1290021,00.html
79
title of a widely read book at the time describing American arrogance, incompetence, and corruption in
Southeast Asia, see William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American (New York: Norton,
1958). The book was highly acclaimed and in 1963 it was made into a movie, starring Marlon Brando.
74
24
spent some $151 billion to wage “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” This amount could,
alternatively, purchased 23 million housing vouchers in the United States, or health care
for 27 million uninsured, or 678,200 fire engines, or food for half of the malnourished
people in the world for 2 years, or clean water and sanitation for all in the Third World
who lack such (for two years).80
Conclusion:
The Edsel was a good product which failed in the market mostly because of poor timing,
whereas the Bush wars were a bad product but which succeeded because of good timing
and the powers of the MIMIC. My “story” has situated the marketing and consumption
of modern American wars within our postmodern society of consumption, persuasion and
spectacles. I have argued that the purchasing/consumption of MWAT needs to be
understood as really the experiencing a bundle of characteristics – an interconnection the
American consumer needs to understand. The focus upon buying a product puts
responsibility upon the consumer rather than blaming the Bush Administration. As
Charles Cutter put it,
“blaming George W. Bush and his administration of militarists only goes
so far…America is still enough of a democracy that the people can have
an impact on governmental policy…ultimately, the fault lies not in our
leaders, but in ourselves. It starts with laziness. The average American has
probably spent more time researching an automobile purchase than they
did researching the validity of their government’s evidence for war…Once
the shooting starts, laziness merges with a warped sense of patriotism…”81
from “Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War,” Foreign Policy in Focus (June 2004), aty:
http://www.afsc.org/pwork/0407/040705.htm
81
Charles Cutter, “Selling War to a Willing Public,” Magic City Morning Star (July 23, 2004), at:
http://magic-city-news.com/article_1831.shtml
80
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Our message – our persuasion – needs to emphasize the downsides of the bundled
characteristics of the Bush wars, the MWATs. In so doing, we will need to confront,
weaken or circumvent the powers of the Military-Industrial-Media-Information Complex
which has served the Bush Administration so well in selling the culture of War. On the
other hand, in March 2005, 48 out of 50 town meetings in Vermont – a blue state –
condemned the war in Iraq and called upon political leaders to bring home the state’s
National Guard.82 One month later, lawmakers of the red state of Montana passed a
strongly worded condemnation of the Bush Patriot Act, thereby joining Alaska, Hawaii,
Maine and Vermont.83
Whereas the Edsel stands as a monument to the limited power of the “Hidden
Persuaders,” the Bush wars stand as a chilling tribute to the powers of image and
persuasion in a postmodern society where the spectacle and hyperreality prevail.84
We are not safer as a nation, we are not more admired abroad as a democracy, and oil is
not even cheaper.
“48 Vermont Towns Vote Against Iraq War,” Democracy Now (March 2, 2005), at:
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20050302102700461
83
Jennifer McKee, “House Condemns Patriot Act,” Billings Gazette (April 2, 2005)
84
analyzed respectively in the extraordinary works of Guy Debord and French philosopher Jean
Baudrillard. Baudrillard is a theorist of hyperreality, a symptom of postmodern culture, in which the world
we live in has been replaced by a copy world, where we seek fabricated, simulated stimuli. Examples of
hyperreality include: almost all video games; a sports drink of a flavor that doesn’t exist; a plastic Xmas
tree that looks better than a real Christmas tree ever could; Disney World and Las Vegas; a war in which
only enemies
die.
See “Hyperreality,” at
Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality
82
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Appendix: Photos Accompanying Text
Photo 1. The Linking of War, Patriotism, Cheerleading and Sports
Jay Fiedler of the Miami Dolphins football team led the team onto the
field for their match against the Colts. He carried an American flag which had
flown over Afghanistan on November 18, 2001, and was presented to the
Dolphin cheerleaders during their 'morale-boosting' visit in Afghanistan in
November 2001 (Source: MiamiDolphins.com: Press Box)
Source: further details provided in my photo data base compiled on “Scenes of Afghanistan
after U.S. Bombing,” at: http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/
27
Cheerleaders of the NBA's Washington
Wizards basketball team, 'perform' for the
U.S. soldiers at Bagram Air Base, outside
Kabul, Afghanistan, on November 14, 2002
[AP photo, Vincent Thian], as an example of
the western version of objectifying
[oppressing?] women. Note should be made
too that this takes place on Muslim soil.
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Photo 2. The MWAT in American Retail Outlets
Left: Christmas tree decoration. Right: Wearing a touch of conquest.
The American conquests of Afghanistan and Iraq are now being
commoditized in the newest fashion. The impulse is to accessorize with
khaki and camo [from Richard Goldstein, "War is Horny. Victory is the
Ultimate Viagra," The Village Voice [April 16-22, 2003] and photo by
Sylvia Plachy at
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0316,goldstein,43402,1.html
On the following Page, J.C. Penney offered a new toy gift, 'Forward Command Post," for
Christmas 2002 : a "pre-bombed" civilian home with a U.S. soldier in it [ details at
http://www.traprockpeace.org/jcpennytoy.html ]
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Photo 3. Revenge Expressed on October 7, 2001 at a Saints Football Game
Football fans display the Bush regime’s reason for attacking the country of Afghanistan
in October 2001.The New Orleans Saints fans engage in this exhibition at the game upon
hearing that U.S planes had begun bombing Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 (AP Photo
by Dave Martin).
30
Photo 4. The Constructed Cases for War (by Toles)
Source: http://ins2001.com/cartoons/2003/2003-2_cartoons.html
Photo 5. The Edsel 1958
Source: 1957 Ford Edsel Citation Convertible (AP photo)
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/
Traprock Peace Center
http://www.traprockpeace.org
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