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Academic

: Essentially Contested America

Revealing More Disinformation about the Surge's Efficacy

By Robert Justin Lipkin

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Again the IPS tries to correct the disinformation about the "surge." Consider: "Exactly one year after U.S. President George W. Bush announced that he would significantly increase the number of troops deployed to Iraq, the wisdom of his so-called 'surge' strategy remains very much in dispute here. . . . While even many Democrats, who have sought in vain to reverse the strategy since it was first announced, now sur:

concede that it has helped reduce the violence in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, critics say that its ultimate political objective -- national reconciliation between Iraq's three major ethnic and sectarian groups -- remains as distant as ever. . . . Some even argue that the surge, which added some 30,000 troops to the 140,000 deployed to Iraq at the time of Bush's announcement, may actually have enhanced prospects for a bloodier civil war by effectively permitting the warring sides -- now more demographically segregated than ever -- to re-group and re-arm in anticipation of a new round of bloodletting as U.S. troops withdraw. . . . 'The thing that worries me most of all is what happens over the next 12 to 24 months in Iraq,' ret. Army Gen. Douglas MacGregor, an outspoken critic of U.S. strategy in the Iraq war since the 2003 invasion, told National Public Radio (NPR) earlier this week. 'Could we have actually made matters worse in the long term?'" For more click here. The salient point here is that we much challenge conventional media outlets that accept uncritically whatever the administration says. The perfunctory acceptance of the administration's propaganda is more evidence, if any more is needed, that the current news outlets are typically propaganda machines supporting Rovian and Cheneyian "big lies." The only democratic answer to bad media is good media. But that requires money and good media, opposed to the egregious corporate mentality involved in peddling news today, can't compete with media giants whose primary purpose is profit. In these circumstances, where the profit-motive transcends the goal of accurate, comprehensive, and critical news gathering, democracy is challenged to the breaking point.

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Full post as published by Essentially Contested America on January 15, 2008 (boomark / email).