Asia Times: A war waged with missiles of misinformation


	March 13, 2002	atimes.com

Media/Information Technology

A war waged with missiles of misinformation
By Ehsan Ahrari

The brutality of the information age became blatantly apparent to the United States during its military campaign in Afghanistan. In the previous war in the region, "Desert Storm", the United States took pride in the ease with which it controlled information and conducted effective psychological operations (psyops) against the Iraqi military. However, during the Afghan campaign, it discovered that the adversary could become effective, or even temporarily gain the upper hand, if it also has access to mass media. That was precisely what happened when the Qatar-based television network, al-Jazeera, independently covered the military campaign in Afghanistan.

What bothered the United States most was that al-Jazeera regularly televised the messages of Osama bin Laden, whose terrorist organization al-Qaeda was one of the targets of US military operations. The Bush administration, fully cognizant of the potency of bin Laden's messages, succeeded in its attempts to regulate his messages within the United States. The US media voluntarily complied with the government's request not to televise bin Laden's messages - either in their entirety or as edited versions - or read summaries of them.

However, influencing US public opinion was of secondary concern for bin Laden. His chief intention was to convey his messages to the Muslim and Arab masses. They were his real audience, and the United States could not keep him from reaching them.

Later, during the Afghan campaign, a high-level decision was made in Washington to allow a number of top government officials to be interviewed by al-Jazeera so that Middle Eastern people could hear the US message on its war on global terrorism. That tug-and-pull for the hearts and minds of the Muslim masses continued long after the conclusion of the first phase of the Afghan campaign.

In an attempt to have ready and independent access to the Muslim and Arab public, the current administration is also in the process of establishing radio and television channels to broadcast its messages and US cultural programs to young Muslim audiences. The US government feels that such programs serve as effective vehicles for conveying American values that are little known in Muslim countries.

Such attempts to influence Muslim public opinion are perfectly legitimate. However, some zealots in the Department of Defense have recently demonstrated how dangerous "true believers" could be in their eagerness to influence international public opinion. The New York Times reported that the Pentagon decided to open the "Office of Strategic Influence" (OSI) in November. The supposed rationale (or, to be precise, the lack thereof) underlying that office was to plant misinformation or disinformation abroad. One can only imagine the embarrassment of the Bush administration when that news story broke.

NBC News reported that the OSI "had circulated classified proposals to disseminate explicitly false information in overseas news reports about US activities". The same report quotes unnamed defense officials as saying the OSI had "a detailed proposal that would have included a sweeping campaign of disinformation not only overseas but also in the United States itself". The report went on to observe, "the plan called for a campaign of lies, coercion and influence against clerics, schools and news organizations. Some of the propaganda would have been aimed at Muslims inside the country."

Under the storm of criticism that followed the report, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld decided to shut down the OSI. But the saddest part of the story was that no one expressed public remorse for such a blatantly stupid act.

The handling of this incredibly idiotic episode begs the question: Why did Rumsfeld go along with such a project to begin with? The bureaucratic explanation was that the decision to create the OSI was made at a "very low level". In an era when the notion of "passing the buck" is so vehemently, fervently, and justly maligned, that statement went surprisingly unnoticed. Additionally, when the US initiates any attempt to lie to anyone, no one is likely to believe it. That very rudimentary reality was never really understood by those who came up with the idea of creating the OSI. The government's credibility is at best shaky. As one dispatch noted, "The US government shouldn't deliberately lie to the public. That's clear. What isn't so clear is whether government officials are lying now."

The resolve to fight global terrorism at the highest levels of the US government is understandably firm. For those of us who are not of age to say that this resolve reminds us of a similar resolve of the 1940s or 1950s - to fight and defeat international communism - may draw such parallels only on the basis of our knowledge of the history of that era. There is that painful and scary reminder from the 1950s that the zealotry to defeat international communism also gave birth to "McCarthyism". The strength of the democratic character of the United States, its magnificent obsession with freedom of expression, and its free media cumulatively defeated nefarious McCarthyism before it could transform itself into a national pathology.

No one is drawing a parallel between a limited but potentially dangerous attempt to create the OSI and McCarthyism. However, the national determination ought to be that US democracy should resolutely nip any notions of spreading disinformation and lies in the bud, no matter the source.

In the final analysis, this episode underscores the fact that zealotry to fight the war against global terrorism can get way out of proportion. There are enough hawks inside and in the close proximity of the Bush administration for whom the end may justify the means. One can only thank our lucky stars that the United States has a vigilant press. The public outcry that democracies do not indulge in disinformation as official policy, no matter what the cause, killed the OSI.

The painful reality remains, however, that the zealots who fathered the sick notion of the OSI are still within the official bureaucracy, and need to be closely watched. Even in its fight against global terrorism, the United States must not let go of its long-standing tradition of legality, decency and morality, and avoid all the temptations offered by mindless zealots to form the Office of Strategic Influence, which, in reality, was an attempt to institutionalize "strategic stupidity".

Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is a Norfolk, Virginia, US-based strategic analyst.

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