COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON (GUEST POST): But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough: the dead in a field in Pennsylvania, in the ashes of the Pentagon, and in the ruins of the World Trade Towers. They were not about to admit to their further errors at Guantanamo Bay. Better to claim that everyone there was a hardcore terrorist, was of enduring intelligence value, and would return to jihad if released. I am very sorry to say that I believe there were uniformed military who aided and abetted these falsehoods, even at the highest levels of our armed forces.
Col. Wilkerson offers compelling evidence of what I've been calling "myth-jacking."
"But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough: the dead in a field in Pennsylvania, in the ashes of the Pentagon, and in the ruins of the World Trade Towers. They were not about to admit to their further errors at Guantanamo Bay. Better to claim that everyone there was a hardcore terrorist, was of enduring intelligence value, and would return to jihad if released. I am very sorry to say that I believe there were uniformed military who aided and abetted these falsehoods, even at the highest levels of our armed forces."
Rather than uphold truth, democracy, and the yada yada yada, what did they do? Deployed snipers with high-powered microphones to strafe the airwaves with myths of terrorists with swarthy complexions oh my!
The Pentagon's Message Force Multipliers are no different than snipers with microphones. Have they all stood down?
"The Associated Press’s special report on Pentagon “influence operations” can be read here. The Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office has been one of the last redoubts of the Neoconservatives. Burrowed Bush era figures remain in key positions in the office, which had responsibility for implementation of some of the Rumsfeld Pentagon’s most controversial strategies in which the American public was targeted with practices previously associated with battlefield psy-ops."[1]
In other words, we have weaponized psyche and, like the NSA's capacity to spy, turned it upon ourselves.
"Obama is no shrinking violet. Just the same, it may be useful to warn him not to succumb to the particular brand of “shock and awe” that can be induced by ostensibly sexy intelligence to color reactions of briefees, including presidents. I [Ray McGovern] have seen it happen."[2]
Myths, of course, aren't simple lies, they are metaphors, they are vessels, into some of which we are more easily lured than others. Like kittens into burlap sacks. Or Roma and Jews into cattle cars en route to Dachau. And so on.
Joseph Campbell began lecturing at State's Foreign Service Institute in 1956. Look at the dramatic change in our foreign affairs after that, which just so happen to express his themes masterfully.
Myth-jacking, a hybrid of comparative mythology, and radical behaviorism in a mechanical cosmos, is the state of the art in manuFRACTURing consent.
In this, our Newtonian cosmos, in which the economy is god's own justice-dispensing machine, if you want more money, what do you do? Grab the key and wind 'er up, aka "economic stimuli."
On the advice of their high priests, Greenspan and Rand, bankers did with the world economy what 3-year olds do with a wind-up toy: grabbed the
key and twisted like mad. Turns out, the key they were twisting is the neck of the goose who lays the golden eggs.
Just as the Nazis jacked Germany with myths of the master race threatened by vermin; just as McCarthy jacked America with myths of Commies under every bed; so, too, have we been jacked to hell, by myths of terrorists with WMD, and are even now being stuck with the bill.
[1] Scott Horton, February 7, 2009. "Pentagon targeted and mistreated journalists, AP head charges." http://harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004359
[2] Ray McGovern, November 7, 2008. "President-elect's Queries to Briefers." http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/110708c.html
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