Revolutionary Moderation

American heroism in the face of no resistance



Does anyone remember the film Wag the Dog? I think it was an utterly unremarkable film that is nonetheless trotted out as a metaphor for what is going on at any particular point when war is approaching. Except for one thing: the Albanian war in the film was entirely fake. It was the victory of public relations over reality. And while the leadup to the Iraq war had large elements of that (Saddam and Osama belong to the same secret society, faked satellite photos prove fake nuclear weapons programs), the war itself has been an actual war.



Having said that, there are a couple of notable events of the war that have reminded me of that film, that have reminded me of the moulding of public opinion through fake events and PR. The statue-toppling was one. The rescue of Jessica Lynch, it seems, is another. (I am entertained and impressed by AlterNet's headline for this story, in fact: "Jessica Lynch got the "statue treatment"". So much more concise than this rambling post.)



There was a character in Wag the Dog, an invented POW by the name of Private Shoemaker --- "Old Shoe". Do I need to spell out the parallel? There were more POWs than Jessica Lynch, but she was the story, she was the hook, she's the one who will have a post-military career pitching her ghost-written book. She's this war's "Old Shoe".



Last night on Ideas, there was a discussion of landscape architecture. (I lead an exciting life, I know.) What caught my attention was the argument that what we find "picturesque" is more easily found in parks than in nature. Nature is not organised in a pleasant way, generally, and urban parks are all about organising nature to be pleasant... a copse of trees here, a stretch of water there, some open lawn between.



Here's the surprise that is not a surprise... modern war is the same way. It's complicated, it's ugly, and it doesn't communicate well to television. Fortunately, we have our PR specialists who can organize the war into a few easily-digestible bites, so that we can understand it better. Thus the statue. Thus Jessica Lynch's "rescue". Thus my refusal to watch television news since mid-February.