In WAR MADE EASY Norman Solomon demolishes the myth of an independent American press zealously guarding sacred values of free expression. Although strictly focusing on the shameless history of media cheerleading for the principal post World War II American wars, invasions, and interventions, he calls into question the entire concept of the press as some kind of institutional counterforce to government and corporate power.
Many of the examples compiled in this impeccably documented historical review will be familiar to readers who follow the news on the Internet. But such examples achieve fresh impact because of the way Solomon has organized and yzed them. Each chapter is devoted to a single war hawk argument ("America Is a Fair and Noble Superpower," "Opposing the War Means Siding with the Enemy," "Our Soldiers Are Heroes, Theirs Are Inhuman"), illustrated with historical examples from conflicts in the Dominican Republic, E1 Salvador, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Kosovo, both Iraq wars, and others in which the media were almost universally enthusiastic accomplices.
The book should really be subtitled "War reporting doesn’t just , it kills. "it makes you feel like demanding a special war crimes tribunal for corporate media executives and owners who joined the roll-up to" shock and awe" as non-uniformed psywar ops. To be sure, this would raise the issue of whether or not following orders might suffice for the defense of obedient slaves such as Mary McGrory and Richard Cohen, who performed above and beyond the call of duty. "He persuaded me, " ncGrory gushed(热情洋溢地表达) the morning after Colin Powell addressed a plenary session of the United Nations on February 5, 2003, declaring that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. " The cumulative effect was stunning. "In the same Washington Post edition, Cohen wrote.
The evidence he presented to the United Nations—some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail—had to prove to anyone that Iraq. not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool—or possibly a Frenchman—could conclude otherwise.
Solomon demonstrates how this kind of peppy prewar warm up degenerates into drooling and heavy breathing once the killing begins. As if observing a heavy metal computer , the ographers of death concentrate on the exquisite craftsmanship and visual design of the murder machines and the magnificence of the fiery explosions they produce.
What is a common misperception of American press