Customer Reviews

Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public

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This excellent and highly readable summation of the political dynamics of war selling in America should be required reading for all Americans, especially all those seduced by Bush's lies and disinformation on Iraq (I was not one of them, but then, I live by the axiom that ALL politicians lie ALL the time.) Starting with the non-intervention of 1954 Vietnam and ending with the Iraq Con Job of 2003, the author tells a convincing tale of the interplay between a biased government, a sceptical electorate and a critical/accomodative media. The key ingredient in an administration getting its aggressive, warmongering ways is the control of information; the less data available to journalists, the more data the president can spin any way he likes. The public, always willing to give their elected leader the benefit of the doubt, will then begin to bend inexorably to the winds of war, never stopping to think critically about the frequently inconsistent stream of news they receive. Throw in some biasing event like 9-11 and the spin cycle job of manipulating threat imagery becomes infinitely simpler.
This book admirably compiles succint examples of events that resulted in intervention and those that didn't. Sadly, a president I have had some modicum of admiration for, Eisenhower, comes off badly as a cynical and willing tool of the very military-industrial complex he decided to warn about when he left office. Perhaps as the end approached he sat back and contemplated how history books like "Selling War and Intervention" would make him look.