Norman Solomon

War Politics: Numb and Number

Playwright Lillian Hellman said, "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."

The statement was in a letter to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The year was 1952. We tell ourselves that the McCarthy era was vastly different than our own - but what about the political fashions of 2010?

This year's fashions cut mean figures on Washington's runways. Conformities lie, and people die..

A dozen years after Hellman defied HUAC, a senator defied the fearful conformity of 1964. Seeing the escalation of the Vietnam War on the near horizon, Wayne Morse spoke truth to - and about - power. The contrast with today's liberal baseline on Capitol Hill is painfully evident if you watch footage of Senator Morse for two minutes...

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War Made Easy on DVD

War Made Easy has gone into national home-video release. The DVD is also available online.

Reviews of the War Made Easy documentary

Backspin for War: The Convenience of Denial

The man who ran CNN’s news operation during the invasion of Iraq is now doing damage control in response to a new documentary’s evidence that he kowtowed to the Pentagon on behalf of the cable network. His current denial says a lot about how “liberal media” outlets remain deeply embedded in the mindsets of pro-military conformity.

Days ago, the former CNN executive publicly defended himself against a portion of the “War Made Easy” film (based on my book of the same name) that has drawn much comment from viewers since the documentary’s release earlier this summer. As Inter Press Service reported, the movie shows “a news clip of Eason Jordan, a CNN News chief executive who, in an interview with CNN, boasts of the network’s cadre of professional ‘military experts.’ In fact, CNN’s retired military generals turned war analysts were so good, Eason said, that they had all been vetted and approved by the U.S. government.”

Inter Press called the vetting-and-approval process “shocking” — and added that “in a country revered for its freedom of speech and unfettered press, Eason’s comments would infuriate any veteran reporter who upholds the most basic and important tenet of the journalistic profession: independence.”

But Eason Jordan doesn’t want us to see it that way. And he has now fired back via an article in IraqSlogger, which calls itself “the world’s premier Iraq-focused Web site.” Jordan runs that Web site...

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Let Us Now Praise an Infamous Woman — and Our Own Possibilities

The problem with letting history judge is that so many officials get away with murder in the meantime — while precious few choose to face protracted vilification for pursuing truth and peace.A grand total of two people in the entire Congress were able to resist a blood-drenched blank check for the Vietnam War. Standing alone on Aug. 7, 1964, senators Ernest Gruening and Wayne Morse voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

Forty-three years later, we don’t need to go back decades to find a lopsided instance of a lone voice on Capitol Hill standing against war hysteria and the expediency of violent fear. Days after 9/11, at the launch of the so-called “war on terrorism,” just one lawmaker — out of 535 — cast a vote against the gathering madness.

“However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint,” she said on the floor of the House of Representatives. The date was Sept. 14, 2001.

She went on: “Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, Let’s step back for a moment, let’s just pause just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.”

And, she said: “As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.”

With all that has happened since then — with all that has spun out of control, with all the ways that the U.S. government has mimicked the evil it deplores — it’s stunning to watch and hear, for a single minute, what this brave Congresswoman had to say....

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"War Made Easy"

www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org

Part of the documentary aired on Democracy Now the day after Memorial Day. That program is online.

Norman Solomon's next book, Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State is now available.

Book TV and audio online

Norman Solomon spoke about “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" at a benefit for Global Exchange and Media Alliance at the Women's Building in San Francisco.

It was shown on C-SPAN 2 on Book TV.

Alternet has posted the audio online as an MP3 that can be downloaded or listened to online. There also are more photos.

Big Star-Spangled Lies for War

A lot of people want to believe that the current war on Iraq is some kind of aberration -- a radical departure from the previous baseline of U.S. foreign policy. That's a comforting illusion.

Yes, the current administration in Washington is notable for the extreme mendacity and calculated idiocy of its claims. But -- decade after decade -- the propaganda fuel for one U.S. war after another has flowed from a standard set of lies.

Read the full piece adapated from War Made Easy.

Radio... and a review

Norman Solomon was on KQED's Forum and the Joy Cardin Show (audio is online for both).

War Made Easy was reviewed by David Swanson.

Media Flagstones Along a Path to War on Iran

On Tuesday, big alarm bells went off in the national media echo chamber, and major U.S. news outlets showed that they knew the drill. Iran’s nuclear activities were pernicious, most of all, because people in high places in Washington said so.

It didn’t seem to matter much that just that morning the Washington Post reported: “A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis. The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House.”

By evening -- hours after the Iranian government said it would no longer suspend activities related to enriching uranium -- American news outlets were making grave pronouncements...

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