Time has brought many changes to war. More expensive technology, more destructive weapons, more cruel forms of torture, etc. However, one tool has never needed any development: disinformation.
When it comes to maintaining morale and confidence in a military operation, many leaders have relied on the simple but effective trick of lying about how successfully a campaign is going. Until you’ve been defeated, you can always claim to be winning.
In 2003, George W. Bush gave his infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech during the Iraq war, pledging the fulfillment of American aims in Iraq. This photo-op would come under scrutiny after mass insurgency, instability and sectarian violence across the country kept American troops in Iraq until 2011.
It symbolized the impetuous aims of that administration to resolve a war that would never happen cleanly, where the only winners would be the weapons manufacturers, who got rich off the prolonged suffering of soldiers and civilians.
That description hopefully took your mind to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, initially described as a “2-3 week military operation” by the current administration, which is now entering its second month.
President Donald Trump has made various conflicting statements throughout the war (possibly to game the oil markets), repeatedly claiming victory despite continued fighting. Just days after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed Iran’s air capacities were destroyed, two American fighter jets were struck down over Iran.
It’s evident the administration wasn’t anticipating an extended conflict, and is now scrambling to get ahead of the narrative as public opinion shows vehement discontent with the war.
Importantly, however, it’s not just the President’s social media posts, sometimes bizarre ramblings and other times horrific pledges to “destroy an entire civilization” that confuse the state of affairs. It’s also the failure of the media to report on it responsibly.
I have written previously about the worsening state of this country’s corporate media landscape, and the war in Iran and Lebanon has shown the extent of this degradation.
The AP published an article on April 10 titled “Gaza marks 6 months of a ceasefire that may offer lessons for the Iran war,” despite the fact that routine bombardment and loss of civilian life have continued throughout the supposed “ceasefire” in Gaza.
A bafflingly worded New York Times article from April 8 reads “Cease-Fire Tested by Confusion Over Strait and Strikes on Lebanon,” excising that 250 Lebanese people were killed in a single day of these Israeli strikes, making it less of a test and more of a flagrant violation of both the ceasefire and international law.
A now-edited AP headline read “Iran soccer players honor alleged child victims of the war before World Cup warmup,” a tactless way to refer to the verified deaths of over 100 Iranian schoolchildren following strikes on the city of Minab.
These headlines, on top of being shoddy journalism, obfuscate the reality of this war. If all reporting appears to contradict itself or uses such vague terminology, the public is encouraged to tune out of reality.
War in the Middle East is often viewed as inexplicable or inevitable, but this is simply untrue and falls into the trap of thinking that what happens miles away has no impact on us.
When it is our government going to war without a legal basis and our dollars paying for the weapons that kill and maim, it can no longer be argued that one “didn’t know,” but rather that they were either willfully ignorant or incurious. When this war causes the worldwide economy to fracture and our country to become viewed as a rogue state, it is firmly our problem, and we must scrutinize those who brought us to this point.
As legacy media becomes beholden to the war industry, making an effort to find the unbiased truth is more important than ever. The disinformation tactics being exploited now are not new; if anything, they are eerily similar to those of past administrations, Republican and Democrat.
Bush’s pretense to go to war in 2003 was the disproven claim that Iraq possessed WMDs. Similarly, the justification to strike Iran was to halt its nuclear capabilities, despite the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly stating Iran has “no structured program” to build atomic bombs; in both cases, the media blindly repeated these misrepresentations.
There are independent outlets that will report the facts without equivocation, journalists on the ground reporting live and an obvious reality we should all acknowledge: sending airstrikes to blow up cultural sites and primary schools won’t help liberate anyone living in Iran today, nor will it make any Americans safer in the future.