Images courtesy of Media Education Foundation/Richard F. Fonesca Photo Collage

The Media Education Foundation brings Norman Soloman's War Made Easy to the screen.

It isn’t just George Bush.

It isn’t isn’t just the Republicans.

And it isn’t just Fox.

You’ll see the patterns—frightening patterns that stand out boldly in War Made Easy, a devastating new documentary based on Norman Solomon’s book. But the patterns don’t change depending on who or which party holds the White House. Whether it’s Republicans like Ronald Reagan, George Bush I and George Bush II, or Democrats like Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton, nearly all American presidents since the Second World War have this much in common: they have all used distortion, oversimplification and boldfaced lies to sell the American public on war.

Perhaps more searing than its indictment of the politicians who lead us to war is the film’s unflinching critique of the major media, including once-highly regarded newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, for failing to serve as credible watchdogs. In fact, by excerpting from a broad range of war reporting produced by the American media over more than 50 years, the filmmakers show a media establishment that willingly and repeatedly promotes the government’s lies.

Regular readers of the Valley Advocate won’t be surprised to see Norman Solomon, whose columns we frequently publish, and the Northampton-based Media Education Foundation, which adapted Solomon’s critically acclaimed War Made Easy into film, talking truth to power. But there are many surprises to be found in this riveting documentary, not the least of which is its tone. Neither snarky nor overly accusatory, the film features brief, matter-of-fact narration by Sean Penn, incisive commentary by Solomon and extensive archival footage of presidents and pundits trying to manipulate public opinion in favor of war.

Running about 72 minutes, War Made Easy is restrained and tightly focused, achieving the sense of gravitas and demonstrating the journalistic virtuosity of the best documentary films. But if it has the credibility of say, a Frontline piece, it has the comic entertainment value of The Daily Show. Think you remember all of the bullshit, horrifying yet hilariously fallacious, the Bush Administration spread to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Even if you do, even if you also remember that the major media happily went along with it, taking it all in again is nonetheless a stunning experience. You may laugh—but only so you won’t cry.

“There’s a difference between watching it in real time and seeing it all later, from the archives, with the advantage of historical perspective,” says Jeremy Earp, who co-wrote and directed the film with his MEF colleague Loretta Alper. “It’s easier to see it for what it is when you see it all at once.”
In bringing Solomon’s book to the screen, Earp and Alper showed great discipline in resisting the temptation to go beyond what can be credibly demonstrated about the use of propaganda by successive presidents and news media that chronically refuse to do their job. The film shows more than it tells, and while it will undoubtedly provoke viewers to entertain a range of difficult questions—Why does this keep happening? Is there a cabal behind it all and if so, who are they?—the filmmakers don’t indulge in speculation.

“If we oversimplify things and don’t go into the complexities of the rationale for war, if we just blamed it all on the ‘military industrial complex,’” says Alper, borrowing a phrase from Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about hidden forces that view war as sustenance, “we’re just adding to the problem.”
And undermining the film’s credibility?

“Sure,” says Alper. “People would say, ‘There goes the Left again.’”

“What we do is not leftwing propaganda,” adds Sut Jhally, founder and executive director of MEF. “This film is a clear laying out of the techniques of propaganda. Norman [Solomon] does that about as well as it can be done.”

War Made Easy reveals parallels between the Vietnam War and the nation’s misadventure in Iraq that will undoubtedly reinforce the frustration felt by those of us who oppose the current occupation. The focus is not, however, on any similarities in military strategy or geopolitical conditions. This is, in the end, media criticism. MEF film editor Andrew Killoy’s brilliant arrangement and juxtaposition of archival footage from the media coverage of the respective wars leads the viewer to an undeniable conclusion: things are getting worse. While we are shown one president after another insisting that they prize peace in nearly the same breath as they describe war as inevitable—Reagan says, “The United States does not start fights;” Clinton says, “I don’t like to use military force;” G.W. Bush says, “Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly”—it is the rise of the American punditocracy and the news media’s increasing use of marketing techniques to sell its stories that make the future look so bleak. The media, Solomon points out, eventually awaken to the grim reality of what they’ve helped to promote, but always too little, too late. That, says Solomon, “doesn’t bring back any of the people who have died.”

In the case of the Iraq War, the American media’s failure to critically examine stands in stark relief to the world media. The film focuses on Colin Powell’s pivotal speech to the United Nations—a speech that U.S. media presented as an unassailable justification for the invasion of Iraq. Throughout Europe, news media remained skeptical of Powell’s claims about weapons of mass destruction, while the American media cooed about his “brilliant” performance. “Colin Powell brilliantly delivered the smoking gun,” Fox’s Sean Hannity gushed, while his liberal sidekick Alan Colmes offered weakly, “He made a wonderful presentation. I thought he made a great case for the purpose of disarmament.”

But you don’t need to hear what the talking heads say to see where their corporate masters are coming from. The film offers a shocking montage of the graphics used by all the major broadcast networks throughout the long buildup to the war. In red, white and blue, over waving Amercan flags, scream words like “Target: Terrorism” and “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

For all its pessimism, however, there is ultimately a thread of optimism that runs through War Made Easy. That thread is personified most particularly by two politicians who, though their careers are separated by decades, had in common the rare courage to stand up against the rush to war. We see Senator Wayne Morse, who opposed not only the Vietnam War, but the incorrect assumption that Americans have a duty to follow the President’s lead: “Since when do we have to back our President, or should we, when the President is proposing an unconstitutional act?” And we see California Rep. Barbara Lee, the lone vote in Congress against the Iraq War: “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. As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.”

Let us hope there are people like Lee and Morse out there as our President turns his eyes toward Iran.

War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death plays at the Academy of Music Theatre in Northampton, Friday, Sept. 28 at 7:30 p.m.