War-War Jaw-Jaw (03-24-2003)

I took the title of this cartoon from a quote attributed to Winston Churchill that was making the rounds during the run-up to the US Invasion of Iraq: “Jaw, jaw is better than war, war.” What Churchill actually said was “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war,” but Harold Macmillan repeated the “jaw-jaw” formulation so much it stuck in popular discourse.

Fifty years later the US media had developed its own ways to jaw-jaw about war-war: full on military propaganda mode. In 2003 cable and broadcast TV news dominated the shaping of public perception of the war, providing 24-7 coverage of journalists embedded with US forces to provide an in theater view of the invasion, cheer leading commentary from ex-military experts and right wing pundits, and utterly weird press conferences with President Bush that fawned and rarely challenged his narrative. As for the massive worldwide protests opposing the invasion? Mostly ignored and trivialized.

If you have lived long enough, none of this should be surprising. I was in college during the first US invasion of Iraq in 1991. Much as that military action was a forerunner to the full on war a decade later, so was the cable news coverage. After a decade of Reaganism, the first President Bush enjoyed a press and public primed for simplistic jingoism and the entertainment of “smart bombs” lighting up the Baghdad sky. Today the American public is much more skeptical of US military engagements, having been burned twice by simultaneous “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, spoiling our appetite for war perhaps more than even the US War in Vietnam had. (But who knows? Do we really learn lessons from our past mistakes? I highly doubt it.) Yet despite some notable exceptions, the US news media continues to favor government and Pentagon narratives. Remember how many times Donald Trump “became president” owing to some military action?

Further Reading

“The media and the Gulf War: Framing, priming, and the spiral of silence.”

War and the Media: Propaganda and Persuasion in the Gulf War

“Visual framing of the early weeks of the US-led invasion of Iraq: Applying the master war narrative to electronic and print images.”

War and Media Operations: The US Military and the Press from Vietnam to Iraq