BOSTON — It’s no surprise to find the Defense Department on the Defensive. It’s in the job description. I just hate to see them suffering from self-inflicted wounds.
Every time the Pentagon gets into the PR business, the precision bombers become the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. They need a new slogan: Make War, Not Propaganda.
This time, the same types who named a missile the Peacekeeper — and who did that fool? — tried to coordinate an information war under a newly constructed Office of Strategic Influence. This group’s purpose was to disseminate information about America to counter and influence foreign opinion. But dissemination was going to include disinformation.
Ah yes, dezinformatsiya, "the deliberate distribution of false information in an attempt to change opinion and policy," a gift to the international language from the Soviet Cold Warriors. Apparently, it’s not just the Cold War rhetoric — "axis of evil" — that’s back, it’s the whole dictionary.
Now, frankly, if you are planning to disinform foreign countries, if you’re thinking of providing fake news to foreign reporters, it’s not a great idea to have that plan fall into the hands of domestic reporters. A covert operation shouldn’t be too, well, overt.
But maybe when you put an astrophysicist in charge of propaganda, things are bound to get a little spacey. Brig. Gen. Simon Worden formerly worked at the stratosphere of spin-control: the star wars missile defense program.
The plan that included fooling the press was, predictably, uncovered by the press. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld predictably offered a Nixonian response — "The Pentagon does not lie" — and predictably followed that by blaming the press for being "off the mark."
At that point, the Office of Strategic Influence was shut down before it ever really opened because its "credibility" was damaged. Its credibility, that is, to be incredible!
All this ought to be nothing more than a tempest in a disinformation teapot, the sort of tidbit to keep the conspiracy theorists on full alert. (Shut down? Wanna bet?) But the problem is that there really is a role for putting out the American story. The unpalatable thought left by this PR disaster is that the Pentagon doesn’t think the true story is good enough.
After Sept. 11, Americans woke up to the fact our self-image as innocent victims wasn’t universal. It was a shock to discover that so many in the Muslim world regarded Osama bin Laden as a superhero, or that they believed Israel was behind the attacks.
The question that rippled over the country in the first weeks was, "Why do they hate us?" Maybe it was naive to take the animosity as a personal rather than a policy matter. But Americans also began to realize that we’d let an awful lot of hostile propaganda and, um, disinformation, go unanswered.
In fact, the only home-grown American image with a wide international audience came from Hollywood which, thank you very much, offered up a portrait of a violent and X-rated nation.
It was way beyond time to counter the propaganda. But this administration shares with its predecessors a suspicion of any media it can’t create and control.
So, their first thought was advertising. They hired Charlotte Beers, the erstwhile "Queen of Madison Avenue," as undersecretary for something called "public diplomacy" and assigned her to sell Brand America the way she sold Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice and Head &Shoulders Shampoo.
Then they dropped leaflets on Afghanistan featuring doctored photos of bin Laden suggesting he’d gone Western go-go. In this phony confetti, he was beardless and suited up like a Las Vegas lounge lizard.
And then they came up with this idea of promoting our great American values and increasing our "strategic influence" overseas by approving some lies and mixing some "dis" in the information.
I can hear an echo of Donald Rumsfeld, who said in his own repentant way: "The office is done. It’s over. What do you want, blood?"
Not exactly. It’s bad enough when our own government forgets that the best antidote to propaganda isn’t more propaganda but an independent and trusted media. It’s thoroughly disheartening when they mistrust the sales appeal of their policies.
As for selling the American story itself? At the risk of sounding more patriotic than the Pentagon, we’ve got pretty good material for a documentary here, an honest portrait of a diverse, imperfect, argumentative, and democratic culture and people, continually in process.
Want a sales pitch? This is a country that makes room for a rambunctious and free press that is congenitally and constitutionally out of control. Out of government control. Want some good news that isn’t propaganda? In this country, disinformation gets dissed.
Ellen Goodman can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or send e-mail to EllenGoodman@Globe.com.
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