Being Pro-War Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

Thank you, Tim Robbins! In a keynote speech to the recent National Association of Broadcasters conference, Robbins laid on the line what few in big media are willing to acknowledge.

Five years ago, many studio-chair warriors of the major U.S. networks trashed him for daring to oppose the invasion of Iraq. Today, Robbins — a very fine actor and director — continues to show that he's also a very fine media critic. As a result, he articulates deep concern for democratic discourse, a concept that still eludes the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Joe Scarborough, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

Given the irrefutable evidence that the case for war on Iraq — made with a straight face by thousands of media fixtures — was based on deception, you might think that the zealous media proponents of the war would now be apologetic. But, with rare exceptions, they skitter past the realities of their own roles in bringing on the disaster.

So, in the absence of any expression of apology — much less remorse — from the media mavens of militarized massacre, it was left to Robbins to offer a mock apology of his own.

"A few years ago," he recalled, "they told America that because I had different opinions on the wisdom of going to war, that I was a traitor, a Saddam lover, a terrorist supporter, undermining the troops. I was appealing at the time for the inspectors to have more time to find those Weapons of Mass Destruction. I was a naive dupe of left-wing appeasement."

Tongue firmly planted in cheek, Robbins went on: "And how right they were. If I had known then what I know now, if I had seen the festive and appreciative faces on the streets of Baghdad today, if I had known then what a robust economy we would be in — the unity of our people, the wildfire of democracy that has spread across the Mideast — I would never have said those traitorous, unfounded and irresponsible things."

Therefore, Robbins added, "I stand chastened in the face of the wisdom of the talk radio geniuses, and I apologize for standing in the way of freedom."

It was an unusual public way to make a point that rarely gets public mention: Those in the media who helped drag the country to war have suffered no substantial loss of credibility within their own profession.

On the contrary, the memory of the media biz has an extremely short half-life. Inconvenient facts are simply jettisoned by virtue of going unmentioned.

That's the most powerful way to keep the media atmosphere stultified. By not acknowledging the existence of directly contrary opinions — or by frequently vilifying people who express such opinions — the tactics of suppressing debate aim to win the arguments over public policy and proper behavior.

Unfortunately, the media baseline is commonly adaptable for convenient amnesia. If certain facts or non-facts justify the latest rage for war, keep beating on them like a drum. If other facts get in the way, simply pretend they don't exist.

If it was supposedly wise to demand an invasion of Iraq in early 2003, that's merely unimportant history in 2008. To stay within shouting distance of the horizon for the next American-launched war is to re-certify the weight of a pseudo-patriotic media persona. And so it goes, anyway, in the dominant terrain of American medialand.

To a large extent, like it or not: This medialand is your land, this medialand is my land. (Sorry, Woody.) The pervasive impacts of the media landscape can be felt in every community of the United States, where the wisdom of Scarborough, O'Reilly, Hannity and the rest has beamed through the tube and clogged up what should be free-flowing public debate.

Those eminent media stars got what they demanded — a war in Iraq. But they have utterly failed to obtain what they evidently wanted just as much — the silence of war critics.

The First Amendment. Use it or lose it.

Tim Robbins keeps using it. So should we all.

Norman Solomon's books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." A documentary film of the same name, based on the book, has just been released on DVD nationwide. For information about Norman Solomon, go to www.normansolomon.com, or visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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