John F. Kennedy’s successful use of television

If JFK’s ability to use television to his advantage is acknowledged even as a minor component of his presidential victory, then the conclusion can be made that the introduction of television as part of the country’s political landscape was a notable milestone in the advancement of American society. As president, JFK utilized the intimacy of broadcast television to strengthen his image among the populace that he was ardently committed to preventing the spread of communism worldwide. His foreign policy was largely a continuation of the containment policy with an emphasis on the development of specially trained ground units to handle the unique implications of counterinsurgency warfare and other types of unconventional strategy and tactics that were increasingly important in the battle to repress the spread of communism abroad. This is another important idea to analyze contextually because it shows the enhancement of traditional policy in light of developing Cold War political and military situations.

When JFK took office the US was just seven years out of the Korean War, the first conventional ground battle of the Cold War. The conflict in Korea indicated that, in support of its containment policy Washington must be prepared and ready to engage in a new type of battle in hot-spots across the globe. The idea of rollback, a total destruction of the enemy’s government, was shelved and the aforementioned policy of containment began to look like the more reasonable strategy in preventing the spread of communist influence. The Kennedy administration’s initial stumbles—the publicized failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the inability to prevent the construction of the Berlin Wall, for example—meant that Washington was compelled to take action for fear of appearing weak to its allies and rivals alike. The first US military advisers to South Vietnam had arrived a decade before, and it seemed that bolstering military presence there would be an effective way of showcasing the versatility and strength of the modern US force. In the years between his inauguration and untimely death, JFK increased US troop presence in South Vietnam from 800 to 16,000 and implemented a series of covert military actions aimed at overthrowing the communist regime and destabilizing insurgent forces.

The assassination of JFK was a major event that forever altered the course of American history. Coverage of the event by the broadcast industry gripped the nation and further solidified the role of television news as a mainstay in the collective American consciousness. The immediate demand for news and images related to the assassination meant that people across the nation surely tuned-in in unprecedented numbers. It was shortly after the death of JFK that both the major news networks extended their evening broadcasts from fifteen minutes to thirty. The news coverage of the president’s death has been described as “a shared media experience of astonishing unanimity and unmatched impact, an imbedded cultural memory that as years passed seemed to comprise a collective consciousness for a generation”(Doherty). As the nation mourned the loss of its commander in chief, the networks inadvertently further expanded their influence on the public’s perception of events both global and domestic. 

Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam strategy

Upon assuming his role as president, Johnson was quick to assert his determination to stand-up against communism, even as political instability in South Vietnam had the country in tatters Johnson showed his resolve and quickly began working to reverse Kennedy administration plans to start withdrawing troops. An additional 5,000 advisers were sent by Johnson within months, and Johnson’s appointment of general William Westmoreland as commander of forces in Vietnam indicated that the Johnson administration was preparing for a ground war in southeast Asia. On August 2nd, 1964 a major event referred to as the “Gulf of Tonkin incident” led Johnson to present congress with a proposal to authorize military action and further the troop build-up. What happened in the Gulf of Tonkin has been subject of controversy over the years, as some believe the attacks on US reconnaissance vessels there was misreported in the field or exaggerated by Johnson’s administration. Regardless of what actually happened, the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin would allow Johnson to acquire the permissions required to officially begin engaging in military operations against North Vietnam.

Johnson used to powers given to him in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to begin airstrikes targeting communist and rebel strongholds in North Vietnam. Ultimately, Johnson would initiate a massive troop build up in Vietnam and the start of a sustained campaign that would become the nation’s most unpopular and unsuccessful war. It is crucial to note that at this stage of the war the press was more than willing to accept the State Department’s “official line” and present the Gulf of Tonkin story to the American people. This type of manipulation of the media by military and political leaders wasn’t exactly revolutionary, there are other examples of questionable journalism aimed at fooling the public to supporting a war effort, but it was significant in that it established a modern precedent of misinformation being presented to the public as fact which would eventually contribute to an idea known as the “credibility gap” which would be an increasingly relevant topic in the later years and aftermath of the war.

By 1965, Johnson and general Westmoreland had implemented a strategy that has been referred to as the “Americanization” of the Vietnam War. It meant the build up of large quantities of American troops to conduct operations against the North Vietnamese Army. This policy was part of the administration’s larger strategy of containment. Johnson hoped that by lending the South Vietnamese the aid of US forces it would eventually stabilize and be able to resist falling to an attack from the communist forces. Containment was the strategy that worked in Korea, but it would become increasingly clear that the situation in Vietnam was quite dissimilar from the situation in the previous conflict. Both the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong insurgents that US forces battled quickly discovered that they would have to develop more complex strategies if they wanted to repel the US military. Thus both sides dug in and the US entered into a war of attrition against the enemy forces in hopes they could root out and wear down the enemy forces while attempting to minimize friendly casualties.

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The war had many preconditions, yet a structured sequence of events led to the commencement of armed conflict. On September 1^st, 1939 Germany invaded its neighbor state, Poland, after having already invaded Czechoslovakia in April of the same year. This caused Britain to declare war on Germany two days later in defense of Polish sovereignty when it then became clear that the Soviet Union had already agreed a secret pact with the Germans to partition Poland. The leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin, would soon find himself in a difficult position as he had underestimated Hitler and the German intentions. It became clear that the Soviets would also be targeted. With the war in the European theatre well underway, Japan began attacking and defeating its neighbors in the Pacific. On December 7^th, 1941 the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the American navy in Pearl Harbor and destroyed much of the Pacific Fleet of the United States. In response, the United States declared a state of war against Japan the next day. Throughout this sequence, almost all of the world’s states became involved on one side or the other. Many became partners, in the case of Italy with Germany, or many became occupied states, such as France.

The war had many underlying currents, some that had been in action many years prior to the actual conflict. One of the most striking features of the Second World War was the ideology and use of propaganda in the fabric of each nation. The goal of this paper is to identify the types of propaganda that became such a central focal point in the prosecution of the war and to judge the effects on those that were the target audience. The other feature of war that examined in this paper is the role of the “hero”; in this war there would be the victors and the vanquished, as there are in most wars. Accordingly, there would be heroes and villains.

Propaganda in Nazi Germany

In the 1930s, the National Socialist ideology and aesthetic were successfully attached to the state in the person of Adolf Hitler. While nearly all countries give their fallen soldiers a place in national myth, Germany went beyond memorial, making death in war a philosophy of life. At the forefront of Nazi propaganda was minister Josef Goebbels, who produced the primary thrust of Nazi propaganda through the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. He was an outstanding graveside orator, speaking at all major Party funerals, and in this tradition he knew how to morph terrible defeats and the horrors of war into victories. Unlike much propaganda elsewhere, which was addressed to existing belief systems, his propaganda works would also serve to be the building blocks for the irrational ideology of National Socialism. The pledge that German soldiers took is reflective of the die-hard sacrificial loyalty adopted in much of the Third Reich: “I swear before God this sacred oath, that I will obey absolutely the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, the Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, and that I will be ready at any time as a brave soldier to give my life for this oath.” Every common foot-soldier who did not know otherwise ideally possessed a firm belief in this statement, with the ultimate satisfaction in knowing that fighting and living for his country was great, but fighting and dying for his country was even greater.

This myth, though it was nurtured by a long previous German tradition of warrior hood and heroism, was born for the Nazis from a battle in Langemarck, where in 1914 tens of thousands of young, poorly trained Germans died in a frontal assault against entrenched, veteran English troops. They became iconic of the pure Aryan warriors who would restore the heroic spirit of their ancestors to the dying Germany. In reality, the attack was a tremendous waste of young human life, and was testament to the gross excesses of nationalism which were recognized by much of the participants after World War I. In Nazi Germany, the blood of the sacrificial dead in Flanders would be the force that would revitalize the glory of the nation, and these battles of martyrdom would repeat themselves in Marne, Verdun, and Somme. Nazi propaganda posters would come to be dominated by images of shirtless, young Aryan men working and flashing their weapons in heroic poses.

In 1923, the Nazi Party found its own martyrs during Hitler’s failed beerhall putsch. After an unsuccessful attempt at a coup in a beer hall with government officials, sixteen Party members were killed in the ensuing violence. These became the Sixteen Immortals, to whom Hitler built the Temple of Honor in Munich to honor them. Each year, he commemorated the failed putsch by reenacting his march. Large celebrations honoring the German war dead became a critical part of Hitler’s arsenal in reinforcing the sacrificial Nazi ideology. Horst Wessel, a member of the Stormtroopers killed by communist partisans in 1930, was turned into Germany’s number-one national martyr by its propaganda machine. His image was so well-admired that celebrations in his name were turning into a national cliché, and Minister Goebbels even banned all celebrations except those commemorating the day of his death in order to preserve Wessel’s strength as an icon.

Horst Wessel, the Sixteen Immortals, and the dead at Langemarck were only a few of the numerous symbols that summated to create the German national mythology and its attraction. When Hedges refers to “War as Culture,” no better major example springs to mind than the National Socialists of Germany. Ironically, without World War I, World War II probably would not have happened. The major tragedy and loss of life in the first war supposedly told the world that this was the end of war. For Germany, however, the carnage in hindsight only brought them closer to war, and needless death became necessary heroism. War pervaded their culture in the absence of stable, orderly, and productive society. In a propaganda publication, Friedrich Holderlein wrote, “live on high, O fatherland, and do not count the dead! Not one too many has died for you.” Ideas like these brought the Nazi party to power by creating the higher cause that could justify anything, and making it noble to be a part of it. In the end, its follies and absurdities were too great for even the greatest of giants to sustain.

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When discussing the 1979-1983 U.S. actions in Grenada, one must ask the first and most important question: what interest could the world’s capitalist superpower possibly have in a tiny island less populous than a South American football stadium? The miniscule nation’s economy, lacking any significant natural resource or consumer markets (for example), naturally precluded almost any possibility of American business interest in Grenada that could capably provide a specific political-economic impetus for invasion. It likely follows, then, that the intervention was part of an arrangement of Cold War policy disassociated from narrow, influential business interests, and one more involved with broader ideological and strategic (Realist) theories. The new socialist government of 1979 had already not been in good standing with the Carter administration; the coming of Reagan in 1981 only deepened U.S. negativity toward Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movement (NJM), which had aligned with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Washington could, in turn, publicly allege that Grenada was a significant security threat if it were used militarily by the Cubans as a base for regional subversion, notably in Central America, or by the Soviets for projection of power, whether conventional or nuclear. In line with the U.S.’s hard-line economic stance on Cuban communism, policymakers also sought to isolate (and destroy) any non-capitalist system to prevent the creation of any precedent toward the success of such systems anywhere else in the region. Finally, as probably the most central motivation for the invasion of Grenada, Reagan, battling a proxy war in Nicaragua against the leftist Sandinistas, wanted to send a clear message to all countries in the region that the United States still had the power to intervene—with its own forces—anywhere it deemed necessary during the post-Vietnam era, and did not need to rely on proxy armies like the Contras. The causes for intervention, separate from the Reagan Administration’s stated rationale, can be principally divided into three parts: the long-term military security of the nation, in addition to rolling back the influence of the Soviet Union; the discouragement and destruction of any installation of a “socialist experiment” in such proximity to the United States; and the symbolic display of military power to intimidate regional opponents while restoring prestige to the nation’s armed forces.

Background and Outset of the Conflict

Grenada, a small island nation one hundred miles north of the coast of South America, is a heavily agriculture and tourism-dependent state with a population of under 100,000. Formerly a British colony, it gained its independence from Britain in 1974 under the leadership of Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy, one of the key players in fomenting change through trade union organizations in the previous decades. Though his popularity after independence successfully won his reelection to the premiership three times, he soon proved to be eccentric- obsessed with UFOs, extraterrestrial contact, and occult practice- and despotic, maintaining his rule through a secret police known as the “Mongoose Squad.”[1] Gairy’s opponents, the largest being the New JEWEL (Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education and Liberation) Movement, a Marx-inspired socialist group led by attorney Maurice Bishop, began to take action. In a coup with little bloodshed, Bishop and the NJM seized the government while Gairy was in New York discussing UFOs in the United Nations. Following the NJM victory, the new government began to pursue aggressive and ambitious socialist programs that arguably turned the country toward progress, reducing unemployment from 49 to 14% and pulling up impressive growth rates in the midst of a world recession. The World Bank praised the new government in 1980, declaring, “government objectives are centered on the critical development issues and touch on the country’s most promising development areas.” The U.S. stance toward Bishop rapidly turned adversarial, however, and the Administration under Carter (and then Reagan) began taking measures to undermine Bishop’s government, particularly through subversion of the Grenadian economy. Travel-scare rumors were spread to American travel agencies while the White House painted the island as a communist enemy in order to discourage economically important tourism, and several international lending institutions were aggressively lobbied to halt loans to Grenada (to not much avail). Plans were also drafted by the CIA to “cause economic difficulties for Grenada in hopes of undermining the political control of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop,” but never came into fruition due to opposition from the Senate Intelligence Committee.[2] In the months leading up to the invasion, the Reagan Administration made a series of allegations against the Bishop government, centered about an image of a proximate hostile military threat that leveled accusations of military transfers to the island, such as a the construction of a Soviet submarine base and a shipment of a vast armada of aircraft. The most media attention was given to the construction of a new airfield under construction with the assistance of Cuba and Cuban workers, which was suspect to use for military purposes.[3] In March 1983, President Reagan announced on television:

Grenada doesn’t even have an air force. Who is it intended for?… the rapid build-up of Grenada’s military potential is unrelated to any conceivable threat… the Soviet-Cuban militarization of Grenada … can only be seen as a power projection into the region.[4]

All of these claims were at least in most part proven false. A Washington Post reporter visited the purported submarine construction site, finding nothing except the sea being too shallow for a sub-base; the massive Soviet arsenal of MIG fighters and attack helicopters was never found; and the clear economic motivations for the airfield were supplemented by a report by the British multinational corporation, Plessey, that enumerated a number of necessary military specifications not applied to the airfield’s construction.[5] With the specious groundwork of such claims, opportunity then struck for an invasion: on October 19, 1983, hard-liners in the NJM (later forming the Military Revolutionary Council) led a military coup and imprisoned Bishop and his ranking supporters. Capitalizing on the presence of 800 American medical students, Reagan began attempting to emphasize their imminent danger from the chaos and unrest of the coup as a pretext for an invasion, despite assurances from Cuban officials, the Grenadian military government, and the students themselves that no such threat existed. Though there were valid grounds to be skeptical of promises made by enemy powers, widespread refusal by medical school officials and students to acknowledge any significant danger trumped any realistic need for action for the sake of American safety. Why Washington would hold such an antagonistic and disruptive position would lie beyond the televised broadcasts.

Security concerns from the Soviet threat

Lies, falsehoods, and fabrications to drum up public approval notwithstanding, there were indeed several potential security concerns for the U.S. and the Western Hemisphere involving Grenada. After coming to power, Bishop, shunned by the U.S. and blocked from most Western aid, had no choice but to support his bankrupted treasury by appealing to the Soviet Union and Cuba for assistance. Unfortunate as these circumstances were for Grenada (either attracting more American enmity or letting the country’s economy suffer), associating with the Communist alliance would only invite influence and leverage from it. That the Reagan Administration concocted myths of vast Cuban and Soviet military aid to the island obviously did not change that such aid was possible and even desirable to the communists as a future opportunity. With strategic access to the Caribbean and Latin America, Grenada could serve as another Soviet power projection in the hemisphere and be used as a base of operations for South America. It had the potential to receive heavy aid and grow into a state similar to Cuba, it possibly becoming another flash-point for a confrontation similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961. Shortly after Bishop’s 1979 coup, the U.S. Ambassador delivered a note to address fears of a mercenary army (led by the exiled Gairy) counter-coup: “… it would not be in Grenada’s best interests to seek assistance from a country such as Cuba to forestall such an attack. We would view with displeasure any tendency on the part of Grenada to develop closer ties with Cuba.”[6] At the First International Conference in Solidarity with Grenada in November 1981, Bishop’s government outlined its plan for building a socialist Grenada while protecting it from “imperialism” abroad to delegates from “around the world”; that is, as they wanted it to seem. Though present were representatives from U.S., British, and other national political interest groups (communist parties, Grenada Friendship Societies, etc.), the majority of delegates sent by actual governments themselves were from such nations as Nicaragua, Libya, Vietnam, North Korea, and the USSR.[7] Over the course of the conference, the Grenadian ministers continuously expressed support for a vast list of distinct U.S. enemies, while emphasizing its positive relations with “the socialist community and other democratic and peace-loving states,” including those under the control of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe.[8] Meanwhile, they lambasted American policy with harsh rhetoric, at one point labeling the Reagan Administration a “fascist clique.”[9] Considering these outward gestures, Bishop’s government appeared to be following a route of foreign policy similar to Cuba’s, attempting to ensure its survival by aligning with the “anti-U.S.” Soviet and miscellaneous powers. A viable purpose of the conference, then, was to visibly demonstrate to these powers that Grenada was ready for a serious commitment in return for economic and military assistance. Whether this predicament was caused unfairly or not, Bishop’s strategy would become grounds for U.S. concern. The 1983 MRC coup, however, drastically altered Grenada’s strength. After imprisoning and executing Bishop and his cabinet, General Hudson Austin, the military architect of the coup, realized that his new government had overstepped and become isolated, condemned by Cuba, sanctioned by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, and only supported with words from Moscow. In the language of British correspondent Hugh O’Shaughnessy,

There is every reason to think that in the case of Grenada the MRC would have collapsed under the great weight of the opprobrium it was suffering within the island, combined if there had been a need with the outside pressures exerted on it by its neighbors… had [Austin] and Coard not given up their narrowly dictatorial aspirations it is difficult to see what force they could have relied on to maintain them against the popular anger at the massacre they were responsible for.[10]

Indeed, though Austin desperately sought to negotiate his government out of its helpless position and the previously mentioned security concerns were all but dissipated for the time being, the U.S. immediately seized the opportunity to invade and claim a victory in the name of liberation.

The post The U.S. Invasion of Grenada: the American Government’s Justification and Narrative appeared first on Rare Essays.

After 23 years of France’s post-World War I mandate, the creation of the Lebanese National Pact, an unwritten agreement between the Sunni, Shi’ite, and Maronite leaders permitted Lebanon to achieve stable independence. The Maronites, largely modern and pro-Western, agreed to accept Lebanon as an “Arab” country and not seek foreign intervention, in turn making the Muslims abandon hopes of uniting with Syria. Also created by the pact was the Confessional System, holding that the President was always to be Maronite, the Prime Minister Sunni, the Speaker of the House Shi’a, and the ratio of Parliament members 6:5 in favor of Christians to Muslims. By 1958, however, growing Pan-Arabist sentiments spread by Egypt’s Nasser captured significant portions of Lebanon, leading to a small-scale civil war between the Pan-Arabist and the pro-Western Christians over three key issues: the dominant Maronite composition of government, the friendly relationship between Lebanon and the West, and Lebanon’s stance in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Maronite President Camille Chamoun, a staunch supporter of the Eisenhower doctrine, called on the major Western powers for help when Armed Forces commander Fu’ad Shihab refused to commit the Lebanese Army to end the civil war, fearing disintegration and mutiny. Five thousand U.S. Marines were sent ashore to find little fighting for them, and the crisis blew over. Shihab, arising as a prominent leader, succeeded Chamoun as President and introduced several reforms that assisted in the nation’s prosperity, but regional changes would soon shake the country once more. [1]

Following Jordan’s clash with Palestinian groups and the Black September incidents of 1970, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine sought a new base of operations. They began to set up “refugee camps” in Lebanon, a majority of which became well-armed fortresses containing thousands of members of the Fatah, the armed wing of the PLO. The PLO, led by Yasser Arafat, benefited from the now-deteriorating authority of the central government, seeking to administer a “state-within-a-state.” Given a safe haven by Lebanese Muslims and Druze in return for pressure on the Maronites, the Palestinians composed the largest private militia in the nation. At the time, the leading parties in Lebanon had formed into the Christian and Muslim “camps”: the Christians were primarily represented by the Phalange (Kataeb) and National Liberal (Ahrar) parties, led by Pierre Gemayel and Camille Chamoun, forming the Lebanese Front; the Muslims, including the Nasserites, Leftists, and Pan-Arabists, formed the National Movement, led by Kamal Jumblatt. Growing tensions exploded when in 1975, direct conflict began.[2] Two of Pierre Gemayel’s bodyguards were killed by unidentified gunmen, and Phalangist militia, in retaliation, attacked a Palestinian bus in the same neighborhood, killing 27. By 1976, the war had turned against the Maronites and was rapidly approaching defeat. Seeing this, President Suleiman Franjyeh called on Syria for help to end the war. Syria understood the implications of a Maronite defeat, which would entail a direct Israeli intervention and takeover of Lebanon to prevent it from falling under complete PLO control, and Syrian troops entered Lebanon in June 1976, occupying the port of Tripoli and the Bekaa Valley, under the Israeli-accepted Red Line Agreement, which prohibited Syrian troops from entering South Lebanon, placing Surface-to-air Missles in the occupied territories, and utilizing any of their air power against Christian forces. The Civil War had come to an “official” end, but the conflict was far from over. [3]Meanwhile, the Israelis provided arms and training to the Maronites, an effort that intensified with the election of the hard-line Menachem Begin in Israel. In 1978, eight Fatah militants launched a raid into Tel Aviv, killing 34 Israelis, prompting Israel to launch Operation Litani. Israeli forces attacked South Lebanon to destroy PLO infrastructure, but were soon ordered to leave by UN Resolution 425, which provided for the creation of a UN Peacekeeping force. Before withdrawing, Israel created a 10 sq. km buffer zone to be patrolled by Saad Haddad’s South Lebanese Army, in order for it to maintain its border security.[4]

Meanwhile, Christian resentment was high, with the knowledge that Syria’s leadership had never ideologically accepted Lebanon as an independent state, and that the Syrian forces would not be protectors, but occupiers. Retaking the offensive, Gemayel attempted to extend his authority into the Bekaa and stop Syria from re-installing Franjyeh as President by attacking the strategic city of Zahle, leading to a series of conflicts between Syrian forces and the Phalange militias. Syrian attack helicopters were ordered to attack Christian positions (in violation of the 1976 Red Line Agreement), and Gemayel called on Begin in Israel for help. Israeli fighter jets shot down two helicopters, leading to Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad to order SAMs placed around Zahle.[5]

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