Our Greatest Fear

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people don't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

—Marianne Williamson

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Marketing a War: the Use of Fear

The Bush Administration has deliberately worked to install fear in the minds of Americans so as to create an environment where their crooked war - their attack on Iraq - was (and is) passable:

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Marketing an Invasion
How to Sell a War

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

This essay is excerpted from Cockburn and St. Clair's new book on the death of the mainstream media: End Times.

The war on Iraq won't be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as "weapons of mass destruction" and "rogue state" were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience: us.

To understand the Iraq war you don't need to consult generals, but the spin doctors and PR flacks who stage-managed the countdown to war from the murky corridors of Washington where politics, corporate spin and psy-ops spooks cohabit.

Consider the picaresque journey of Tony Blair's plagiarized dossier on Iraq, from a grad student's website to a cut-and-paste job in the prime minister's bombastic speech to the House of Commons. Blair, stubborn and verbose, paid a price for his grandiose puffery. Bush, who looted whole passages from Blair's speech for his own clumsy presentations, has skated freely through the tempest. Why?

Unlike Blair, the Bush team never wanted to present a legal case for war. They had no interest in making any of their allegations about Iraq hold up to a standard of proof. The real effort was aimed at amping up the mood for war by using the psychology of fear.
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Old-fashioned diplomacy involves direct communication between representatives of nations, a conversational give and take, often fraught with deception (see April Glaspie), but an exchange nonetheless. Public diplomacy, as defined by Beers, is something else entirely. It's a one-way street, a unilateral broadcast of American propaganda directly to the public, domestic and international, a kind of informational carpet-bombing.

The themes of her campaigns were as simplistic and flimsy as a Bush press conference. The American incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were all about bringing the balm of "freedom" to oppressed peoples. Hence, the title of the U.S. war: Operation Iraqi Freedom, where cruise missiles were depicted as instruments of liberation. Bush himself distilled the Beers equation to its bizarre essence: "This war is about peace."
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Freedom

Although the concept of freedom may in actuality be quite hollow, there are certain freedoms, which are fundamental to the good life. These freedoms include religion, association, and speech.

Contrary to President Bush's rhetoric about freedom and democracy, life has taken a turn for the worse, in regard to freedom, since he has been in office - both in Iraq and in the USA. Now, I don't think it is the most effective strategy to challenge Bush. Because I think that the democrats are equally capable of maintaining the type of tyranny we are currently experiencing. The two party duopoly is a problem. But I am not sure that there is a political solution.

I think the solution is economic and social. The solution is to "make like a tree and just walk away." : )

But, the reason that we need change is because we have a system in which the "most powerful" decision maker on Earth (i.e. 'President' Bush) is able to say that we are in Iraq to fight for freedom. And no one has presented a practical challenge to his rule. It is up to we the people. Congress won't do it. They're in cahoots. They might make some noise, but in terms of fundamental change...well, I'll believe it when I see it (feel free to show me.)

Anyway, what is freedom? A fundamentally important freedom is the freedom from fear. To be able to live without fear. Fear of being persecuted or targeted because of belief or ideology or lifestyle; I want to live in a society that is free of that type of fear.

Fear is the enemy. It seems that in the current political climate George Bush is free to spew hateful and fearsome rhetoric. The main streams of media must challenge this trend, but instead they just sit by idly and play along.

Ultimately it will be people like you and me who make a conscious decision to withdraw our participation in this current economic and political system. Many are already taking steps in this direction. Because a better world is possible. A better society is possible. The potential, for not only stability, true freedom and security, but also a beautification of the environment and our lives is great. But in order to actually fulfill an alternative society, the bonds that tie us to this current system - of exploitative manipulation of nature and each other, and of colossal destruction and waste - must be severed.