I came across this film as I was doing the research for FOX ATTACKS! Iran. I had been searching with little success for information and footage of FOX before the current Iraq war — while much had been written about the supposedly "liberal" media's overall failure to do its job before the war, I could find surprisingly little that was specifically about FOX. Robert lent me a copy of War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, a terrific documentary that traces the history of the American media's unholy relationship with the government to convince US citizens to support wars, and I quickly realized that this movie had exactly the kind of footage I was looking for.

Robert got me in touch with Jeremy Earp, who co-wrote and co-directed WME with the film's producer, Loretta Alper. I was hoping to lock FA Iran in about a week, and Jeremy and his crew at the Media Education Foundation (which produced WME) worked with astonishing speed to get us the footage we were looking for. This is essentially a long way to explain my biases in writing this review — there would be no FA Iran if it wasn't for Jeremy and the folks at MEF, and I'm forever indebted to them. And Jeremy is a super cool guy, to boot. 

However, even if I had never had contact with Jeremy, I would be just as enthusiastic in my praise and admiration for War Made Easy. The film, based on Norman Solomon's book of the same name, expertly uses footage from World War II to present day to illustrate how both Democratic and Republican administrations have used the same set of propaganda tools and a compliant, fawning media to repeatedly push the US into war. Some of these tools, created by the government and internalized by the media, include comparing our enemies to Hitler, celebrating military technology (instead of the death and destruction it is designed to inflict), the silencing of dissenting voices, the sanitizing of the realities of war, and false pronouncements of America's reluctance to fight, even as it leads the attack. WME is occasionally narrated by Sean Penn, though an interview with Solomon provides the bulk of the dialogue.

WME is extremely informative and should be required viewing for any journalism, political science, or history class. As someone born in the mid 70s, I was fascinated by the long view WME provides, especially since I didn’t live through WWII or Vietnam and my childhood memories of the Reagan and Bush I administrations are foggy at best. Regardless of whether the war was considered "good" (WWII), "bad" (Vietnam), short (Iraq War I) or long (Iraq War II), I was amazed to see the same techniques used over and over again, often using identical language, regardless of the administration, party affiliation, or era. So Republicans can boo and hiss at the Clinton and Johnson clips while Democrats can fume over the Reagan, Nixon, Bush I and Bush II clips (sorry, Repubs, there have just been more crappy GOP-led wars).

But one of the most striking and educational things about WME is its mythbusting. For example, I, like many people, believed the myth that the American media’s consistently honest portrayal of the brutal realities of the Vietnam war was what turned public opinion against it. Turns out I was wrong – as Solomon points out, the exceptional reporting during the Vietnam war showing civilian casualties or the burning of villages was truly the exception, which explains why it remains burned in the American psyche today. Vietnam was at least as media-managed as the wars that came before it and those that followed.

I was also under the impression that the media was strongly against the Vietnam war, but apparently that’s not true either. In one part of WME, Solomon reveals that a Boston Globe survey of 39 different major US newspapers in February of 1968 did not find a single editorial advocating the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. As with the current Iraq war, American citizens were way ahead of the press and the politicians in their opposition, not followers of a brainwashing “liberal” media. These myths led to the myth of Vietnam Syndrome, which claimed that Americans no longer had the stomach for war, though history shows a continued willingness of Americans to support military action after Vietnam.

As we watch the Bush administration rewrite the lessons of Vietnam (that the US only lost because we didn’t stay long enough), it is imperative that the truth remain at the fore. As we speak, conservative pundits are creating the future myths about Iraq II, like the idea that Americans have turned against the war because they are simply “tired” or “frustrated” that it has lasted so long, not because the war was based on lies and has been executed with criminal incompetence and corruption. If Bush is able to run out the clock and leave it up to a Democratic president to end Iraq II, you can bet that the future myth will be that Iraq II was only lost because cowardly Democrats are weak on defense and the US would’ve won if we’d just stayed a few years longer.

WME also effectively wounds the myth of the “liberal” media with its treatment of Iraq War II. If FOX was the loudest cheerleader of the war, it’s only by a slim margin – there wasn’t a single member of the “liberal” media that showed even rudimentary journalistic skepticism towards the Bush administration’s claims, let alone the supposedly obvious left-wing slant that these networks are supposedly disseminating with every broadcast. As the movie points out, one of the only anti-war voices on TV was Phil Donahue on MSNBC, whose show was canceled despite high ratings. There are many clips in WME where it’s difficult to tell if you’re watching FOX, CNN, or NBC. If all of the networks are so liberal, where was the opposition to the war that progressives were providing in the blogosphere? Another myth down.

War Made Easy provides a perspective that is absolutely essential for the age of corporate media we are now living in. If anything, you should watch it to take a trip down our dark and recent memory lane – watching the footage from before our current quagmire would almost make you laugh if you didn’t think of the disastrous consequences that followed. There’s plenty more to say about this movie, but you should really just see it for yourself (you can also read more reviews here). WME is in limited release, but you can buy the DVD here and find out about screenings here.