American PR and Iraq

Mel Gibson’s movie

Throughout the ages, the Vatican’s iconic depiction of the Crucifixion has been an example of one of PR’s most effective ‘tactics’: the freeze-framing and subsequent promotion of a single event, to dictate perception, itself a marketing tactic. (The same ‘mind control’ is apparent in marketing today, when, say, a ‘life-style’ freeze-frame is used to sell an expensive product.) The hanging of the crucifix around the necks of infants can be seen as representative of both the marketing and PR process. These have been given extra life world-wide by Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ which, while market-growth may be illusory, has allowed for the updating of some of the merchandise to the existing one. (Badges, bumper-stickers and posters being no more than the modern, if often transient version of, say, wearing a crucifix.)

The movie played to packed houses in the Middle East at precisely the same time as its citizens were: a) reminded of the picture of President Bush on a battleship: freeze-framing gone wrong; and b) hit by the image of a ‘modern’ crucifixion, the ghostly photograph of an Iraqi civilian, held prisoner by US soldiers, arms outstretched in perfect replica of 2000 years ago. On the prisoner’s head, in grotesque parody of the Crown of Thorns, was a hood, a sinister echo of the Ku Klux Klan; the electrodes attached to his body, a modern version of the nails driven through Christ’s hands.

Recognising the strength of the image, US PRs tried to dilute its power by concentrating minds on different photographs: e.g. of a seated, hooded Iraqi with his arms folded behind his head; or the ‘pile’ of naked Iraqis. However, countless other vile examples came tumbling out, including one of a US woman soldier with an Iraqi on a leash. This gave the religious image its decadent secular accompaniment, resulting in this century’s first example of Icon PR, an essential part of mind control, which is why the Americans are so frightened of it. The latter was so culturally specific that it may have been learned from Saddam Hussein’s secret police with whom the US were working last year, or from deliberate – as opposed to vicarious – scrutiny of the latter’s photographic archive, perhaps pointing to orchestrated strategy. The President’s belated apology could have appeared more sincere had, prior to it, and in demonstration of true contrition, the US explained to the American public why, in Iraq, dogs are symbolic of degradation. There are two very specific ‘old’ reasons. Meantime, a minor secondary strain of Icon PR burst into life: circulation of the banned photographs of the dying Princess Diana – the Anglican monarchy’s discarded ‘Madonna’ – murdered, Middle Easterners believe, because she fell in love with a Muslim.

All of these, for different reasons – and bolstered by those photographs which ‘merely’ depict torture – work well with The Passion.They will not be unseated by, say, alternative photographs of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue/SH caught in a rabbit-hole/on trial; or, whenever it happens, a captured Osama Bin Laden. Like The Passion, they fit snugly beneath the Middle East’s ‘arch’ – America/Britain/Israel – a.k.a. ‘The Great Satan’. They are nourished by memories of the ancient loveliness of Palestine’s bulldozed olive groves, along with the villagers and villages they sustained; and the unfolding horror, amid the beauty of date palms, nabuk and eucalyptus trees, in Iraq.

They are not displaced by competing images e.g. terrorised Israelis/maimed Americans; although they do create a market ‘need’ for those ‘selling’ to different consumers. This is why rivals have a vested interest in the ‘success’ of some atrocities but not others. To put it unforgivably but straightforwardly, Bali’s catastrophe represented a ‘success’ (for America’s ‘War on Terror’) because the collapse of its tourism industry brought local people onside; whereas the equally tragic Madrid bomb did not: the right-wing Spanish government fell and Spain’s troops withdrew from Iraq.(1)

The Great Satan

Many believe the demonisation to be no more than reciprocal and just deserts. One way of countering it – had the fundamentalists running the White House not unleashed mayhem – could have been to stand it on its head along Miltonian lines: i.e. Milton’s devil was thrown out of paradise because, while being respectful of God, the fallen angel wanted the right to individual identity. Which is to say, the tag, using many PR tactics including product placement, could have been turned into a virtue: depictions of a non-aggressive smiley satan to counter the successfully marketed fearful one. (A variation of which includes equally fearful allegorical reinterpretation of St George and the Dragon.)

US information control

While the photographs of brutalised Iraqi civilian prisoners went world-wide, Europe buried its penultimate Cold War ‘body’: citizens of some former Soviet bloc countries became members of the corrupt European Union.(2) As celebratory fireworks extended across the continent, ending in Dublin but omitting London,(3) the American public were provided with the ‘old’ story (collapse of Communism) in order to make subliminal feel-good linkages (‘America defeated Communism’); but were denied the opportunity to form modern linkages (‘liberated’ Eastern Europeans v unliberated Iraqis/Palestinians). As a result, one of Europe’s ‘new’ stories, the growth of anti-Americanism, and, more importantly, understanding of where it came from, was withheld. (A mirror image of the information vacuum US governments imposed on their people’s understanding of the Middle East and Islam.) (4)

Obesity PR: the perfect metaphor

Accepting that further atrocity could, depending on its scale and perpetrators, override or negate the following argument, anti-Americanism in Europe did not start with the Iraq war nor with America’s relationship with successive Israeli governments. ‘Brand America’ has been under pressure for some time. This could have been averted had reputation management been taken seriously, the potential risks evaluated and crisis strategies rehearsed. Instead, blinded by commercial and military power and the arrogance that goes with it, the US executive had no sight of developing, sometimes conjoined issues which are known in PR as the ‘Three Es’ – emotion, environment, economics – their increasing potency, or how these impacted on ‘Brand America’. The result was meltdown: a many-stranded issue accumulation which included anxieties about Americanisation of culture, and the conduct of US corporates and/or products: e.g. GM food. To précis simplistically (which is what PRs do) the demonisation of America in the Middle East and Asia, coincided with different demonisation in Europe, morphing, in all but name, into ‘the Great Satan’ forcing us to eat ‘Frankenstein Foods’.

Next came a perfect, timely metaphor in the shape of a vital public health issue,’obesity’.(5) (‘Fat’ Americans v starving millions; ‘fat’ and/or corrupt corporates ruining our health etc.) The multinational food and drinks industry – which is not exclusively American but ‘association’ is seldom fair – along with many politicians and officials, stood condemned. Fast-food chain McDonalds, as synonyomous of America as it is ubiquitous, spurred by the fact it had gone into loss, reacted. It stopped supersizing products and, in Britain at any rate, introduced salads and fruit to its range.

For ‘Brand America’, however, and McDonalds, it was too late. They had been ‘decapitated’. In PR terms, their own PR tactic – ‘decapitating’ detractors and critics – had been turned against them: it was now the exclusive tool of civilians and consumers.(6) Now concentrating on claw back, their futures depend on what I call, for want of a better word, ‘Recapitation’. Their goals will remain what they have always been: consumer growth and control of populations.(7)

US executive ‘Outreach’

Prior to, and immediately following the Iraq war – and astonishingly unaware that ‘decapitation PR’ was now the weapon of the ‘underdog’ – America’s ‘decapitation’ message (of Saddam Hussein) was reinforced by senior US personnel from various worlds who had/have excellent access to specific local societies from London to, say, Tashkent. In addition, sophisticated US ‘outreach’ – which proactively supports the ‘message’ – swung into action. In PR, the process known as ‘outreach’ is never a numbers game: ‘message-ambassadors’ are finite and can better use their time by, say, bribing brutal dictators; or, in democracies, meeting with targeted influencers, including junior ranks, rather than with larger numbers of untargeted sections of those democracies’many publics.(8) Some of the latter are actively mopped up by contrived inducement, e.g. a tourism drive offering (to some) cheap holidays and/or real estate, which is one reason why the dollar is being kept artificially low. In America’s case, this went wrong because of the introduction of extra security measures which meant hours of queuing/discourtesy at US airports, a good example of a well-known PR pitfall: the inability to align the strategies and policies of different organisations. (The PR is usually stuck in the middle and always gets the blame.)

In Britain, US outreach imploded when, thirteen months after the Iraq war, 52 retired senior British officials wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister. In PR terms, the letter was an old ‘tactic’ (decapitation), carried out by the ‘underdog’ (retired Arabists), to advance a new strategy/’message-ambassadors’, in order to claw back British interests: ‘recapitation’ (9)

Atlanticists

The letter arrived at a time when the American executive had ‘offended’ various global interests, e.g. some commercial enterprises, including American ones, angry that their involvement in Iraq had placed them under unprecedented scrutiny on the one hand, and their operatives in danger on the other. Crucially, the US executive had offended many European mandarins and politicians, who, to the glee of ‘old’ Soviets, had watched aghast as the invasion of Iraq inadvertently cracked open democracy’s last fault-line/Cold War hypocrisy: i.e. not many wanted Iraq run by its majority.

The US executive could have negotiated the problems had its European ‘Atlanticists’ – of all nationalities – taken the threat to their own position, if not the American executive, seriously. They did not do so because they were, on the one hand, mesmerised by US focus/certainty of victory, which remains the case; while the careerists and opportunists among them were equally mesmerised by US patronage/network. (The British-America Project – and its equivalent in other parts of the world – comes to mind.) In Britain, and in PR-speak, America’s payroll cheerleaders, were useless to it, at precisely the time its Iraq enterprise risk managers most needed them: i.e. when the letter from The 52 landed on No.10’s doorstep.

This was simultaneously crucial because America’s rhetoric – an insult to countless different cultures and value systems – as well as its Middle Eastern policy, had embarrassed, for example, US-educated established local elites fronting up American enterprises in for example, Saudi Arabia or India; at the same time as, in Europe, an equally embarrassed new generation of politicised, upcoming managers/professionals – all fluent in several languages – and highly educated ‘elites-in-waiting’ anxious to do business and/or develop contacts with America, gained access to the wider European workforce. (Representing, in PR terms, the discomfiting of existing cheerleaders on the one hand, and an immediate loss, however temporary, of a new generation of key US cheerleaders on the other. I say ‘temporary’ because all PRs know that people love to trust their favourite brand, and will usually find any excuse to return to it.) (10)

Meantime, global populations judged the US against ‘delivery’ (toppling of Saddam Hussein, but not other dictators and reemployment of SH’s generals); ‘deliverers’ (whether these be US marines, officials or private armies/security companies); and the product ‘delivered’ (loss of life); but had no sight of the work/generosity/time of, say, US museums whose personnel, along with a world-wide community of other nationals, hold allegiance to each other rather than governments. More importantly, global populations were refusing to be fooled by Brand America propaganda. (Was Afghanistan under the Americans better off than it was under the Soviets?)

America’s greatest ‘outreach PR’ failure, however, was among: a) the urban, often metropolitan, predominantly Muslim, usually highly educated civilian elites of the Middle East, who form the area’s key minority; and b) another important minority, the world-wide, often liberal, Arab diaspora including some Arab Christians and Arab Jews. Instead, it targeted a third minority – clerics/tribal leaders – who, for the most part, have the greatest access to the poor (the majority). Which is to say, it ignored ‘triangular shareholders’, targeting instead one of the ‘stake-holders’.

In PR terms, it was a bit like the client trying to sell shaving-foam to bearded men; when the majority had no beards, or wanted to discard them, and, moreover, did not see the product as gender-specific anyway.

Some PR Solutions: Iraq

PR is about empathy (to hold attention), good manners (to keep the goodwill of those who are not the target but whose approval is important) and delivery (to see off competitors). These can only be achieved by carefully worked out, respectful ‘characterisation’, ‘weighting’ and ‘layering’. (‘Characterisation’ means acknowledging why, say, an elderly villager is not impressed by shaving foam; ‘layering’ means ensuring this does not imply, even by omission, that the elder is necessarily representative of, say, young men in the village, or, as importantly, those who live in town; and ‘weighting’ means to understand/make allowance for the conflicting pressures that they are all under, including from their women, or those seeking to act on their behalf.)

It is not about America rediscovering T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and announcing in The Times that it is ‘invaluable for those who wish to understand the Arab mindset’. (The book is useful only in specific circumstances – ‘ring-fencing’. Otherwise it would be insulting, were it not so farcical, and about as useful as mugging up on Scotland’s McDonald clan, in order to understand the American fast-food industry.) (11)

Some global PR solutions

America has time on its side. Hedonism, consumerism, opportunism, bribery, indifference, ‘winners’, the sheer will to survive – so many PR ‘strands’ known as ‘negative-positives’ – will, eventually, come to its aid, crowding out the ‘losers’ including maimed Americans and Iraqis. However, it requires a globally inclusive ‘Mission Statement’ and goal. The ‘singularity’ of the ‘War on Terrorism’ slogan was never appropriate since all governments have lost control of single-issue manipulation. It invites attack; in some parts of the world America is regarded as the ‘Father of Terrorism’, others feel they have been wrongly stigmatised. As a goal, it is incomplete, neither anticipating success nor envisaging it.

America also has to accept that fragments of other people’s stories, while meaning nothing to the big picture, are a major element of ‘perception management’: i.e. it will have to address global population ‘confusion’. Saddam Hussein, murderer of the Shia, is in prison; Ariel Sharon, responsible for the Shatila/ Sabra massacres, is feted at the White House. ‘Confusion’ no longer works in the mind-manipulators favour: i.e. it is linked to thinking. (‘Confusion’ is a ‘positive’. Only mind manipulators want us to think of it as a negative.)

Ambassador-at-large Cofer Black, US counter terrorism co-ordinator

To achieve the above, America requires top-quality globally pitched ‘brand ambassadors’ (BA) whose ‘messages’ can be picked up behind the scenes (‘silent PR’) by a new generation of ‘cheerleaders’ on the one hand; and by regional broadcasters, including hostile ones – forced, because of the BA’s seniority, to cover their ‘performances’ – on the other. (The PR ‘tactic’ used to strip such performances of their potency is for the hostile broadcaster’s presenter to do a third-person summary of what was said.)

Unless he becomes overexposed, a textbook, ‘good’ (this is not a moral judgement) performer, with an equally good ‘script’, is Cofer Black whom I saw interviewed on Fox News, 30 April 2004. The mild-mannered skills he used – which doubtless hide the chill –were helpful, non-aggressive, informative; which is to say, the way he progresses the points he wishes to make is a perfect example of populist mind-control and/or threat to specific communities, inclusive and non-cliched: his ‘message’ speaks to the ‘home team’ as well as to the community of nations. His clothes are attractively put-together but unremarkable. In a studied attempt to be non-charismatic/non-dominant, his body language is ‘neutral’ but embracing (the neutrality being a subliminal message of power; the ’embrace’ of empathy); his words as balanced as he can make them, showing awareness – respect – for his many audiences. Nevertheless, and despite his non-combativeness, he controls subliminally throughout – a superb example of a mind control practitioner going about his work.(12)

‘Poor’ brand ambassadors

In Britain, an example of a ‘poor’ BA was Sir John Scarlett, the country’s joint intelligence co-ordinator, who, giving evidence to the televised Hutton inquiry, and in an unsuccessful effort to control/downplay events, ignored his global audience.(13) So did the most powerful gatekeeper in the world – who happens to be a woman and black, ordinarily a PR ‘positive’ – Dr. Condoleezza Rice, when she gave evidence to the US Congress inquiry into 11 September 2001. Like Sir John, Dr Rice was parochial: when the tragic events upon which they were giving evidence impacted on the world. (Despite the British government’s attempts to ring fence the Hutton inquiry, it was always seen in its Iraq context.) Dr Rice spoke to a single audience: the American people. She had a single goal: to protect the President’s reputation and keep him positioned for success in November 2004 by keeping the American public petrified and focused on the ‘War on Terror’, simultaneously concentrating their minds on the President’s inheritance from successive presidencies and intelligence chiefs.

In an unforgivable and discourteous error, she appeared not to know – or care – how her one-dimensional script would insult/inflame/alienate audiences outside America; nor why it mattered to so many, including, incidentally, those responsible for US spook recruitment.(14) Her failure meant that others could write an alternative ‘script’, on a subject, and at a time, of their own choosing. The ‘best’ – meaning the most damning – I saw, came from The Peoples Republic of China. When totalitarian regimes can write ‘plausible’ scripts about America, the extent of its PR/mind control problem becomes awesomely apparent.

Fox News: Colonel Oliver North

A crucial branch of America’s ‘PR outreach’ is its broadcasters. These – if the globally recognised iconic title of the novel and movie ‘Bonfire of the vanities’ is not to be America’s epitaph – have profound responsibilities. They are particularly well-placed to assist America’s public sector PRs create a piggy-bank of courtesies, complimenting ‘good deeds’ of those working at local level, which can be evaluated against set targets.(15) Broadcast ‘tailoring’ – which used to be called ‘spin’ but everybody is too frightened to use the word now, despite the fact it is more necessary than ever – recognises there are multiple causes to appalling situations and, sadly, seldom holistic solutions. This appreciation is vital for US outreach because of the ‘globalisation of mourning’: i.e. local populations world-wide who grieve for, say, those who perished on 11 September 2001 but who, equally, weep for the tiny town of Falluja. Sorrow has no scale. It is never relative. (16) While grief is universal (‘globalised’), the Americans in their arrogance have ‘parochialised’ their own dead. As a result non-Americans are ‘indifferent’ to their losses, including their young soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan – an indefensible US government ‘achievement’.

An inadvertently poorly handled broadcast, was a Fox News item in which retired Colonel Oliver North – a ‘celebrity’ whose association with previous US executive adventure is not necessarily helpful to those currently responsible for US reputation management –interviewed a US marine in Ramadi, Iraq, about recent combat in the town. Ramadi, to those who know it – in my case from the 1960s – was beautiful. It was where Iraqi schoolchildren were taken to relax after they had finished their exams; where those driving to Jordan stopped to refresh themselves in the town’s lovely British-built colonial hotel before the long desert crossing. It is a bit like, say, a Chinese colonel and soldier in combat gear standing outside Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage chatting about war, having flattened it. I overstate the point, to make it. Courtesy, unlike war, (or PR, come to that) is priceless. More importantly, it has ‘legs’.

Notes

1 I understand that since the Madrid bomb there is some evidence of what is known in PR as ‘transference’: i.e. some Spaniards blame America for what happened.

2 ‘Penultimate’ because the Polish Pope was a major component of anti-Communist PR. He will be ‘allowed’ to die soon. The Vatican requires a different PR.

3 A pro EU Prime Minister, responsible for sending troops to Iraq, could not be seen to be celebrating, any more than could Britain’s head of state, invisible for the same, as well as constitutional, reasons.

4 Reinsertion of a discredited UN into the Iraq crisis, is another example of mind-control – as well as, of course, desperation – since, arguably, the EU has the ‘better’ claim. Reasons for the latter include some EU member countries’ imperial history which, in PR terms, gives it the required ‘sector knowledge’; while its modern experience of the complexities of peacefully incorporating so many cultures/languages – now requiring careful monitoring of the regionalised alliances forming – means it could supervise, in PR jargon, Iraq’s ‘issue development’. To block this, NATO, as an alternative to the UN, is being mentioned.

5 I assume that the wave of articles/programmes suggesting that obesity may not be as bad for you as its cracked up to be, could be part of the fast-food industry’s fight back.

6 Along with ‘demonisation’, ‘decapitation PR’ was one of (all) governments most consistent, last century, ideological/political PR tactics that I can identify. It operated at two levels. Firstly, against groups. A First World War example could be, say, ‘the only “good” Hun is a dead one’. Secondly, by singling out individuals, e.g. Stalin. The tactic imploded with the collapse of the Berlin Wall: East Germany’s ‘decadent capitalist’ demonisation gave way to reunited Germany’s ‘management of expectations’, which is to say, their lowering. As one of the Cold War’s ideological victors, America was under no pressure to change its ‘decapitation PR’ model. Therefore it staggered on, with ruinous consequences, until it crashed, along with much else, in Iraq. In America’s case, it was always cheap PR: what should have been a tactic as part of a strategy, was in fact the strategy, which is why it collapsed. It is lethal, despite its sometimes surprisingly low intensity.

Note: The use of the word ‘management’ is a frequent example of modern government mind manipulation – e.g. the ‘management of change’ – in an attempt to restore the status quo in ‘post-leadership’ societies. (If you accept ‘management’, you agree to be ‘managed’ i.e. ‘led’.) In fact, people do not want ‘management’, but professional competence, a wholly different matter.

7 ‘Recapitation’ as a US foreign policy objective, must never be confused with ‘nation-building’. The altruism of the latter was once brilliantly illustrated by America’s post-WW2 Marshall Plan.

8 Untargeted publics: Perception ‘fragments’ means balanced acknowledgement of, say, the generosity of esteemed American universities to, say, individual British students rejected by elitist establishments here; as well as, say, the superb care the US army is taking of animals in Baghdad Zoo. These add up to a clutch of ‘perception-positives’. However, they may not override the carefully weighted judgements of others, especially those with a non-ideological moral compass.

9 See appendix.

10 Other losses could include damage to educational establishments, particularly as, for example, India and China are investing in local, sophisticated business schools.

11 The Times, 1 March 2004. A young British diplomat working in an inhospitable part of Iraq, as reported in The Guardian, is using T.E. Lawrence’s book in its correct context.

In order to ‘understand the Arab mindset’, US officials could have done better reading the Middle East’s literature and poetry, especially that written by exiles, some of which has been translated.

12 Mind control never changes, although the methods of transmission, and therefore the numbers that can be reached, do. One reason why the US were so daft to rely on satellite rather than human intelligence was because they tried to change the rules, they did not respect intelligence history which would have told them that they couldn’t, and therefore failed.

Because of the explosion of media outlets, espionage is much more exposed. For example, we can now see the evidence of ‘facial cloning’: despite the generation gap, compare the faces of ex-SIS spooks Lord Browne, Richard Tomlinson and the more urbane looking Crispin Black.

13 Non-spook Sir Harold Walker, former Ambassador to Iraq, is an example of a ‘good’ performer. However, his currency is ‘devalued’ because he is retired/regionalised. As a result, he is forced into the position of ‘supplicant’.

14 For the same reason, they learned to spot altruists, some of whom were rich, or young people, who were ‘cheaper’ whom they then developed. (American culture is too ‘fast’/results-driven to allow time for ‘development’.) Enormous pieties remain about spook payments. A management consultant paid by a multinational is ‘OK’ even though the work could be detrimental to his/her country’s interests; similarly an international footballer. A spook is not judged by the same standard. Moreover, a spook who accepts money from a foreign government, is, as often as not, working in the interests of his people.

15 Public Sector PRs: Educated, sensitised, public sector mind manipulators are better (and cheaper) than those from the private sector because the latter, because of the market, have a project/immediate result mindset.

16 Falluja. Double standards include disparaging references to ‘foreign elements’ when, for example, Czechs who fought with Britain in WW2, or Canadian pilots with Israel during the Six Day War, are praised. The town has become the symbol of Middle East manhood: my computer spell check changes the name ‘Falluja’ to ‘phallus’. Which is what, in a way, the Iraq war and all that goes with it, was all about.