Ever since the US war against Vietnam provoked normally passive civilians into demonstrating against the war, the ruling class has been acutely aware that when it wants to wage war against another country, it needs to control the information which the public gets.
When the US invaded Panama in 1989, the US government and Western media demonised Panamanian dictator General Manuel Noriega — but suppressed the fact that Noriega had carried out most of his drug-running and human rights atrocities while working for the CIA and that the US invasion resulted in the deaths of 3000 Panamanian civilians.
During the Gulf War a little over a year later, the US military used similar tactics — both against Saddam Hussein and against the American people. Learning from the Vietnam War, journalists were not let behind "enemy" lines to report on the impact of the war on civilians; instead the world was treated to hour after hour of CNN coverage of Pentagon briefings and the bright lights of distant bombing raids.
Now we have the "war against terrorism" and the US government, with the help of the corporate media, is again seeking to manipulate public opinion in order to maintain support for a dirty war against Afghan civilians.
Because the US government has used the deaths of innocent civilians in New York and Washington to justify its war, it can't maintain public support if a large number of innocent Afghan civilians are known to have been killed by US bombs.
So the US government is doing all it can to maintain the fiction that Afghan civilians aren't being killed by the US bombing, and if any have, that it is just a very small number of "accidental" deaths.
With Western journalists again unable to get behind the lines, reports of civilian casualties coming from the Taliban or from civilian refugees have been dismissed as "not credible". Few personalised interviews with Afghan refugees, the kind of thing which might elicit sympathy in the West just as it did after September 11, have appeared.
Despite there being no evidence connecting the anthrax-laced letters with Osama bin Laden, or with Iraq, the US government has deliberately used the anthrax scare to frighten the US public into accepting whatever indiscriminate killings of Afghan civilians the US government deems necessary.
There has been little media coverage of the fact that the US is still funding and training terrorists (and repressive governments) around the world, in exactly the same way that the US trained and funded Osama bin Laden in the 1980s.
News of international opposition to the war has also been underreported: enormous demonstrations in the US and Europe against the war have rarely received much press.
When the anti-war movement in Pakistan is reported upon, the international media covers the demonstrations organised by the Islamic extremists and ignores the anti-war demonstrations which have been organised by the left and democratic movement — creating the impression that the only Pakistanis who are opposed to the war are religious extremists.
The one television station which was reporting from the ground, and reporting critically, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network, has been subjected to a barrage of US government condemnation, including pressure on the Qatari government to shut it down. In the end, the US Air Force did the job — knocking out its satellite transmitter during a bombing raid on Kabul.
While the US government has not had to resort to such direct censorship to get the US corporate media to do its bidding, there have been instances of media employees getting sacked or disciplined for questioning the war.
In Australia too, there have been direct attacks on civil liberties.
Anti-war stalls organised by Resistance and the International Socialist Organisation have been closed down on the University of Sydney and University of Queensland campuses. Two members of the Nuclear Disarmament Party were also arrested at the University of Sydney for handing out anti-war leaflets. Green Left Weekly has been fighting a battle against attempts to ban its distribution by the Hobart City Council.
But all is not lost. Far from it, the anti-war movement, and independent publications like this one which are committed to it, have continued to organise and struggle. They have sought to get the truth out, to tell people the real story of what is going on in Afghanistan and what the US ruling class is fighting for.
At a time of war, when the corporate media see their role as supporting the war, a newspaper like Green Left Weekly is precious for the information it contains. Because it is a non-profit publication, it can speak out against injustice without fear or favour. At a time like this, it is important not to miss a single issue of Green Left Weekly. Subscribe today.
From Green Left Weekly, December 5, 2001.
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