Sorry, GarzaUK, that was a horrible paper. It makes me wish I would've applied to get into Stanford if the bar is set that low (and that paper was from a senior too!)
First off, the writer Sierra Martinez, begins talking about propaganda in a broad definition and then decides to apply it to war time without any footing.
Then, this statement:
"There is a formula for effective war propaganda." Really? Does it work everytime without fail? Has the war propaganda for Iraq snowed the US citizens? Answers: NO
Hitler did not start out as a successful propagandist. Bush did. There's a problem there by the fact that they're not similar.
Propaganda is not inherently successful but can be if applied “correctly”. That's like saying "X works if you know how to use it". Duh.
First, the public must be convinced that they are being attacked. Second, the pacifists must be denounced. And third, patriotism must be proposed as the only security measure. We can see that all three of these criteria were met in both Nazi Germany and contemporary America. What a paper, she just says that all three were met in contemporary "America" and doesn't provide documentation, back-up, or any arguments to support her claim.
Then she says:
War support can be garnered without contrived propaganda, and without satisfying all of these conditions. For example, America joined the WWII with international support, thus failing to satisfy the above criteria of disregarding the will of the international community. However, the point is that these criteria, or some subset thereof, are sufficient conditions for successful war propaganda. W-w-w-wait. That contradicts what she says here:
Propaganda is not inherently successful but can be if applied “correctly”. Of what exactly this correct application consists (of the three points listed).
In addition to the “Goering Three”, deemphasizing the significance of the international community, glorifying military might, creating detention centers for the blamed, and devaluing the loss of life are all key ingredients in the recipe for domestic war support.
Where did she pull these from? Without a cite, she's just making up stuff that suits her argument.
She then goes on to talk about the Homeland Security Advisory System.
If the purpose of the color-coded levels is to avoid terrorism, then we are entitled to a few questions. I'm sure her sense of entitlement is high (sorry, I felt I needed to do a personal slam here).
First, what kind of terrorist act would be stopped by ordinary citizens? If the terrorist intended to hijack a plane, an ordinary citizen could try to intervene, but most likely, (and as seen from the results of 9/11), would not be able to prevent the terrorist act. Yeah, like that plane that flew into the US Capitol building. Oh wait, that was stopped. The end result, some lives were lost but more lives were saved.
The fact that an ordinary person probably could not stop a terrorist warrants an inquiry into the motivation behind instantiating the Homeland Security Advisory System. Fact? How about "baseless assumption"?
Second, it is the job of our Federal Bureau of Investigation, Counter Intelligence Agency, and other security agencies to prevent terrorist attacks. There are specialized organizations built into our government whose purposes are to protect this country. It does not seem appropriate to delegate the work, normally accomplished by officers and professionals, to normal citizen. Ordinary people have their own jobs to attend and fulfill. :roll: Yes. The citizenry have other things to do and if they see something suspicious, we should just realize that the citizen has classes to attend, a TiVo to program, and a myriad of other things. It's not delegation to the citizens any more than a neighborhood crime watch to prevent car or house theft is the police eschewing responsibility.
Third, even if an ordinary citizen could stop the supposed terrorist act, what new information does the Homeland Security Advisory System provide? Because the Homeland Security Advisory System provides no specific information about terrorism, its purpose cannot be to prevent terrorist attacks. She's right, the HSAS does not provide specific information but just a color. Of course, specific information has come out in conjunction with the color notifications so it behooves the citizenry to know what's going on and a hightened alert might prompt them to learn more.
While there was not an official Homeland Security department, Hitler had his own methods of contriving threats to the German public. Instead of terrorists, the Nazi party identified and targeted Jews. Umm, what? How is the HSAS similar to Hitler targeting Jewish people?
The American version of a blitzkrieg attack was “shock and awe”. Snerk. Apparently someone wasn't watching when the "shock and awe" actually happened. It was quite the let down.
Despite the fact that Iraq was a sovereign country with its own electoral process (corrupt as it may have been), we chose to regard Iraq’s government as a “regime” instead of the government that it was.Regime:a : mode of rule or management b : a form of government <a socialist regime> c : a government in power <predicted that the new regime would fall> d : a period of rule That sure seems to fit the definition.
The sixth condition for successful disbursement of the government’s desires into the minds of its citizens is to create detention centers for the blamed. In Nazi Germany, the notorious concentration camps were the areas where the government detained the arrested Jews. Ahh ,G-Bay. Although I disagree with G-Bay, I do have to assert that we're not bringing people there to work until they die or just gassing them to death, or performing medical experiments on them.
Like the Nazi Government, the Bush administration knows what makes for successful war propaganda, and detention of those blamed is one of those conditions. Of course, G-Bay as successful propaganda? Not so much. She offers no proof that this has been successful either.
Last, the devaluation of human life is an important condition when convincing a country to go to war. This point is more observational than factual. Almost all of her points have been mono-objective, far from factual and subjective.
The correlating philosophy of lost human life to Nazi Germany hardly requires explanation. It does? I'm glad she can make inferrence and stand back smugly. I, on the other hand, require a bit more.
Both the Nazi German government and the American Bush administration successfully implemented this model of war propaganda. Any denial of the claim that our methods of justification for war propaganda are fearfully similar to that of Hitler’s, is just a wishful delusion. She hasn't defined what "successful" is, so she would probably define her paper as "successful" and then call anyone who disagrees "deluded".
All in all, it was a bad read. I give this paper a big red
F