Toothpaste, war, whatever
Tuesday July 24, 2007
Categories: Not the Onion
I hope that Kurt Vonnegut, wherever he is, saw this WaPo story from last weekend. Seems that the Pentagon commissioned a study to learn from advertising and marketing techniques how the military could better sell the Iraq War to Iraqis:...
Filed Under: consumerism, War
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Helmus and his co-authors concluded that the "force" brand, which the United States peddled for the first few years of the occupation, was doomed from the start and lost ground to enemies' competing brands. While not abandoning the more aggressive elements of warfare, the report suggested, a more attractive brand for the Iraqi people might have been "We will help you."
Our country is being run by crazy people..
Below we see a lovely spokesmodel at the Abu Ghraib outlet failing to understand her consumer:
LOL. That's too funny.
400,000 of our tax dollars at work.
I'm sorry to sound incredibly ignorant, but I have to be reading this post incorrectly. I am reading this as to suggest that Helmus is equating the U.S. military with Walmart, and that the problem is that we are having bad PR, not that innocent Iraqis are dying and that our troops are over there in a war where we didn't need to be. There is no humanly possible way for that to be the case, so someone please correct me on this.
The picture reminds me of my brother in law's going away party. My sister, his wife, bought him a cake. She had the icing spell out - have fun. kill hajis. stay safe. I was absolutely shocked, so I could only leave shortly thereafter. What could I possibly say to that on the evening of his departure?
Sorry, Dragyn...
You're through the looking glass. All bets are off. Up is down, black is white, and war is just another product to be sold to the public.
God help us.
Sorry for being dense here. What is it that's being covered up in the picture from Abu Ghraib? I'm not getting it.
A dead man's face in a body bag. Hence being packed in ice and the sh*t-eating grin on that horrible person's face.
I guess I'm an odd duck. I'd have to know who the dead man is before I could make a judgement. Is he some scumbag jihadist imported from Syria or Iran? Is he a Shiite militiaman? If so, to hell with him. I was (and am) against the war in Iraq, but unless he's an innocent civlian I think I can live with him being on ice. My negative feelings toward this unnecessary war don't make every casualty a tragedy.
And her smiling over him isn't enough for me to see that pic as indicative of why we've bottomed out in Iraq. You could probably find a similiar pic of an American soldier in Germany, grinning over a nazi corpse.
Yeah, it's bad PR in the Muslim world. But so is choosing a breakfast cereal that offends Allah. The only thing dumber than trying to win the hearts and minds of Muslims is trying to make their countries democratic. Lost cause.
Is he some scumbag jihadist imported from Syria or Iran? Is he a Shiite militiaman? If so, to hell with him.
With that attitude, surely you have no problem with them blowing up our citizens. I mean, from their perspective, if it's just some imperialist tool from America, to hell with them?
Just when you think the Cheney regime hits a moral bottom, the trapdoor opens.
Kim M
You're through the looking glass. All bets are off. Up is down, black is white, and war is just another product to be sold to the public.
Do we at least get a tea party? Mr. Dreher, you seem to be an expert on culinary delights. What drink do you suggest nicely balances an overcoming cynicism with the faint glimpse of naive optimism that seems to be fading every day like a dying star?
I guess I'm an odd duck. I'd have to know who the dead man is before I could make a judgement.
Not me. I consider a soldier -- a woman at that -- smiling happily for a party pic over the body of a dead enemy prisoner to be a moral defeat, a sign of the victor's degradation.
After the battle of Gallipoli during World War I, in which half a million men from the Turkish and Allied side perished, Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk), who led the winning Turkish forces, paid moving tribute to the gallantry of the enemy soldiers. That is a noble man, and a good soldier. I don't expect a soldier to pay tribute to the gallantry of a jihadi or anything, but to behave as that soldier in the photo did in the presence of a dead man is sinful, in my view. If she were my sister or daughter, I would be ashamed, and pray for her soul.
Right, Rod. That photo is absolutely indicative of how our soldiers act in Iraq. Spot on.
There is a distinct heartless streak being fostered in our society. It may be a silly example, but go do a search on You Tube for "Snape Kills Dumbledore" and watch the video of the teenage hooligans driving by Barnes and Noble a while back on the night of the release party for Harry Potter 6. They, driving their momma's mini-van, drove around the parking lot hollering "Snape Kills Dumbledore" to the families who were waiting in line to purchase, or who had just come from purchasing, the brand new book. Why? Because they could.
Read the comments - they're split down the middle between people who thought it was a total d*ck move on their part and the people who think that it was the funniest thing in the world that people had their excitement and anticipation ruined. Why? Because it's not important to them. No empathy and no reason to *have* empathy.
To those people, there are winners and losers. Winners get to do what they want because they're winners. What losers want or need doesn't matter because they're losers.
That picture Rod posted is a perfect illustration of this sickness.
I hate us sometimes.
Let me clarify myself. I don't believe you meant any ill-will by posting that photo, but I think you could have made your point in a different manner. Blithely posting a crude photograph of a smiling woman over a dead Iraqi body leaves much room for interpretation.
What is your point, Cody? Tit for tat? For every good example there's a bad one. For every bad example there's a good one. Your posting the picture you did does not negate the picture Rod posted. Nor does the picture Rod posted negate the one you did.
What do you mean by "indicative?" Because looking at the photos - both of them - they're *both* "indicative" of the behavior of our soldiers.
So now what?
No. I don't believe that for every good example there's a bad example. Good acts carried out by our soldiers every day in that savage country clearly out weigh the bad deeds committed by a foolish few.
Our soldiers have a hard enough time fighting this stupid, useless war. The last thing they need is to be portrayed collectively as a bunch of brutes.
Actually, while I find the overuse of marketing slang as just silly, isn't a PR guy exactly what we need? The whole problem is, essentially, the Iraqis don't want us there, since we're making the whole killing each other thing more difficult; psyops to convince them against that would be a good thing, if they can work.
God bless.
Cody: Right, Rod. That photo is absolutely indicative of how our soldiers act in Iraq.
Where do you get the idea that that was the message I was sending? I was trying to point out the moral insanity of trying to "re-brand" the occupation, in light of things like Abu Ghraib. Which is where that photo came from.
Iirc one of the things mentioned in one of the many Abu Ghraib reports was how the body of a Iraqi man who died during torture (or whatever you would prefer to call it) was packed in ice in order to disguise the time of his death. The picture may or may not be of that man.
Wow, this report may not convince anyone that the administration now, finally, knows what it's doing to secure Iraq, but we're in the midst of a full-on propaganda blitz that I hope people can withstand. Bush is clearly attempting to instill fear with his latest rhetoric about Al Qaeda of Iraq, while the military tries to persuade the public that it has a plan this time.
But this is what they've come up with?!?! "We will help you"?!?!
Rod: I believe I did a sufficient job of clarifying myself in the second post.
Right or wrong, this is your blog, and I don't wish to dictate how you run it.
Maybe our disagreement is about taste, with that photograph being of particularly bad taste. You could have easily made your point without it.
Maybe I'm also being a little self-conscious and reactionary. During the run-up to the war, and a couple years after, it was "Rah Rah! These guys are American heroes!" Now that the war has turned sour and much of the country rightfully against it, I am picking up a steady stream of criticism of not just the generals and politicians but of the actual grunts on the ground.
Let me clarify myself again: Criticism is not a bad thing when used judiciously. Criticism of the troops due to frustration at those at the top of the food chain is unnecessary (not that I'm accusing you of that, Rod).
That should have gone in the previous post. I'm afraid this is becoming a habit.
Maybe I'm also being a little self-conscious and reactionary. During the run-up to the war, and a couple years after, it was "Rah Rah! These guys are American heroes!" Now that the war has turned sour and much of the country rightfully against it, I am picking up a steady stream of criticism of not just the generals and politicians but of the actual grunts on the ground.
This brings up a question that I am loathe to ask (but I will anyway):
Why does being a grunt on the ground give one a free pass when it comes to criticism? Is that photo not of a grunt on the ground? Did that grunt on the ground torture prisoners - under orders or not? Was it not grunts on the ground who raped that girl and killed her whole family to cover it up? Are not the grunts on the ground the ones killing people - guilty and innocent alike?
I am not, in any way, saying that our men and women over there are all guilty, nor am I saying that they're all maliciously killing every Iraqi they can get in their sights. I *am* asking why evil is given a free pass when it's committed by a grunt?
"What drink do you suggest nicely balances an overcoming cynicism with the faint glimpse of naive optimism that seems to be fading every day like a dying star?"
A bottle of Everclear.
"No. I don't believe that for every good example there's a bad example. Good acts carried out by our soldiers every day in that savage country clearly out weigh the bad deeds committed by a foolish few."
No they don't not in the real world. This is a major reputation destroyer. I can offer you dozens of examples.
Kim M
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