Harry Targ
We live in a World of Cognitive Warfare
A recent document prepared by the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) suggested that “in cognitive
warfare, the human mind becomes the battlefield. The aim is to change not only what people think, but how
they think and act. Waged successfully, it shapes and influences
individual and group beliefs and behaviors to favor an aggressor's tactical or
strategic objectives.”
This NATO document, of course, is addressing the world
of international relations but the concept of “cognitive warfare” seems to
parallel efforts “to change not only what people think, but how they think and
act.” This project animates the efforts of media conglomerates-print, electronic,
social media platforms. Changing how people think and act has its historic
roots in campaigns to convince citizens to support wars, consume cigarettes,
forget climate disasters, and to find flaws in populations because of class,
race, gender, sexual preference, and/or religion. Creating images of enemies
is central to launching wars. The processes of “branding” are similar in
all realms of human experience.
Perhaps challenging the process of “branding” should
be on the agenda for all those who seek a more humane society. Break up
“branding machines.” Democratize the ability to describe and express
experiences. And, in the educational sphere, teach students to analyze brands
and to evaluate their relative accuracy.
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In August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese armed
motor boats attacked two U.S. naval vessels off the coast of North Vietnam. The
administration of Lyndon Johnson defined the attacks as an unprovoked act of
North Vietnamese aggression.
Two days later it was announced that another attack on
U.S. ships in international waters had occurred and the U.S. responded with air
attacks on North Vietnamese targets. President Johnson then took a resolution
he had already prepared to the Congress of the United States. The so-called
Gulf of Tonkin resolution declared that the Congress authorizes the president
to do what he deemed necessary to defend U.S. national security in Southeast
Asia. Only two Senators voted "no." Over the next three years the U.S.
sent 500,000 troops to Vietnam to carry out a massive air and ground war in
both the South and North of the country.
Within a year of the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incidents, evidence began to
appear indicating that the August 2 attack was provoked. The two U.S. naval
vessels were in North Vietnamese coastal waters orchestrating acts of sabotage
in the Northern part of Vietnam. More serious, evidence pointed to the
inescapable conclusion that the second attack on August 4 never occurred.
President Johnson's lies to the American people about the Gulf of Tonkin
contributed to the devastating decisions to escalate a U.S. war in Vietnam that
cost 57,000 U.S. troop deaths and upwards of three million Vietnamese deaths.
Forty years later, George W. Bush and his key aides put together a package of
lies about Iraq- imports of uranium from Niger, purchases of aluminum rods
which supposedly could be used for constructing nuclear weapons, development of
biological and chemical weapons, and connections between Saddam Hussein and
Osama Bin Laden.
As the Vietnamese and Iraqi cases show, foreign policies built on lies can lead
to imperial wars, huge expenditures on the military, economic crises at home,
and military casualties abroad.
Now is the time for the American people to insist that their leaders tell the
truth about the U.S. role in the world. The same goes for peoples everywhere.
UNESCO on War
“Since wars begin in the minds of men (and women), it is
in the minds of men (and women) that the defenses of peace must be constructed'.” (The first sentence of the Preamble to UNESCO's Constitution is translated
into nine languages and carved in stone on a monument erected at the UNESCO
headquarters in Paris).
