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00:02:57:12 - 00:03:36:15
David Sirota
Everyone. And welcome to this week's special bonus episode for paid subscribers. Today, we're sharing my interview with activist, journalist and media critic Norman Solomon. If you don't know Norman Solomon, for decades he's played a prominent role in independent media and has been a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy and corporate influence in the media landscape. In 1986, he co-founded the media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, or FAIR, which holds media outlets accountable for biased reporting.

00:03:28:08 - 00:04:14:19
David Sirota
And they promote media transparency. I spoke with Norman Solomon about his new book, War Made Invisible How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. The book details how the United States military has been in a perpetual state of war since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Wars which have either gone underreported by the media or have been obscured by military officials.

00:03:53:23 - 00:04:14:19
David Sirota
It was a fascinating and illuminating conversation, and I'm excited to share it with everyone. Thanks again for being a supporting subscriber and for funding the work we do here at the Lever. Now, here's that interview with Norman Solomon. Hey, Norman, How you doing?

00:04:08:22 - 00:04:14:19
Norman Solomon
Good. Hey, and wonderful to see the lever every day.

00:04:12:13 - 00:05:06:20
David Sirota
Well, thanks. Thanks for saying that. I appreciate it. And I appreciate all the work that you've been doing over so many years in this space. This is a topic that I think is so important. The erasing of war from the American consciousness and from and really from from view. Your new book is called War Made Invisible. It details how the U.S. military has been in a perpetual state of war since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan all the way back in 2001.

00:04:42:18 - 00:05:06:20
David Sirota
Wars again that have gone unnoticed or have been obscured or have been, in a sense, hidden from public view. So let's start with that big question. When we say wars are made invisible. What do we exactly? What do you mean by that? And who do you think is to blame for that?

00:05:02:06 - 00:05:53:12
Norman Solomon
The public in the US is pretty much clueless about what's being done with their tax dollars and their names. And really, the so-called war on terror got quite a huge jump when Afghanistan was invaded in the aftermath of 911 in October 2001. There's a really stunning poll that I talk about in the book from Gallup just before it was clear, but just before the attack began from the U.S. on Afghanistan.

00:05:34:16 - 00:06:20:23
Norman Solomon
90% of the US public said they supported such an attack. Only 5% was opposed. So the militarization of U.S. foreign policy to the extent of endless war really got a huge boost at the outset. When you have only one out of 20 people saying they oppose attacking a country that had nothing to do with 911, and since then, well, there's been a lot of coverage intermittently anyway, in Afghanistan and Iraq when U.S. troops were involved.

00:06:09:03 - 00:07:01:21
Norman Solomon
Just the suffering of other people has been, with rare exceptions, just not in the U.S. media frame. So as far as the vast majority of people in the United States have been concerned for more than two decades, the US is scarcely at war and you're bombing the way in which the U.S. has increasingly relied on drones and other from the air.

00:06:34:02 - 00:07:01:21
David Sirota
Above it.

00:06:34:12 - 00:07:01:21
Norman Solomon
All sort of attacks. That barely registers either. So the invisibility has really gotten worse over the years.

00:06:42:15 - 00:07:50:20
David Sirota
I mean, it's in a sense it's sort of a departure from the first war that I can remember, which was the Persian Gulf War, the original Iraq war, if you will. And I remember as a as a kid, that that was the it was called at the time the first TV war. And I remember as a kid, seeing it on CNN, the the Scud missiles and the and the panic of the Patriot missiles and the you know, the the the the televised aspect of it.

00:07:12:06 - 00:07:50:20
David Sirota
I mean, it kind of I think I think was actually Norman Schwarzkopf who said it looked like a video game war. But my point being is, is that the Persian Gulf War did not feel like an invisible war. I mean, it was a lot of things, but it didn't feel invisible. Now, granted, it was short lived, so maybe it was only a short television show.

00:07:32:13 - 00:07:50:20
David Sirota
But I guess the question then becomes, has have wars always been invisible or did something change?

00:07:39:14 - 00:08:30:12
Norman Solomon
We could say there are two layers of visibility. One is coverage that overwhelmingly and habitually focuses on the U.S. side, this side of the missiles and U.S. troops. And then there's the other invisibility, which has always been the case, including in the 1991 Gulf War, and that is what happens to people at the other end of the bombs and the missiles.

00:08:04:07 - 00:09:32:15
Norman Solomon
And they are rendered as non persons, which is part of, if you would, if not the ideology, the sort of tacit media theology of what goes on when the United States goes to war, the lives of Americans so important and at that level not invisible. The tearful departures and returns of the troops, whether it's 1991 or after the war in Iraq, was going for a while, or just the overall ambiance of worship of the latest gods of metal, weapons of the U.S. military, which has just been profuse in war after war, the perfect war, in a sense, from the Pentagon and media standpoint is when few Americans die.

00:08:50:22 - 00:09:32:15
Norman Solomon
And if some Americans die, then of course, they're the ones that matter. When you go back to and this was sort of a precursor or precursor of the air wars to come, 1999, Bill Clinton and you live in Colorado, so especially perhaps poignant at the same time that the Columbine massacre had occurred. The United States was dropping huge quantities of bombs on Kosovo, Serbia.

00:09:18:10 - 00:09:59:23
Norman Solomon
And Bill Clinton very piously went on TV right after the Columbine disaster. And he said we must teach our children not to try to settle their differences with violence. And meanwhile, the US led NAITO bombing of Yugoslavia is is at its peak. And this kind of doublethink from then and now has been a very symptomatic of the warfare state, the media management of that state and the way in which the invisibility of war in terms of people who are suffering most from it is really routine in the United States.

00:09:59:08 - 00:11:01:20
Norman Solomon
I recount in the book what happened when the United States led the NATO's bombing of Libya for more than half a year under Barack Obama. And at one point, the spokesperson, an attorney named CO, went to a congressional hearing and explained that the United States wasn't really at war. It had already spent $1 billion helping to bomb Libya with disastrous results, ousting one horrific dictator and turning that country into turmoil and ongoing massacres and feeding the growth existence and expansion of terrorist groups like ISIS, by the way, but with a straight face.

00:10:48:07 - 00:11:01:20
Norman Solomon
You had this Obama administration spokesperson saying the U.S. isn't at war. And when he was asked about that, he said, well, no Americans have died.

00:10:56:20 - 00:11:27:10
David Sirota
That kind of illustrates the ideology at play and the and the bias at play, what we call a war and what we don't call a war. So let's talk a little bit about the media. In your book, you discuss the role of compliant journalists who provide narrow coverage of military engagements and repeat the military's talking points. I mean, at one point I think it was in the Iraq war, there was this idea of embedded journalists, embedded journalism, where the journalists were almost a part of the fighting force.

00:11:27:23 - 00:11:56:09
David Sirota
Go into a little detail about what motivates this kind of journalism and how it provides additional cover for the military and for the arguments for never ending war.

00:11:43:03 - 00:12:46:21
Norman Solomon
In terms of covering warfare, it's a dynamic very similar to what the lever has so well documented in terms of economic and social issues. You have a Washington press corps that wants access, and the desire for access means ingratiating oneself. Yeah, there's conflicts between the press and administration, but retaining and gaining more access is really important. And so during the US invasion of Panama, which was part of an era when under Reagan and the first Bush, the US sort of tuned up after the Vietnam War, what was denounced as the Vietnam Syndrome turned up its military to begin invading countries again.

00:12:30:02 - 00:13:15:18
Norman Solomon
You had a lot of complaints from the US media. They were kept in hotels in Panama and so forth. They didn't get to see the bang bang action. So the Pentagon responded by saying, okay, you want access, we'll give you access. And so the embedding came in during the Gulf War and then later on. And so journalists learned that they got, as one Fox journalist reported, we're making you guys famous, you troops famous.

00:12:57:10 - 00:13:55:12
Norman Solomon
And so there was camaraderie. And this is simply one aspect of the way in which US media coverage paints windows on the world red, white and blue, which is very comfortable for the establishment, the advertising and so forth. As I document in the book, Phil Donahue was kicked off of MSNBC a very top rated in terms of viewership program in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq because he had the temerity to invite some antiwar speakers and guests onto his program, along with pro-war speakers.

00:13:35:13 - 00:14:38:06
Norman Solomon
Well, that couldn't be countenanced. There was a memo leaked from MSNBC, true to form, that they didn't want to go against the grain of the U.S. military, and so they axed Phil Donahue program and we would have been told, Oh, well, you're just being a conspiracy freak and so forth. If you make the allegation that that's why his program was ditched, except we got the leaked memo that spelled it out in black and white.

00:13:59:07 - 00:14:38:06
Norman Solomon
So I think it's a physical embedding. There were many hundreds who were embedded during the Iraq war, journalists who were very ready, willing and able to identify with and travel with the troops and report as such. It's also a psychological embedding. It's the idea that the United States has the prerogative to invade and militarily work its will on the world as as it can, as it thinks prudent to do.

00:14:24:21 - 00:15:04:01
Norman Solomon
And in the process, it's the way in which journalists, if they want to stay in that profession or rise in the profession in mainstream corporate media, there has to be an implicit acceptance of the right of the United States to intervene militarily around the world. If you are an anti-war journalist, according to the mainstream team perspective of the powerbrokers in media, then you're biased, you're antiwar, you're biased.

00:14:53:20 - 00:15:29:01
Norman Solomon
If you're pro-war, you're objective. And that has played out again and again, even to the point of sadism, is seen as a positive virtue. I quote extensively in the book, and this is another way in which I think the title of the book or Made Invisible, is borne out a normalization of encouraging the United States to commit war crimes.

00:15:16:15 - 00:15:57:02
Norman Solomon
Thomas Friedman, who wrote many, many columns cheering on and calling for more bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. And it's really stunning to go back and read how he encouraged the U.S. to bomb civilian infrastructure in Belgrade, which is a war crime. And a few years later, he wins the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. So this is the baseline of what we're told is professional journalism.

00:15:44:08 - 00:16:33:13
David Sirota
So let's talk about technology and some of the new technologies that may have created a the possibility of a greater disconnect in the ways the American military can conduct a war and the way the media portrays those wars or can hide those wars. I mean, you mentioned drones. Are there are there are other technologies that allow that are helping wars to be conducted kind of off the radar screen?

00:16:13:05 - 00:17:00:17
Norman Solomon
Yeah, The distancing is ironically simultaneous with a capacity to cover in real time what is going on many thousands of miles away. So I think drones and other remote capacities to bomb are very important. And at the same time, it's who controls the technology. That's the most important, because I would say that the same technology that is so digitally stunning in terms of anywhere on the planet, taking you to it via a screen anyway, TV or computer, whatever, that could be used with a very different sensibility.

00:16:52:23 - 00:17:44:07
Norman Solomon
If we had journalists and media institutions dominant in the United States that truly did report on war without fear or favor, that was not nationalistic, but more journalistic, then you'd have a very different political climate. And so the technologies and I think drone is one of the most striking ones, no pun intended, that is sort of the premier example of the use of technology to make the wars both effective in terms of killing people from the Pentagon's standpoint and also the most pernicious because of the distancing not only for the public, but for the people pushing the buttons.

00:17:35:17 - 00:18:08:16
Norman Solomon
We and I've interviewed many drone whistleblowers who talk about the trauma. You know, on the surface, we might not think, well, you're sitting at a computer console in Nevada, you're killing somebody in Afghanistan. They are pixels on a screen. What's the big deal? In point of fact, many of them, they're not desensitized, many of them. And they go through trauma, PTSD, because they're aware that they're part of a system.

00:18:01:12 - 00:18:41:23
Norman Solomon
And yet and I think this is a metaphor as well, more and more this is like a Taylor ISM assembly line for disinformation and for mass killing because everybody has their little part to play and any accountability has no, I was just doing my job. I was just moving these pixels around. And with my mouse or whatever, or I'm a technician or this or that.

00:18:26:12 - 00:19:30:18
Norman Solomon
And it's the lack of accountability that is built in to justify killing and reinforcing the warfare state. I mean, the fact is we are involved now in warfare and war maneuvers according to the Costs of war project that Brown University in some way in 80 different countries. And yet how many people are even aware of that? It's barely acknowledged and is generally not acknowledged in U.S. mass media.

00:18:54:13 - 00:19:59:15
Norman Solomon
And yet the the net effect is that the political economy of the United States is largely built on warfare, especially because what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex and we could now hyphenate military industrial media, intelligence complex, has Silicon Valley making billions of dollars. You know, companies like Google that said, we're going to do no evil. Now they're out just making a killing, literally and figuratively by providing the digital tools of the trade for the United States to be engaged in war without end.

00:19:31:00 - 00:19:59:15
David Sirota
What about the undercounting of deaths? Your book highlights how deaths and injuries from U.S. military engagements are often discounted and, as I said, undercounted. How is this even possible in a world with so much technology, in a world where so many people have cell phones, in a world of of of what we sometimes think of as meticulous record keeping?

00:19:58:04 - 00:20:29:03
David Sirota
How is it possible that injuries and death tolls are undercounted, ignored? And what steps do you think can be taken to address that particular issue and ensure greater accountability?

00:20:13:05 - 00:21:02:08
Norman Solomon
A lot of this happens just outside of any realm where U.S. journalists or U.S. media outlet representatives exist. 70% of the population. Afghanistan, for instance, rural, the tree falls in the forest. It did it happen in the media world? No. If Afghans are terrorized and killed by U.S. bombing over a course of a decade, did it really happen?

00:20:41:18 - 00:21:28:07
Norman Solomon
While according to news media, you know, what's that terrible saying in Washington, official Washington appearance is reality. And I was just talking about lack of accountability. When members of Congress vote for these astronomical military budgets, they also never see the faces of the people that they helped to kill. They don't know their names. There's very little interest there.

00:21:06:03 - 00:22:04:02
Norman Solomon
So the possibility exists for us to look at how this does happen, which is who controls the dominant technology in terms of numbers, the so-called legacy Corporate media dominate the Internet. And they, as Robert McChesney has pointed out, it really is a matter of who has the billions of dollars to dominate the technology. You can go back, theoretically to Herbert Marcuse, who said that it's not a matter of the technology, it is who controlled it.

00:21:39:10 - 00:22:38:13
Norman Solomon
And in terms of the the ideology or perhaps the mythology of the Internet and so forth, there's the idea that it's an equalizer. It's true that the barriers to entry are lower. And when we have learned when we have learned basic facts about the so-called war on terror, it's been because people did independent reporting. When you look at, for instance, WikiLeaks and what Chelsea manning did for us, one of the many things was to break through those barriers, to have the famous video that showed from the sky U.S. troops just brazenly and flippantly killing the people on the ground.

00:22:28:05 - 00:23:14:20
Norman Solomon
That was an end run around the dominance. So I think the possibility exists for us to, although we are certainly outspent vastly to continue to use and find better ways to to use the technology that does exist to break through the barriers. Otherwise, because of just the dynamics of media, the vast geographical spread of the United States engaged in military activities, we just don't know.

00:22:57:02 - 00:23:45:13
Norman Solomon
The only people do know is the people being terrorized by drones and being injured and going through the kind of trauma that we just we are concerned about with U.S. troops. And we also know that they are mourning they are mourning just as much as any American who lose a loved ones, but they're mourning and they're suffering and they're grief virtually completely off the U.S. media concern.

00:23:26:14 - 00:24:14:22
Norman Solomon
And one thing I would I would want to mention as I wrap up my response here to your good question, David, is that a big theme of this book or made invisible? Is that a basis of U.S. media coverage and U.S. politics on Capitol Hill and in the White House is that there are two tiers of grief, The grief of Americans and those who are implicitly or explicitly designated as important people because they're U.S. allies and people suffering from designated U.S. enemies, such as in Ukraine.

00:23:59:19 - 00:24:40:02
Norman Solomon
And then the other tier of grief is people who suffer from the other end of U.S. firepower. The Iraqis have died. The Afghans have died. Others who have, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, lost their lives, been injured, lost their loved ones. And there is another tier of grief. Their grief in practical terms, as far as U.S. society is concerned, just doesn't matter because they don't really matter as people.

00:24:25:18 - 00:25:03:10
David Sirota
Let's speculate for a second here, but let's speculate about whether or not the American public's support for or at least tolerance of the sprawling military industrial complex, whether that would change if we were seeing in a more honest and real time and explicit way the consequences of or even just the day to day engagement of the war state.

00:25:01:13 - 00:25:37:03
David Sirota
Do you think if we were seeing on our television screens, if we were seeing regular reporting, if we were seeing all of the journalism that we don't have right now covering the American military complex, do you think that would change the politics of, let's say, the defense budget or change the politics of whether a president feels free to engage in another one of another military engagements?

00:25:36:00 - 00:26:01:03
David Sirota
I guess what I'm asking is, do you think if war wasn't invisible, the politics of war would change?

00:25:41:17 - 00:26:12:18
Norman Solomon
Really, that's a key question. And I would say there would be a mitigation sign of the dishonesty. There would be a reduction of the invisibility, so to speak. We would begin to see more, and that would have potentially some impact on the politics of the warfare state. Right now, what you're raising is exactly what Daniel Ellsberg spoke about in an interview that's in the last chapter of war I made Invisible, where he addresses that very question.

00:26:12:07 - 00:26:49:07
Norman Solomon
And he says that in its usual, ironic way, when he's making sometimes a key point that perhaps it's to the credit of Americans that they're being so lied to because they are mostly unaware of the war crimes, the crimes of war that are continually being committed with their tacit or at least passive approval, their uninformed consent of the governed.

00:26:43:00 - 00:27:35:01
Norman Solomon
And so one part of the answer is that we really don't know if we had good journalism, to what extent that would affect the passive approval of the populace towards this ongoing warfare. My hunch is it would make some difference, but it's not. Pardon the expression, a silver bullet, because as Susan Sontag has pointed out, and I quote her in the book, it depends on context.

00:27:12:09 - 00:28:10:23
Norman Solomon
And so if we were to see on our front pages and the evening news and so forth, graphic examples of with empathy portrayals of people suffering from a war that the United States is engaged in, then one answer is, hey, we would be much better off and the world would be much better off to stop this war effort.

00:27:37:13 - 00:28:10:23
Norman Solomon
Another way to look at it would be, well, this war is terrible. And so we need to persist to end it as soon as possible. And that's where the political context comes in, so to speak. Yes, there would be the picture, but what's the frame around the picture? What is the analytical and presuppositions that bring people to look at it in the first place?

00:28:00:21 - 00:28:49:20
Norman Solomon
And that's where the propaganda of silence is so important. The realities that the US has been engaged in one war after another based on deception. If people look at the suffering and they say, Well, this is a war that was necessary, unfortunate, regrettable, but this is a righteous war by the U.S. they'll come from one conclusion to one conclusion.

00:28:24:21 - 00:28:49:20
Norman Solomon
If, on the other hand, they think, well, this is completely gratuitous suffering based on lies, they might come to another conclusion.

00:28:34:14 - 00:29:04:02
David Sirota
So the final question I have is, is one just about the book generally, without giving too much away about all the details in the book. What's the one thing you think our audience needs to know about the way in which the U.S. conducts war, something that we may not know about, something that may It is kind of an open secret.

00:28:58:14 - 00:29:16:21
David Sirota
Is there one or two things that that that we just we don't really fully appreciate and understand about the U.S. military adventure.

00:29:10:05 - 00:30:02:14
Norman Solomon
Hidden in plain sight is the reality that our society is now so dehumanized by the ongoing U.S. warfare that we have tacit way but emphatically separated the world into people who matter and people who don't, and that the US political economy and the Pentagon and all that goes with it in terms of political and media domination, all of that has put us in a spiritually, morally, ethically, deeply compromised position.

00:29:46:18 - 00:30:32:10
Norman Solomon
We've been corrupted psychologically. We are arrogant by our accept hints of the silence, by our passivity in the sense that the human existence of so many people on the planet is simply shrouded in invisibility and a kind of discounting of their basic humanity. So I would sort of sum it up this way. After 911 and George W Bush talked about the evil doers and how the United States must go to war and smite them and get rid of all the terrorism in the world, they're gradually with some sort of backlash.

00:30:32:12 - 00:31:07:10
Norman Solomon
It was called Manichean. It was called ridiculous by some because it divided the world into two categories, the good and the bad. I would say in 2023, in a more liberal way, the status quo of the United States in terms of the domination by the mass media and political so-called leaders of the country, all of that is functioning to divide the world in terms of warfare into two categories people who matter and people who don't.

00:31:08:09 - 00:31:45:18
Norman Solomon
When Ukraine is invaded. Then the Ukrainian people who suffer as a result are human beings with whom we empathize and whose suffering we learn about and we connect with and we really care about. And the Ukrainian flags are all over the place. When President Biden does a fist bump with the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, which is responsible for killing upwards of 200,000 people in an ongoing war on Yemen with the biggest cholera epidemic in the world as a result.

00:31:47:07 - 00:32:01:01
Norman Solomon
I'm not seeing the Yemeni flags anywhere in the United States. This is a moral and ethical degrading situation for our own humanity.

00:32:01:13 - 00:32:14:02
David Sirota
The book is called War Made Invisible How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. The author is Norman Solomon. Norman, thank you so much for writing this book. Thanks for taking time with us and thanks for all of your work.

00:32:14:08 - 00:32:35:07
Norman Solomon
Thank you, David. And this is an opportunity for me to say the letter is just such a terrific source everyday for people, and I would urge that support in whatever way people can provide, go ahead and and support because we need the lever very much for many of the reasons that we've discussed.

00:32:35:12 - 00:32:37:13
David Sirota
Thanks so much. Thanks for saying that. Really appreciate it.

00:32:37:13 - 00:32:38:01
Norman Solomon
You bet.

00:32:38:13 - 00:32:59:20
David Sirota
I will. That's it for today's show. Thanks a ton for being a paid subscriber to the letter. We really could not do this work without you. If you like this episode, please pitch in to our tip jar. You can find that link in the episodes description or at lever News.com slash tip jar. Every little bit helps us do the independent journalism that we do.

00:33:00:01 - 00:33:21:11
David Sirota
Oh, one more thing. Be sure to, like, subscribe and write a review for lever time on your favorite podcast app. Until next time. I'm David Sirota. Rock the Vote. The Leisure Time podcast is a production of The Lover and the Lover Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, David Sirota. Our producer is Frank Cappello, with help from the Levers lead producer Jared Kang, Mayor.