According the article “War and Peace in the Information Age” (124) of Elizabeth Hanson, the framing of the war was the key to the success “on the domestic front in shaping public perceptions and in maintaining the dominant interpretation of the event in the media during the course of major combat operations….The effective communication strategy began with the framing of the response to the September 11 attacks as the ‘war on terror’, and the representation of the overthrow of the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of that war”.
Later Hanson says that this frame also met three conditions that enable political leaders to keep control over the framing of the event. First, the conflict was characterized as a threat to basic cultural values; Second, the lack of debate among the political elite that could have provided a base for a dissenting coverage; and, Third, the nature of the situation itself clearly called for a response.
I guess could be very interesting to know how was done the decision making process in the Bush Administration to link the overthrow of the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of that “war on terror”. The decision making process probably was the result of a misperception created for ignorance about the muslin world; or perhaps an unmentionably interest; or maybe a mental schema related with the ideology of the people that took part in the decision; even domestic policy could be an alternative explanation. That is a very interesting task for the academics and practioners of diplomacy.
However, is probably just a little more than a mistake if not a calculated and an induced one, in order to misinform and induce to the public opinion to believe so because as Hanson says on his article (126), “Although President Bush himself never explicitly made the connection, mentioning “Saddam Hussein” and “September 11” frequently enough in the same paragraph or sentence helped to make the link.” Agustin Fornell
No comments:
Post a Comment