Exploiting public confusion for partisan gain

October 17, 2007

The NYT’s Janet Elder notes today that much of the public is still, even now, confused about questions such as Iraq’s involvement in 9/11. Elder suggests this creates an environment in which war supporters try to exploit this confusion to advance their agenda.

One of the most striking poll findings is the number of people who continue to think Saddam Hussein was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Depending on how it is asked, more than a third of Americans say Saddam Hussein was personally involved in those attacks. In a New York Times/CBS News Poll in September, 33 percent of the respondents said Saddam Hussein was “personally” involved. In June, when Princeton Survey Research, polling for Newsweek, asked if “Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly involved in planning, financing or carrying out the terrorist attacks,” 41 percent said yes. […]

The respondents in the Times/CBS News poll last month who said Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11 were more likely to say getting involved in Iraq was the right thing to do — 59 percent compared with 31 percent. These respondents were also more likely to see Iran as an immediate threat that cannot be contained.

Adler seems to believe this confusion stems from the public conflating unconnected groups and events into one. “[F]or some voters, terrorists, terrorism, the war in Iraq, 9/11, Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda are all part of the same multi-headed hydra.”

I think that’s largely right. I don’t doubt there’s a depressingly large number of people who see the Middle East as one big enemy. There are generic Islamic bad guys, they assume, and we need to “stand up to them.” The notion of nuance and recognizing differences between nations, groups, leaders, and sects is missing entirely. It makes these people susceptible to arguments for staying the course in Iraq, and launching an attack against Iran. After all, these people think, they’re all the same enemy.

But I’d take Adler’s point one step further and actually start naming names.

Yes, it’s frustrating that people, especially conservatives, are still confused about basics such as Saddam and 9/11, but it’s worth remembering that they’re confused in part because several Republican leaders go out of their way to make sure they stay confused.

Rudy Giuliani, for example, has said he makes no distinction between Sunni and Shia. At a debate in June, he connected Iran to the Fort Dix plot for no apparent reason. Around the same time, he gave up appreciating the nuances of Middle East politics altogether, concluding that the region is filled with those who “have a similar objective, in their anger at the modern world.” In other words, Giuliani said, they all hate America.

Mitt Romney is nearly as bad. In May, he tried to explain how he perceives threats to the U.S. from the Middle East: “This is about Shi’a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate. They also probably want to bring down the United States of America.” None of this makes a lick of sense.

At another debate, Wolf Blitzer asked Mike Huckabee whether he has confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Huckabee responded with a semi-coherent argument about the Taliban in Afghanistan. What did this have to do with Maliki? Nothing, but as far as Huckabee was concerned, they’re all the same thing.

And then we have the ideologues in “Freedom’s Watch,” which recently aired TV ads arguing that the U.S. has to stay in Iraq because “they attacked us.”

Conservatives who don’t know better hear these leaders, and watch these ads, and start to think that the Muslim world really is exactly the same — one dangerous entity that we need to confront.

Ideally, it’d be helpful if these same folks turned off Fox News and picked up a book. Either way, when describing the problem, let’s not forget that they’ve been lied to for a long time, which is bound to lead to some confusion.

Exploiting confusion for partisan gain is just the followup to creating confusion for partisan gain. Without this 2-step tactic, conservatives would be nowhere. (Also see “teaching the controversy”).

  • To quote Beep52 above “eploiting confusion fro partisan gain is just the follow up to creating confusion for partisan gain” Spot on. Let’s give credit to the great exploitator and confuserator and partisianator, GeorgeW and Karl Rove. I think only Cheney ever said Saddam and 9/11 were inextricably tied. But Dubs sure did a ton of conflating the two thru like 2006. So I think the entire creating/exploiting confusion for partisan gain is a feature, not a bug. Bomb Iran! And Hezbollah! And Syria! And let’s make the entire middle east a parking lot with gas stations!

    Oy. The media must be held to blame for much of this.

  • Most Americans are poorly educated and poorly informed about a great many things. Many are predisposed to conflating all the peoples of the middle east because of simple racism. Many Americans cannot locate Iraq on a map. It’s sad.

  • What’s sad is that 1/3 of us still probably couldn’t identify Iran on a map, and they don’t CARE that they can’t. We are saddled with a huge horde of idiots who know they don’t know JACK about the issues, and yet they feel perfectly comfortable to offer opinions as to what we should do over there. They mirror Bush, even when they disagree with him.

    To these people, Ignorance Is Strength.

    What I would like to see sometime on TV would be a dissection of the correlation between false beliefs and support for Bush and the war in Iraq. Then throw in a bunch of video clips of false statements by the neocons, with a smackdown for each one.

    One final point… The Lobby has been pushing these bogus stories hard to both sides of the aisle. They’ve helped convinced a majority of Americans that the government of Iran is supporting the terrorists in Iraq (Democrats included) and now they’re pushing for us to attack Iran “in self defense”.

    Those people scare me more than Rudy the moron.

  • I sincerely think our good ol’prez is so confused on the “modern world” he is leading the confusion among the less discerning among us. Whether the obfuscations are deliberate or just a part of the nagging incompetence of this administration and its apologist allies is yet another story. In the meantime, the world stage is becoming rearranged as we watch these blind folks try and get around the new effects their failed policies have wrought without bumping into something sharp before they have a chance to sit down and play tiddly winks with our future. -Kevo

  • And CB, you left out perhaps the most frequent and cynical offender of all, Dick Cheney, who has repeatedly in dog whistle terms and dog whistle venues kept the “Saddam-9/11 Connection” notion alive even as Bush and other cabinet members go before MSM and admit there is no such thing.

    Yeah, the Repub candidates – mostly from ignorance – blur the lines. But Faux News and Dick “Vader” Cheney have both engaged in a longstanding, intentional and consistent scheme over time to sow erroneous “facts” to susceptible believers.

  • For purposes of national security, what is the difference between Shiite and Sunni that we wish Giuliani to distinguish?

    They have a long-standing blood feud based on who should have been the leader of Islam 1300 years ago, but how does that affect anything non-Muslims care about?

    A small portion of BOTH sects believe in violent jihad. I’ve heard nothing to say that either side is more responsible for terrorism. (You know, the old definition of the word; where unarmed civilians get killed in order to pressure governments to alter their policies.)

    I may be in need of more information, but, so far as I know, Shiite and Sunni can be seen as interchangeable in many contexts just as many protestant sects can be lumped together for purposes of political discussions. In most cases, a Muslim need not care about the differences between a Pentacostal and a Methodist though members of those two sects might laugh if you said their faiths were similar.

  • It begs the question: what gave us the official explanation for the events of 9/11?

    Let’s see. There was the Bush Administration –they’ve proven to be highly credible. Then, of course, there was the Corporate Military Industrial Media’s coverage. Lastly, these was the Federal Government’s official exposition into the events of 9/11: The 9/11 Commission.

    Mike Vick was paid more in 2005 ($23 million) than was allocated for the 9/11 Commission ($15 million) –and it’s a mystery why some people believe that Saddam was in on 9/11? We spent more investigating Bill Clinton’s sexual liaisons ($40 million). I’ll bet there’s only a small minority in this country that could not recall the name Monica Lewinsky.

  • So, America is full of a bunch of ignorant morons. Tell me something I don’t know. Welcome to the third world people. It won’t be long until the US looks like Mexico; an elite ruling class living in mansions within gated communties, and the rest of population? Dirt poor and ignorant as hell.

    It’s called the erosion of the middle class, and it ain’t happening by accident…

  • The Nazis needed a hate group to appease the masses and gain power. Someone to blame and a reason to take freedom losing precautions. Bush has done the same and in spite of the fact we now know they were lying about Sadam and 9/11 and that they knew they were lying when they made such accusations our leaders continue to ignore this crime and don’t make it public knowledge by impeaching this group.
    My relative works 80 hrs/wk running his own business and we never get around to talking politics but when he mentioned that he liked Bush for going after Sadam for attacking the WTC and killing all those people I was shocked. I realized he actually had no idea that the two were not connected. He really just did not know.

    When I told him and showed him the video of Bush saying that Sadam had nothing to do with 9/11 he was stunned. “Well, why did everybody keep saying that he did it?” I explained (without being condescending) that it was a right wing talking point to justify attacking Iraq and these people want to keep that lie going so people would support their war.

    My relative doesn’t have time for TV or to keep up on politics and couldn’t really tell me where he got that idea from, just that he thought that was what everyone thought. It changed his thinking on Iraq completely…just knowing that one thing…that Sadam had nothing to do with 9/11.

  • “Ideally, it’d be helpful if these same folks turned off Fox News and picked up a book.”

    Yikes, a conservative’s book collection, now there’s a scary thought.

    “Let’s see, I have Rush’s ‘See, I Told You So’, Sean Hannity’s ‘Deliver Us From Evil’, Ann Couter’s ‘Treason’, or the Old Testament. What to choose, what to choose…..”

  • Republican reactions to what must feel like embarrassing setbacks are getting interesting. They’re finally accepting that they have been defeated politically. Bush continues to flex and crow, but it has a false ring. What the right haven’t yet accepted is that they’ve also been disgraced in the eyes of everyone but the basest of their base. Mukasey’s statements about Bybee may push along the process of understanding the extent of the disgrace and the damage to their party.

  • williamjacobs (#7), i strongly disagree with that on both points. it certainly should interest a Muslim whether an American is a Methodist or a Pentacostal, because the odds are overwhelming that they have very different positions on war and peace, religious tolerance, and whether Muslims per se are people we should seek to understand or work with. since many of the core Christianist movement come from Pentacostal churches, and many Methodist churches belong to Interfaith Alliance and related groups, my guess is that 2/3rd of the Pentacostals remain allied with Bush and 2/3rd of the Methodists do not. That would make knowledge as between those two denominations fairly relevant to a Muslim.

    On the other side, while Shia are engaged in terrorism and are fighting the US in Iraq, to my knowledge they have never asserted violent jihad against US interests out of their home region. Sunni, on the other hand, have. And knowing the distinction also helps us with regard to tactical considerations — for example, had BushCo appreciated that ancient dispute, the civil war we are now in the midst of might have been foreseen. So non-Muslims certainly should care and would benefit from seeingthem as two distinct groups. Absent that understanding we will have a hard time strategizing about the interaction of Iran, Iraq, the various sections or Iraq, and all of their various neighbors in any way that has any promise of success.

  • Yikes, a conservative’s book collection, now there’s a scary thought.

    I know what you mean. I checked out the bookshelf last time I visited my wingnut fundie parents and it was so bizarre I didn’t know whether to laugh or shudder. Books on how the ACLU is seeking to undermine our country, a few on “the gay agenda”, the Left Behind series (of course), O’Reilly’s BS, etc. Just getting people to read books sometimes only exacerbates the problem. What I’d like to see anybody of any political persuasion read would be books that explain logic, argument, and propaganda so that they could recognize bogus material when they hear or read it. That, of course, should be job one at school, but there’s nothing like it there. A major failing of our educational system, to be sure.

    A civics class or two wouldn’t hurt, either.

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