Selling the War Invoked a Buying Frenzy But Was the Product Shoddy?

This short documentary was made two years ago, and offers a good introduction to my post on the enormous public relations campaign used to sell Canadians on the War in Afghanistan.

Rick Hillier certainly changed the way we saw our military and our new combat role. When he first showed up on Paul Martin's doorstep with maps and a plan, he was a man ... literally ... on a mission.

According to Billy Schiller in the Toronto Star, Hillier used this March 21, 2005 meeting with then prime minister Martin and his 12-person inner circle, to convince his government to send "a battle group of at least 1,000 soldiers" to the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. He saw it as a way to improve Canada's armed forces and their reputation worldwide.

We were no longer peacekeepers. We were fighters, or as Hillier put it 'killers.'

And he made no secret of how he felt about the people he was determined to kill. They were "detestable murderers" and "scumbags." When Jack Layton called his remarks "disconcerting", he was accused of trying to "bestow the most ennobled status on the Taliban---that of victim."

You were with him or against him. Now where have we heard that before?

It's no accident that the Support the Troops campaign was such a success though. Those three words had a proven track record, and that's because of another three words: Hill and Knowlton.

I remember when Stephen Harper introduced his first cabinet, feeling some alarm at who he named as his minister of defense. Gordon O'Connor was a career military man, but he was also a lobbyist. And not just any lobbyist, but a lobbyist for military contracts with the ad agency Hill & Knowlton.

I wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper at the time, questioning this appointment. Hill & Knowlton did not have the best reputation of it's handling of wars. Although I suppose, the word 'best' would depend on who you asked. If you were the CEO of a company that wanted military contracts, they absolutely were. And in terms of falsely legitimizing war, they were also the best.

But promoting peace, good governance or the rule of law? Nope. There is one reason and one reason only to go to war . Money. And if you need a firm who could increase your fortunes through war; H & K was that firm.

How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf

Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. Its activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion. By law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the Justice Department chose not to enforce it. Nine days after Saddam's army marched into Kuwait, the Emir's government agreed to fund a contract under which Hill & Knowlton would represent "Citizens for a Free Kuwait," a classic PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its collusion with the Bush administration. Over the next six months, the Kuwaiti government channeled $11.9 million dollars to Citizens for a Free Kuwait, whose only other funding totalled $17,861 from 78 individuals. Virtually all of CFK's budget - $10.8 million - went to Hill & Knowlton in the form of fees.

The man running Hill & Knowlton's Washington office was Craig Fuller, one of Bush's closest friends and inside political advisors. The news media never bothered to examine Fuller's role until after the war had ended, but if America's editors had read the PR trade press, they might have noticed this announcement, published in O'Dwyer's PR Services before the fighting began: "Craig L. Fuller, chief of staff to Bush when he was vice-president, has been on the Kuwaiti account at Hill & Knowlton since the first day.

... "Hill & Knowlton . . . has assumed a role in world affairs unprecedented for a PR firm. H&K has employed a stunning variety of opinion-forming devices and techniques to help keep US opinion on the side of the Kuwaitis. . . . The techniques range from full-scale press conferences showing torture and other abuses by the Iraqis to the distribution of tens of thousands of 'Free Kuwait' T-shirts and bumper stickers at college campuses across the US."

Documents filed with the US Department of Justice showed that 119 H&K executives in 12 offices across the US were overseeing the Kuwait account. "The firm's activities, as listed in its report to the Justice Department, included arranging media interviews for visiting Kuwaitis, setting up observances such as National Free Kuwait Day, National Prayer Day (for Kuwait), and National Student Information Day, organizing public rallies, releasing hostage letters to the media, distributing news releases and information kits, contacting politicians at all levels, and producing a nightly radio show in Arabic from Saudi Arabia,"

Oh and that yellow ribbon campaign?

How Bush Sr. Sold The Bombing Of Iraq

Hill & Knowlton's yellow ribbon campaign to whip up support for "our" troops, which followed their orchestration of Nayirah's phony "incubator" testimony, was a public relations masterpiece. The claim that satellite photos revealed that Iraq had troops poised to strike Saudi Arabia was also fabricated by the PR firm. Hill & Knowlton was paid between $12 million (as reported two years later on "60 Minutes") and $20 million (as reported on "20/20") for "services rendered." The group fronting the money? Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a phony "human rights agency" set up and funded entirely by Kuwait's emirocracy to promote its interests in the U.S.

So while the narrator of the video above may have fancied that General Rick Hiller was a public relations guru; it was not without the help of a highly successful yellow ribbon campaign that made a lot of money for a lot of people.

This doesn't mean that I don't support our troops, but remember when Hillier was going around waving the flag, attracting his throngs? He was not acting honourably in Afghanistan. If the reports from the Wall Street Journal are true, he may already be named in an international investigation into war crimes.

Will that be his legacy? Will it be ours? If our prime minister and some members of his cabinet don't smarten up and allow an investigation into the Afghan Detainee issue, it very well could be.

Because that's how they support the troops, by hiding behind them.

Harper Must Come Clean. Jody Deserves Better.

Despite the fact that the majority of Canadians question our role in Afghanistan, they do support our troops. They have been given a difficult job to do, but are doing that job with honour and dignity.

However, this government continues to try to hide behind our soldiers, suggesting that the opposition, and in particular Michael Ignatieff; are attacking our men and women in uniform.

In fact the opposite is true.

Our soldiers like the fact that those back home are thinking of them, but don't like the politics. They are smart enough to know that not everyone agrees with the war, but continue to do us proud. They know about the Geneva convention and became very concerned with what was happening to the people they captured. They worried so much that they started taking photos.

Unfortunately, not everyone worried about what this might do to moral, or the safety of our military engaged in Afghanistan. They chose to play games and are still playing games.

This is simply not good enough. Jody in the video deserves better. Our fallen soldiers deserve better. We need a full public inquiry that will exonerate them, and lay the blame at the feet of those who made the decisions; which were often contradictory to those decisions made by those on the ground; who put humanity and honour above all else.

The government should have hugged Colvin, not demonized him
Jeffrey Simpson
Dec. 12, 2009

Patriotism being the last refuge of scoundrels, it's hardly surprising that the Harper government's last line of defence in the Afghan detainee affair has been the military and the flag.

All those who question what happened to Afghan prisoners, runs the government's line, are casting aspersions on the military, the diplomatic corps and Canada. The line is bunk.

We now know, courtesy of an admission from the Chief of the Defence Staff, that Canadian soldiers did their job right. They found a prisoner who'd been tortured, did what they could for him, and reported what they'd discovered.

Worse from the government's perspective: The soldiers' report, cited by General Walter Natynczyk, strongly suggests it was common knowledge among Canadian soldiers in Kandahar in 2006 that prisoners were being abused. Into the dustbin, therefore, went repeated assertions from Defence Minister Peter MacKay that there had never been “credible” evidence of detainee abuse, and not a “single” instance of torture.

The government had plenty of evidence of problems in 2006, and not just from their own soldiers and civil servant Richard Colvin, who papered Ottawa with reports and warnings about what was happening. The Americans were so concerned that they built their own prison. Human-rights groups inside and outside Afghanistan were waving red flags. This is Afghanistan, after all, a post-medieval society where behaviour we would consider unacceptable is often the rule rather than the exception, and not just in the treatment of prisoners.

It was not until May of 2007 – after The Globe and Mail ran stories about abuse, and evidence came to light from other sources – that the government updated and improved its arrangements for prisoners with Afghan authorities.

Therefore, it's “ludicrous” – to use a choice expression of derision by Rick Hillier, the former chief of the defence staff, against Mr. Colvin – that neither he nor other senior military officers, to say nothing of the government, knew anything about what was happening in the prisons.

There were warning lights flashing inside the government and from outside the government.

Mr. MacKay and other ministers insist the government had no “absolute proof” of abuse, whereas we now know such proof was provided. And, in any event, there was so much credible evidence of problems, or at least very strong likelihood of problems, that only the willfully blind or completely distracted would have ignored it or displayed such a lack of interest.

Likewise, it's wrong for Mr. MacKay to say he hadn't assaulted Mr. Colvin's character, since that's precisely what he, the Conservative Frat Pack of attack dogs and the military's journalist supporters have been doing since Mr. Colvin's affidavit and subsequent parliamentary testimony.

Such have been the attacks that 71 former ambassadors – the number is growing every day – have signed a letter reproaching the government for its campaign of vilification of Mr. Colvin.

Usually a retiring bunch (literally), former envoys trained to take orders and stay neutral seldom band together in such numbers to deplore a government's policies.

What we are witnessing is a window into this government's preferred method of behaviour, its method of responding to criticism and, strangely for a government preoccupied with spin and image control, of bad public relations.

The government's ferociously partisan instinct is to crush dissent, and to punish the dissenters.

Hence the treatment meted out to Mr. Colvin. Hence the stonewalling and attack dog methods in the Commons. Hence the last line of defence: patriotism.

The narrative from a more nuanced government could have been: We heard Mr. Colvin's warnings and those from other sources. He was a fine public servant, but he had only one angle on the challenges we faced. We listened to his information and sought to corroborate it because, after all, we were working in another country for which we had to show certain respect. When we gathered more information, we acted to upgrade our agreement with Afghan authorities. Rather than demonizing Mr. Colvin, the government should have hugged him.

Instead, his allegations are described as “ludicrous,” his character is assaulted, and those who raise questions about whether Canada was fulfilling its Geneva convention obligations in handling prisoners are accused of undermining troops' morale, criticizing the secularly sacred military and lacking in patriotism.