***** KELLNER ************** EJC/REC Vol. 2, No. 1, 1991 ***


THE "CRISIS IN THE GULF" AND THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA


Douglas Kellner
University of Texas


        Abstract.  In this paper, I carry out a
     systematic analysis of the mainstream media
     presentation of the "Crisis in the Gulf" and argue
     that the dominant media frames and discourse
     privileged the military solution option and the
     policies of the Bush Administration.  In
     retrospect, the lack of critical discussion in the
     media over the administration's positions and
     policies enabled Bush to prepare for his eventual
     war and triumph during the air and ground war
     against Iraq.  The failure to critically debate
     Bush's policies reveals again the failure of the
     mainstream media to adequately debate issues of
     public importance and testifies to an intensifying
     crisis of democracy in which the mainstream media
     fail to live up to their democratic
     responsibilities.  Employing methods of frame
     analysis and ideology critique, I analyze the
     dominant frames and discourses employed by the
     mainstream media, especially television, in
     presenting the crisis in the Gulf.  I also discuss
     the pool system and the military attempt to
     (successfully) manage the images and discourse
     during the pre-war crisis period.


     In response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in early
August 1990, the political and media establishment in the
United States immediately began promoting a military
solution to the crisis.  When the Bush administration
announced that it sent a massive troop deployment to the
region on August 7, the mainstream media applauded these
actions and became a vital conduit for mobilizing support
for U.S. policy.  For weeks, hardly any dissenting voices
were heard in the mainstream media, while TV reports,
commentary, and discussion strongly privileged a military
solution to the crisis, serving as a propaganda vehicle for
the U.S. military and national security apparatus which was
facing severe budget cutbacks and loss of public prestige on
the very eve of the invasion.  In essence, no significant
debate took place over the validity and dangerous
consequences of the initial U.S. military response to the
Iraqi invasion and during the first weeks of the crisis,
critics of U.S. policy were largely absent from the
television media coverage.

     Although the mainstream media usually support U.S.
military interventions and actions, the coverage for months
was excessively narrow and uncritical.  Television favorably
portrayed all U.S. policy actions, presented the U.S.
military intervention in an extremely positive light, and
privileged those voices seeking a military solution to the
conflict.  As the U.S. military juggernaut rolled toward
Saudi Arabia, media commentators spoke of the inevitability
of war and the necessity for a military solution.  For
example, on ABC's Nightline on August 20, correspondent
Forest Sawyer indicated that he believed that the U.S. was
moving toward a military resolution of the crisis; on ABC on
August 21, it was reported, after citing a 75% approval
rating for Bush, that "Americans appear to be rallying
around the President and to support military action"; later
in the same broadcast they cited French President Mitterand
claiming that "Saddam Hussein has led the world to a war
mentality from which it will be hard to get out."  On August
23, NBC Pentagon correspondent Fred Francis reported that
the Pentagon had promised the Saudis that they wouldn't
leave Saudi Arabia and allow Saddam Hussein to remain in
place and that unless he were to pull out of Kuwait
immediately, there would be war in three to six weeks.

     The diplomatic initiatives the Iraqis began floating on
August 12 were shot down one by one by the Bush
Administration, which was inexorably orchestrating the march
to war (see Kellner, forthcoming).  The media rarely
criticized or even noted the Bush Administration's failure
to negotiate, or even to consider, a diplomatic settlement
to the crisis in the Gulf and served to cover over the
relentless progress toward a military solution.  Indeed, the
mainstream media consistently privileged whatever strategy
and (shifting) rationales the Bush Administration was
deploying, and were little more than public relations
outlets for the White House and the Pentagon.

     In this article, I shall analyze some of the ways that
the mainstream media served as a mouthpiece and amplifier
for U.S. foreign policy in the crisis in the Gulf.  I will
argue that the range of policy discussion in the mainstream
media during the pre-war crisis period was woefully
restricted and that the media thus failed to serve their
public interest requirements of providing a diverse range of
opinion on issues of public importance.  In particular, they
failed to inform the public concerning what was at stake in
the Gulf crisis, what the consequences of war would be, and
who would primarily benefit from a Gulf War.  In retrospect,
I would argue that the uncritical coverage of Bush
Administration and Pentagon policy worked to make war
practically inevitable and helped to promote and legitimate
the eventual military attempt at solving the crisis.

     In my book, Television and the Crisis of Democracy
(Kellner, 1990), I argued that there is a crisis of
democracy in the United States because the media are not
serving their functions of promoting vigorous debate of
issues of public concern and that with the concentration of
ownership an ever smaller range of voices are appearing on
the dominant networks.  My presupposition is that a
democratic social order requires a separation of power in
which the media play a vigorous, critical watchdog function
against dominant institutions and inform their citizenry
concerning matters of public importance so that the public
can participate intelligently in public affairs.  The
limited, partisan, and propagandistic coverage of the crisis
in the Gulf suggests that the crisis of democracy is
intensifying in the United States due to excessive corporate
control of the media and a well-documented bias toward
conservative and pro-corporate groups and policies.[1] My
strategy in this paper will be to analyze the ways that
television framed the crisis, set the terms of debate, and
covered the daily unfolding of the crisis, as well as to
discuss the media's failure to criticize the war policy of
the Bush Administration and the Pentagon.

The Media Beat the War Drums

     The media mobilize public opinion according to certain
frames through which they present events and individuals.
The frames used to present possible U.S. military
intervention or war involve producing an image of the enemy.
As Sam Keen put it: "In the beginning we create the enemy.
Before the weapon comes the image.  We think others to death
and then invent the battle-axe or the ballistic missiles
with which to actually kill them.  Propaganda precedes
technology" (1986, p. 10).

     From the outset of the crisis in the Gulf, the media
utilized the frames of popular culture which portray
conflict as a simple battle between good and evil.  Saddam
Hussein quickly became the villain in this scenario with the
media vilifying the Iraqi leader as a madman, a Hitler, and
worse, while whipping up anti-Arab and anti-Iraqi war fever.
He was characteristically described as a "dictator," a
"military strongman," and a "madman" who was a menace to
world peace and the American way of life.  Mary McGrory
described him as a "beast" (Washington Post, Aug. 7, 1990)
and a "monster" that "Bush may have to destroy" (Newsweek
Oct. 20, 1990 and Sept. 3, 1990).  The New Republic doctored
a Time Magazine cover story on Saddam to make him appear
more like Hitler by shortening his mustache.  Cartoonists
had a field day presenting images of the demon Saddam
Hussein, and television resorted to cartoon techniques
itself as when an NBC "war game" simulation on Aug. 8, 1990
had a U.S. colonel pretending to be Hussein stating that
"I'll hang a hostage every day!"  The media eagerly reported
all of Hussein's alleged and actual crimes (suddenly
focusing on actions and events which had gone unreported
when Saddam was a U.S. ally, such as his alleged use of
chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels in his own country).
There was even speculation on Iraq's plans for future
terrorism when no current atrocities were on hand (see
Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 21, 1990) and countless TV
segments on Iraqi terrorism, which along with chemical
weapons were oft-repeated threats that never materialized.

     Saddam's negative image was forged by a combination of
rhetoric, popular culture demonology, and Manichean
metaphysics which presented the crisis as a struggle between
good and evil.  The "naked aggression" of the Iraqi leader
was continually denounced by the Bush Administration and the
media.  From the beginning, Bush and the mainstream media
demonized Hussein and personalized and simplified the
conflict as that between the "good" allies and "evil"
Iraqis.[2] In Michael Rogin's conceptualization, the U.S.
regularly constructs political enemies "by the inflation,
stigmatization, and demonization of political foes" (1987,
p. xiii).  The effect of the demonization of Saddam Hussein
was to promote a climate in which the necessity to take
decisive military action to eliminate him was privileged.
Countless reports of his brutality were endlessly repeated,
and there was report after report on Iraqi chemical weapons,
its potential nuclear capacity and its ability to mobilize
terrorist attacks on the U.S. and its allies.  TV broadcast
reports about radio stations playing records that simulated
rock classics with new lyrics vilifying Saddam.  Tee-shirts
appeared with vicious images of Saddam Hussein and the
Iraqis.  It is as if American popular and political culture
needs evil demons to assure its sense of its own goodness
and the media responded with the demonology of the Iraqi
dictator.

     Generally speaking, the United States is perpetually
"in search of enemies," to use John Stockwell's phrase,[3]
and constructs enemies with propaganda campaigns that paint
some leaders, or countries, as absolute villains, while
painting other leaders, who may be just as bad, or worse, as
"allies."  Saddam Hussein was constantly demonized as the
absolutely evil Foreign Other by the Bush Administration and
media from the beginning of the crisis in the Gulf, while
allies like Syria's Assad, who many believe to be as
oppressive as Hussein, were related to positively by the
Bush Administration.  In this way, the frames of popular
culture entertainment, which are structured by a Manichean
opposition between good and evil, are deployed in the
symbolic construction of Saddam Hussein as the absolute
villain, the evil demon who is so threatening and violent
that he must be destroyed and eradicated.  One cannot
sensibly talk with such a villain, or seek common ground or
a diplomatic solution; instead, one must totally eliminate
such evil to restore stability or order in the universe;
such is the fable of Hollywood movies and popular television
entertainment and such are the politics and dominant media
frames of the U.S. intervention into the complex politics of
the Middle East.

     The crisis in the Gulf was thus portrayed by the
mainstream media as a simple conflict between good and evil.
While Hussein was presented in purely negative terms, Bush's
actions, by contrast, were praised as "decisive,"
"brilliant," and "masterly."  U.S. motives were described as
good and pure, as when the New York Times pontificated that
U.S. politicians "appeal to high moral values and the
lessons of history;" "deep down the United States
understands that many of its partners are in the coalition
only because of a coincidence of interests, not because they
share a common sense of moral purpose" (September 23, 1990).
Few questions were raised concerning more base U.S. motives
like the desire to control the flow of oil and petro
dollars, the U.S. desire to establish a permanent military
presence in the area, to discipline Third World countries
that refuse to submit to U.S. hegemony, or the domestic
political motivations of Bush and the military.  Instead,
the U.S. is presented as the good protector of small
countries against vicious bullies, while the allies are
presented as weak and lacking in resolve (see the
demythologizing of U.S.  "principles" in Chomsky, 1990).

     While the Iraqis were being portrayed as vicious
brutes, Bush and the U.S. were presented as manly and virile
protectors of international law and order.  Newsweek
proclaimed that "the president's grand plan for the
post-cold-war world can be summed up simply: Stop
International Bullies" (September 3, 1990).  Many newspapers
and TV commentators praised the U.S. as the only superpower
able to stand up against aggression and to enforce
international law.  Such fulsome praise overlooks the fact
that Bush and the U.S. had recently violated international
law during the Panama invasion; moreover, U.S. allies in the
multinational coalition included Syria which seized parts of
Lebanon in the 1980s; Turkey which invaded Cyprus, seizing
half of the island; Morocco which invaded Somalia; and, on
the sidelines, Israel which held Arab lands seized in
several wars.  Double standards, however, are necessary to
produce the requisite simplification that frames the
conflict as a struggle between good and evil.

     The Bush administration and the media also played on
sexual and racial fears in constructing their image of
Saddam Hussein.  The rhetoric of Iraqi "rape" and
"penetration" was deployed from the beginning of the crisis
throughout the war.[4] The media demonized Saddam's Big Gun
and chemical weapons, as well as his missiles that could hit
Cairo and Tel Aviv.  His very name was mispronounced as
Sad-dam, evoking sadism and damnation, and Sod- dom, evoking
sodomy.  Deploying both racist and sexual rhetoric, Bush
claimed that the U.S. went to war against the "dark chaos"
of a "brutal dictator" who, following the "law of the
jungle," "systematically raped" a "peaceful neighbor"
(quoted in Joel Bleifuss, "The First Stone," In These Times,
March 20-26, 1991, p. 4).  Bleifuss also cites
Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz who rhetorically
asked if you would "let a man like that get his hands on
what are essentially the world's vital organs?"

     Throughout American history, vengeance for rape --
especially the rape of white women by people of color -- has
been used to legitimate U.S. political and military action.
Captivity drama narratives of white women captured and raped
by Native Americans were a standard genre of colonial
literature and during the Spanish-American war; the Hearst
newspapers popularized the story of Spanish kidnaping of an
upper-class and light-skinned Cuban woman as a pretext for
U.S. intervention.  John Gottlieb reminds us in The
Progressive that: "Bush not only used rape as a
justification for the war against Iraq, but also ... cited
the sexual assault of an American officer's wife by a
Panamanian soldier as a reason for invading that country,
and ... used the rape of a white woman by black convict
Willie Horton to attack Michael Dukakis in 1988" (April
1991, p. 39).

     The dominant frames of both the Bush administration and
the corporate media thus characterized the Iraqi
intervention into Kuwait as rape and "naked aggression"
(i.e. sexual crimes), whereas the U.S. military intervention
into Saudi Arabia is described as a totally justified
attempt to to protect U.S. interests and the "American way
of life."  Hussein is thus presented as a rapist whose big
stick (i.e., his guns, bombs, and chemical weapons) threaten
the virtue and integrity of the area, while Bush is
presented as a benevolent upholder of national sovereignty
and justice.

     The demonization of Hussein and the Iraqis was partly
carried out by their alleged possession of exotic weapons
(few of which actually materialized).  There was perhaps as
much coverage of Iraqi chemical weapons as any single topic
during the crisis and then the war.  On August 8, it was
reported by the television networks that the Iraqis were
loading chemical weapons onto planes en route to Kuwait and
that there would thus be Iraqi chemical weapons in the
field.  Henceforth, there was segment after segment on Iraqi
chemical weapons, the need for protective gear and
antidotes, and the absolutely evil nature of the weapons.
As it turned out, the Iraqis never used these weapons, in
part because they did not have adequate protection against
them and in part because they feared U.S. retaliation from
even worse weapons.  But the constant figure of the
atrocities intensified the demonization of the Iraqis and
fit perfectly into a scenario which prepared the public for
war.

     When the Iraqis began holding foreign nationals in Iraq
and Kuwait as hostages in the middle of August, this story
became the major focus of the crisis for some months.
Almost every night television broadcast ritualistic reports
depicting the plight of the hostages, negotiations for their
release, the suffering of hostages' relatives, and the happy
homecoming of those released.  In this way, too, the
mainstream media presented morality tales which depict the
Iraqis as evil hostage takers and the Americans and other
foreign hostages as innocent victims.  This scenario also
replays the primal captivity drama, one of the mainstays of
American popular literature which began with Indian
captivity narratives and continued through media coverage of
the Iran hostage crisis.

     Thus, "Saddam Hussein" was a symbolic construct
produced by the codes of popular culture.  The "real" Saddam
Hussein is, of course, a dictator who is ruthless,
repressive, and inclined toward military solutions and
actions.[5] Yet he is also a rational and pragmatic leader
who has a long history of cutting deals and making
compromises.  But his media vilification was so extreme that
it ruled out in advance diplomatic solutions and reduced any
possible Iraqi peace initiative to resolve the crisis
diplomatically to mere propaganda and deception.  Week after
week, report after report, Saddam was described in purely
negative terms with commentators stressing his brutality,
irrationality, and duplicity.

     It is significant, however, that the media
characteristic- ally describe similar foreign tyrants who
are sympathetic to U.S. interests merely as "military
leaders" or "presidents" who are regularly portrayed in
positive or neutral frames -- this was the case with
repressive Vietnamese leaders who the U.S. supported during
the Vietnam war, as well as with the Shah of Iran, Chile's
Pinochet, the Phillipine's Marcos, and even Panama's Noriega
and Saddam Hussein himself, until they fell out of favor
with U.S. policy makers.  The initial media coverage of the
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and U.S. intervention in Saudi
Arabia therefore confirms the analysis of Herman and Chomsky
(1988) that the corporate media tend to picture "enemies" of
the U.S. as evil while overlooking crimes of U.S. allies.
When Saddam Hussein was a U.S. ally in his war against Iran
and the recipient of U.S. aid and arms sales, he was
presented positively and his crimes were ignored; when he
became a U.S. enemy, then his every evil deed was magnified.
Likewise, when the U.S. invaded Panama, its actions were
defended by the corporate media which has consistently
attacked Iraq for similar aggression (see the documentation
of media bias toward the Bush administration during the
Panama invasion in Kellner, 1990; Chomsky, 1990; and Lee and
Solomon, 1990, pp. 316-317).

Dominant Images: Troops, Technology, Arabs, and Gender

     In their coverage of the largest U.S. military
intervention since Vietnam, the mainstream corporate media
concentrated much of their focus on the logistics of the
operation and its impact on the home front rather than
discussing whether the deployment was or was not a good idea
and where it might lead.  For the first months of the
deployment, there was almost no discussion of whether Iraq
was really going to invade Saudi Arabia or not, whether the
massive U.S. troop deployment was necessary to stop Iraqi
aggression, or, crucially, whether the U.S. force was
primarily a defensive or an offensive force.  In general,
the media repeated endlessly the legitimations given by the
Bush administration for their successive military
deployments.  In the early days, they dramatized the dangers
to Saudi and other Gulf State oil fields that would follow
without a U.S. military presence and without an economic
blockade of Iraq.  Instead of analyzing what was at stake in
the U.S. troop deployment, night after night, the
operational details of the U.S. military deployment were
discussed; desert maneuvers were depicted; troops were
interviewed and allowed to send greetings to the folks at
home; and shiny and powerful new high tech weapons were
displayed, punctuated by frequent news reports warning
against Iraqi chemical weapons and the one million strong,
well-armed, and highly trained and experienced Iraqi
military forces.

     Against the "evil" Hussein and threatening Iraqis, the
media thus posed images of the "good" American soldier and
powerful U.S. technology.  In the nightly repetition of
these positive images of American troops valiantly
protecting a foreign country from aggression, the need for a
strong military is repeatedly dramatized and pounded into
the public's psyche.  "Desert dispatches" from troops in the
front allowed young men and women to send greetings home;
these images of wholesome young Americans in the desert to
fight an evil and dangerous enemy bonded the American people
with the troops and helped create positive feelings about
the patriotic troops in the field.

     Likewise, the frequent images of U.S. technology --
planes, tanks, artillery, and more exotic high tech items --
provided splendid positive images of U.S. military
technology.  In this context, it should be noted that the
U.S. intervention took place in the context of debate over
the cutting back of the budget of the military and CIA, and
defenders of these institutions used the crisis in the Gulf
to support their arguments against military cutbacks.  For
instance, the B-2 Stealth bomber was killed by Congress
before the invasion; within days, however, it was reinstated
for funding.  The images of the military hardware and troop
deployment thus functioned as advertisements for a strong
military and prepared the public for the rigors of all-out
war, while building support for the U.S. intervention and
Middle East policies.  Consequently, the U.S. military could
not have asked for better advertisements or PR.  What
Bagdikian (1983) calls capital's "private Ministry of
Information and Culture" has become a booster for the
military-industrial complex.  While the military prepared
for all-out war in the Middle East, urged on by hawks like
Henry Kissinger, William Safire, and columnists and
editorialists in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post,
The New York Times, and National Review, the media whipped
up war fever and built up consensus for administration
positions, no matter how dangerous and potentially
catastrophic.

     The images of Arabs during the first weeks of the
crisis were overwhelmingly racist.[6] Repeated images of a
negatively coded Saddam Hussein, of mobs of Arabs
demonstrating and shouting anti-U.S. slogans, and repeated
associations of rich, corrupt Arabs with oil -- and other
Arab leaders with terrorism -- provide an extremely negative
set of anti-Arab images.  Television coverage of the
frequent Arab conferences during September and October,
which sought Arab solutions to the problem, almost always
focused on the more radical Arab leaders and featured scenes
of Arab anti-American demonstrations where U.S. flags were
ritualistically burned.  When Secretary of State Baker
visited Syria, for instance, to recruit Syrian support and
troops for the anti-Iraq mobilization, the television
networks stressed the links between Syria and terrorism and
all of the images conveyed used negative stereotypes of
Arabs.

     To be sure, there were also several TV news reports
dealing with racist stereotypes of Arabs and anti-Arab
images in the U.S., but these segments invariably featured
Hollywood film images of Arabs and I saw no survey or
analysis of the range of common and nightly TV images of
Arabs, how they are framed, and with what they are
associated in the media frames and discourse.  Consequently,
while television pointed to the perniciousness of anti-Arab
violence in the United States and elsewhere during the
crisis in the Gulf and then the ground war, it never
disclosed its own complicity in anti-Arab racist imagery.

     For the most part, the dominant TV frames associated
Arabs with terrorism, anti-American flag burning
demonstrations, and oil.  Other images portrayed Arabs as
premodern nomads, wandering about in the vast Middle East
deserts, an "otherness" utterly different from "civilized"
Westerners.  Throughout the crisis, the dichotomy between
absolutely foreign and different Arabs and civilized
Westerners was drawn upon, thus replicating the Orientalist
discourse analyzed by Edward Said (1978) which founded
western ideology on a distinction between the civilized West
and the barbaric Orient.

     The few images of anti-war demonstrators in the U.S.
that appeared during the first months of the U.S.
intervention utilized the same frames, coding anti-war
demonstrators as Arabs, as irrational opponents of U.S.
policies.  U.S. demonstrators were portrayed as an unruly
mob, as long-haired outsiders; their discourse was rarely
allowed and coverage focused instead on slogans, or images
of marching crowds, with media voice-overs supplying the
context.  Major newspapers and newsmagazines also failed to
cover the burgeoning new anti-war movement.  Thus, just as
the media symbolically constructed a negative image in the
1960s of anti-war protesters as irrational, anti-American,
and unruly, so too did the networks frame the emerging
anti-war movement of the 1990s in predominantly negative
frames.

     The TV coverage of the "crisis in the Gulf" also
featured nightly horror stories of returning "hostages" who
tearfully described the barbaric actions inflicted on
foreigners in Kuwait by the Iraqis.  Images of the innocent
Americans suffering at the hands of the savage Arabs were
supplemented by clips from British television of British
citizens and their tales of horror.  The TV networks also
presented frequent images of the Third World workers and
their families displaced by the Iraqi invasion, though these
refugees were more faceless and massified than the
English-speaking refugees who are allowed to discursively
express their experience, while most of the Third World
refugees were merely pictured as suffering victims, usually
deprived of the spoken word, or given a quick snippet to
express their plight if they could speak English.  Of
course, the highly fragmented and condensed format of TV
news rarely allows anyone to articulate their experiences or
views with any complexity or depth.  And yet, many
English-speaking hostages were featured guests on talk shows
and were interviewed in some depth for the TV news
presentations; this was especially the case during the days
following the release of American hostages in which most
news and discussion shows featured lengthy and emotional
interviews with the returning Americans.

     The gender construction of TV images of the military
and their families has been extremely interesting and points
to the cohabitation of conservative and traditionalist
images of gender and the family with more liberal images
(which also, as we shall see, have an ideological
function).[7] On one hand, the construction of gender of
U.S. military families is extremely conventional with the
male soldiers going off to war, while the wife and children
stay behind.  This frame reproduces the conservative
division between the public sphere as the domain of male
activity with the private sphere reserved for women.  The
frame also privileges the sexist picture of men as active
and virile and women as passive and helpless.  Constant
pictures of tearful wives breaking up as their men go off to
war in a manly fashion reinforced this traditional picture,
as did the juxtapositions of the men active in the desert
while the women at home were seeking help from psychiatric
counselors or support groups.  As Enloe points out (1990),
the fusion of images of "womenandchildren" as released
hostages or domestic victims on the home front reinforce
images of women as helpless and dependent.  Image after
image of stoic men marching off to war and tearful women
staying at home thus reinforced a very traditional
conception of gender differences between men and women to
the detriment of women.

     Yet there were also women in the military who were
being sent to the desert and from the beginning there was
media fascination with the new "women warriors."  Newsweek
featured a Sept. 10, 1990 cover story on women and the
military, as did People magazine (Sept. 10, 1990).  As the
crisis proceeded, images of women troops were appearing ever
more frequently in the TV news coverage as well.  These
images also help with military recruitment and replicate
images of women warriors, which have been popularized in
film and television since the volunteer army allowed women
to join and which are functional for the U.S. military
machine, providing free advertisements for military
recruitment.

     In addition, images of U.S. women in the desert were
often juxtaposed with pictures of Arab women in veils, thus
presenting pictures of "modern," "progressive" customs
contrasted to backward, reactionary regimes that continue to
oppress women.  Such a juxtaposition legitimates U.S.
intervention in the region as a progressive force.  This
contrast was highlighted in mid- November, when Saudi women
protested a ban on driving automobiles with a "drive-in"
during which they defiantly drove autos in Saudi cities.
The Saudi women were harshly criticized by the regime and in
some cases fired from their jobs; the U.S. media focused on
the story for several days, contrasting the plight of Saudi
women with U.S. women soldiers driving jeeps and
participating actively in military life -- presenting the
message that the U.S. is bringing a progressive "modern"
influence into backward Saudi Arabia.

     The whole television coverage of the Persian Gulf War
was detrimental to women through the constant bombardment of
images of male culture and masculist values.  Supporters of
the war from George Bush and General Schwartzkopf to troops
in the desert and their supporters at home constantly talked
about "kicking ass," and when the war started rarely has
brute violence been so positively portrayed.  Feminists
argue that war culture helps validate brutality which
ultimately promotes violence against women (Roach, 1991)
and, one might add, people of color.  Pilots watched porn
movies before their bombing runs, thus fusing sex and
violence.  Throughout the Gulf War, the war totally
dominated television programming and in general promoted a
war culture that is primarily a male culture, thus devaluing
women.  Women were positioned as either devoted wives,
serving as cheerleaders for the military, or women warriors
-- hardly an attractive array of gender ideals.  While many
women actively opposed the war, they were for the most part
excluded from media discourse (see Roach, 1991 for
documentation).  Consequently, war culture promotes
simultaneously sexism and militarism.

The "Pools" and the Lack of Critical Media Discourse

     During the first days of the U.S. intervention in early
August, the only criticisms voiced on the television
networks concerned the timing of Bush's intervention,
stemming from families of hostages who wished he'd given
them time to get out before sending in U.S. troops.  The
only critical voices concerning the deployment were Arab
intellectuals in Egypt, Jordan, and other countries in which
the television networks had stationed crews -- and their
criticisms were usually framed as "anti-American" hostility
(rather than rational arguments).  A rare critique of the
magnitude of Bush's military response during the first
several weeks came from an ABC reporter, Cokie Roberts, who
cited Jeanne Kirkpatrick's questioning of whether the
magnitude of the U.S. response was in line with the degree
of U.S. interests (Sunday Morning with David Brinkley,
August 26, 1990; soon after, however, Kirkpatrick reverted
to her instinctive militarism and by November was calling
for a military solution to the crisis).

     For the next several weeks after the U.S. intervention,
the dominant debate in the political/intellectual
establishment concerned whether the U.S. should begin
bombing Iraq immediately to destroy their military
completely and eliminate Saddam Hussein, or to continue with
the UN-sanctioned economic blockade which (other hawks
charged) might produce a long stalemate and indefinite
deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.  On August 19,
for instance, in a syndicated column, Henry Kissinger argued
that it would be a disaster to get U.S. troops bogged down
in the Middle East desert and urged a "surgical strike"
against Iraq -- a position that he repeated on an August 24
CNN panel and continued to defend in the following months.
Similar military solutions were urged on August 27 in a New
York Times op-ed piece by William Safire and this was the
line advocated by editorialists in The Wall Street Journal
and National Review, and by many Israelis, military
"experts," and pundits who appeared on talk shows and wrote
editorial "opinion" pieces.

     Taking the sanctions position, Zbigniew Brzezinski on
television and in the August 16 Washington Post and August
27 Newsweek argued for the economic blockade strategy and to
put slow, patient pressure on Iraq, "to slowly strangle
them" as he put it.  He also wrote: "My greatest fear about
the ongoing crisis is that it could get out of hand.  The
way it has been played in the media, and even by some
officials, will create a mass hysteria."  Brzezinski was
almost alone in advocating this "moderate" approach during
the first several weeks of coverage, although by late
August, the war hysteria subsided somewhat and finally talk
of possible negotiated settlement to the crisis, or of a
longterm stalemate, began appearing during the weekend of
August 25-26 -- a moderate discourse denounced by Safire in
the New York Times as the "new pacificism" (August 27, 1990
op ed column).

     Thus, the only critical discourse on U.S. military
interventions and the seemingly inexorable military solution
during the first month of the crisis in the corporate media
was from the right with Brzezinski urging patience with the
economic sanctions and blockade while warning against the
dangers of war; Jeane Kirkpatrick raised questions
concerning whether U.S. interests in the region were
commensurate with the U.S. military response and potential
costs; conservative columnists Evans and Novak warned
against portraying "Saddam Hussein as a Hitlerite madman
thirsting for world conquest {which} endows the Iraqi
strongman with powers he does not possess" rather than
presenting him as a rational individual with whom the U.S.
has to and can deal; and Patrick Buchanan and other
right-wing commentators on CNN warned against the costs of
war and criticized those who were promoting the military
solution.[8]

     The right-wing critique of the U.S. military build-up
provides further evidence of splits within the right in the
United States with Kissinger, some core spokespeople for the
military-industrial complex, and key members of the Bush
administration urging a military solution, while other
conservatives argued that the benefit would not be equal to
the costs.  This split replicates the division between
traditional isolationist conservatives and more
interventionist ones.  The isolationists represent sectors
whose interests would be harmed by war and the potentially
higher oil prices if the war were to drag on, which would
fuel inflation, while the interventionists tend to represent
military-industrial and other interests which would benefit
from war (though some interventionists are also no doubt
primarily hard-core macho militarists who represent no
specific economic interests but incarnate a military
mentality).

     No significant anti-war voices were allowed on the
media during the first months of the troop build-up in Saudi
Arabia and there was almost no criticism of Bush's
deployment by the supine Democrats, pointing once again to
the profound crisis of liberalism in the United States
(Kellner, 1990).  There was consequently an almost total
lack of public debate from the time that Bush first sent
troops to Saudi Arabia on August 8, 1990 and little
criticism of his policies.  A study by the media watchdog
group FAIR reported that during the first five months of TV
coverage of the crisis in the Gulf, ABC devoted only 0.7% of
its total gulf coverage to opposition to the military build
up.  CBS allowed 0.8%, while NBC devoted 1.5%, a hearty 13.3
minutes to all stories about protests, anti-war
organizations, conscientious objectors, religious
dissenters, and the like.  Consequently, of the 2,855
minutes of TV coverage of the Gulf crisis from August 8 to
January 3, FAIR claimed that only 29 minutes, roughly 1%,
dealt with popular opposition to the U.S. military
intervention in the Gulf.[9]

     Not only was the large anti-war movement ignored, but
"None of the foreign policy experts associated with the
peace movement -- such as Edward Said, Noam Chomsky or the
scholars of the Institute for Policy Studies -- appeared on
any nightly news program" (FAIR, 1991, press release).
Times-Mirror polls, however, conducted in September 1990 and
January 1991, discovered "pluralities of the public saying
they wished to hear more about the views of Americans who
oppose sending forces to the Gulf" (Special Times-Mirror
News Interest Index, January 31, 1991).  Furthermore, the
voices of troops who were alarmed at their deployment in the
Saudi desert and who objected to primitive living conditions
there were silenced, in part by Pentagon restrictions on
press coverage, and in part by a press corps unwilling to
search for dissenting voices.

     From the beginning of the U.S. deployment, the press
was prohibited from having direct access to the troops.
Journalists were instead organized by the military into
"pools" which were taken to sites selected by the military
itself and then reporters were allowed only to interview
troops with their military "minders" present.[10] Press and
video coverage was also subject to censorship, so that, in
effect, the military tightly controlled press coverage of
the U.S. military deployment in the Gulf and then the action
in the Gulf War.

     Thus no independent access to the troops was allowed
and reporters were only able to visit troops when escorted
by public affairs officers.  Reporters who ventured out on
their own were detained, or told to leave upon arrival at
bases without escort.  Such control of press coverage was
unprecedented in the history of U.S. warfare.  Historically,
journalists had been allowed direct access to combat troops
and sites, and frontline reporting had been distinguished
during World War 2 and Vietnam.  The pool system was
established, however, because it was perceived by the
military that reporting had been too critical in Vietnam and
the military blamed the press for helping erode public
support for the war.  Following British censorship of the
press during the Falkland Islands/Malvinas war, the U.S. had
controlled press access during the Grenada invasion and had
instituted the pool system during the Panama invasion.  The
pool system allowed the U.S. military to keep the press away
from the battle action in Panama completely during the
decisive first day of the invasion and to keep most of the
press interned on a U.S. military base during the next days.
Because the press was not able to discern the extent of
civilian deaths and the destructiveness of the invasion, it
was deemed a great success in the management of information
by the military and became the model employed during the
Gulf War.

     Although the press was unable to adequately cover the
Panama invasion, failing to get any pictures of U.S.
destruction of Panamanian barrios which were assumed to have
supported Noriega, or the Panamanians killed by the
invasion, they generally went along with the restrictions
and capitulated as well to the pool system during the crisis
in the Gulf and then the Gulf War.  Some independent
journals and journalists, however, ultimately sued the
government on January 10 in federal court to overturn the
restrictions on constitutional grounds.  The major media
outlets, however, did not cover (or join) the suit and the
war started and finished without any real challenge to the
pool system.  The pool system worked to manage the news flow
during the war itself and to ensure support for the Bush
administration and Pentagon policies.

     Indeed, the management of news and information was one
of the key pillars of Pentagon policy.  When the Pentagon
suggested giving the major news organizations more time in
the field in October, General Schwartzkopf vetoed the
suggestion (New York Times, May 5, 1991, p. A8) and the
military tightly controlled both access and content of the
news in one of the most thoroughgoing exercises in news
management and the manufacture of public opinion in U.S.
history.  During the crisis in the Gulf, there were thus few
reports of dissenting soldiers or critics of the war.  An
article in the December 9, 1990 Washington Post, however,
suggested that a large number of troops were expressing
"reservations over U.S. involvement in what they see as an
internal Arab conflict."  When President Bush visited the
troops in Saudi Arabia on Thanksgiving Day, "a truckload of
soldiers drove past television cameras and reporters and
shouted, 'We're not supposed to be here!  This isn't our
war!  Why are we over here?'" An Army Lt. told the Post that
"this is not worth one American losing his life.  If they
[Iraqis] were threatening us, I'd be ready to lay down my
life in a minute -- but this is different."

     Consequently, while there was a pointed debate among
the U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia concerning the wisdom of
their deployment, the U.S. public was not often allowed to
hear this debate and any information which might raise
questions concerning Bush administration policy was
considered off-limits.  Reporters critical of the deployment
were not given access to top military brass or allowed to
join the pools, while compliant reporters were rewarded with
pool assignments and interviews.  In particular, the
Pentagon favored local reporters sympathetic to the military
allowing them access to troops from their region to write
puff pieces which positively portrayed the troop deployment
(see the Progressive, Feb. 1991, pp. 25ff).  As the Times
put it: "The military, assuming that correspondents from the
small-town press would write sympathetic articles, provided
free transportation to Saudi Arabia and special access to
servicemen and women from their areas.  Aides also analyzed
articles written by other reporters to determine their
interests and to screen out interview requests from those
likely to focus on mistakes by the military" (May 5, 1991).

     Clearly, the military was concerned primarily with
their image, with looking good, and with avoiding any
criticisms rather than with legitimate national security
concerns.  Thus, reporters who were critical of U.S. policy
found themselves without access to sources or sites.  For
two months, New York Times reporter James LeMoyne had
requested an interview with General Schwartzkopf, but it had
been denied because his articles "were not 'liked'" by the
U.S. military (New York Times, Feb. 17, 1991).  Lemoyne had
written a story which included quotes from soldiers who
criticized President Bush and "emotionally questioned the
purpose of their being sent to fight and perhaps die in
Saudi Arabia."  LeMoyne was later told that "all hell broke
loose" after the article was published and senior commanders
chastised the soldiers who had expressed critical views.
After the LeMoyne story, for "six weeks almost all print
news reporters were denied visits to Army units," though
more compliant television reporters were given access to the
troops.

     Some television reporters also found themselves
blacklisted.  ABC's John Laurence was refused access to the
troops after he had helped produce a segment that detailed
heat and sand problems with equipment in the desert and
described ammunition shortages.  Laurence had previously
angered the military in Vietnam when CBS Reports aired his
footage of soldiers refusing orders in 1970.  Cutting off
access to critical journalists obviously had the effect of
inhibiting reporters to criticize the military, knowing that
henceforth their access would be restricted.

     Thus, the military was able to control the flow of
information coming from the press in the field by allowing
access only to those favorable to the military and by
exercising a security review of reports and video which were
produced by the pools.  This latter practice amounted to
blatant censorship that attempted to block all critical
commentary coming out of Saudi Arabia.  A Nightline episode
on press control showed public affairs escorts breaking in
and cutting off discussion between the press and the
soldiers on the front when topics were broached that the
military did not want to see discussed.  When an Air Force
reservist from Michigan sent his local paper letters
detailing the poor living and sanitary conditions in the
desert, the military ordered the paper, The Bay Voice, not
to publish them.  During the war itself, there were other
examples of press censorship by the military, thus New York
Times reporter Malcolm Browne's comparison of the press's
role in the ground war to that of the Nazi Propaganda
Kompanic seems justified.  In Browne's words: "I've never
seen anything that can compare to it, in the degree of
surveillance and control the military has over the
correspondents" (cited in The Village Voice, Feb. 5, 1991).

     In addition, television controlled and censored
anti-war advertisements.  Alex Molnar, a University of
Wisconsin Professor and father of a young 21-year old
stationed in Saudi Arabia, founded a Military Families
Support Network.  Molnar's poignant letter, protesting the
troop build-up, was published in the New York Times on
August 23 on the op-ed page, but CNN and all three
broadcasting networks turned down a 30-second commercial
paid for by Molnar's group.  CNN and local ABC and CBS
affiliates also turned down a paid anti-war spot produced by
the Los Angeles chapter of the Physicians for Social
Responsibility, although some NBC stations and smaller
affiliates ran the ad.  Pro-war commercials, however,
sponsored by the Coalition for America at Risk and Free
Kuwait group, were shown on many local stations (Ruffini,
1991, p. 22).

     Consequently, the virtual lack of any critical voices
in the mainstream media during the first weeks of the crisis
discloses the timidity, narrowness, and fundamental
subservience of the mainstream media in the United States,
especially the television networks.  The broadcast media are
afraid to go against a perceived popular consensus, to
alienate people, or to take unpopular stands, because they
are afraid of losing viewers and thus profits.  Since U.S.
military actions have characteristically been supported by
the majority of the people, at least in their early stages,
television is extremely reluctant to criticize what might
turn out to be popular military action.  The broadcast media
also characteristically rely on a narrow range of
established and safe commentators and are not likely to
reach out to new and controversial voices in a period of
national crisis.

     The media usually wait until a major political figure
or established "expert" speaks against a specific policy and
that view gains certain credibility as marked by opinion
polls or repetition in "respected" newspapers or journals.
Unfortunately, the crisis of democracy in the United States
is such that the Democratic party has largely supported the
conservative policies of the past decade and so the party
leaders are extremely cautious and slow to criticize foreign
policy actions, especially potentially popular military
actions.  The crisis of liberalism is so deep in the U.S.
that establishment liberals are afraid of being called
"wimps," or "soft" on foreign aggression, and thus often
support policies that their better instincts should lead
them to oppose.  Consequently, the only criticisms of a
major U.S. military intervention that appeared in the
mainstream media during the first weeks of the Gulf crisis
came from hawks like Kirkpatrick and Brzezinski, signaling
once more the crisis of liberalism and the bankruptcy of the
Democratic Party.  On the other hand, it is not certain if
no mainstream opposition was to be found,[11] or whether
television simply ignored any voices that would interrupt
the manufacture of public support for the U.S. intervention.

Conclusion

     When Bush doubled the deployment of U.S. troops to
Saudi Arabia in mid-November, there was finally a debate
over U.S. policy in the Gulf in the mainstream media, but by
now it was too late: the U.S. military machine was in place,
it would be too costly to leave such a vast deployment in
place indefinitely, and the Bush administration was
obviously resolved to have a war.  During Congressional
Hearings in December and the Congressional debate in
January, there were finally some voices heard which were
critical of the Bush administration policy, but by then the
die was cast and Bush began the Persian Gulf War by bombing
Baghdad on January 16.  At this time, the mainstream media
became even more compliant and only voices supportive of the
war were evident in the mainstream media during the war
itself.

     In retrospect, it appears that the time for a serious
debate over U.S. policy was during the first months of the
crisis.  Yet, precisely during this time, the mainstream
media failed to carry out any such debate; the Bush
administration was thus in effect given carte blanche to
plan and to carry out a war that was highly popular and --
in military terms -- successful.  But this "successful" war
has left a legacy of environmental and human devastation in
the Middle East with consequences still to be played out and
which might eventually suggest that the Gulf War was a
disaster that could have been avoided.[12]

     In this paper, I have argued that the lack of an
adequate critical discussion in the media concerning the
Bush Administration's Gulf policy enabled Bush to prepare
for his eventual war and triumph by giving him time to
slowly but inexorably build up his war machine and military
strategy.  The mainstream media aided Bush by employing the
forms of popular culture to demonize Saddam Hussein and the
Iraqis, by glorifying American troops and technology, and by
submitting to the pool system that allowed the military to
control images and information.  Saddam Hussein was
presented so negatively and the massive U.S. troop
deployment so positively that the only logical solution to
the crisis was decisive military action and unquestioning
support for the U.S. troops.  The nightly images of the U.S.
troops in the desert bonded viewers to the soldiers and
created a basis of support.  One could also argue that the
use of the Saddam as Hitler theme especially prejudiced the
public against a negotiated, diplomatic solution.
Obviously, one cannot negotiate with a Hitler who is such a
threat to the peace of the world that he must be destroyed.

     Thus, the extremely negative framing of Hussein and the
Iraqis ruled out a peaceful and diplomatic solution to the
crisis.  In addition, the constant war talk created a
climate in which only military action could resolve the
crisis.  The media scenario of the confrontation as a
struggle between good and evil with the evil Hussein
unwilling to negotiate and threatening the allies produced
tension and the need for a resolution that war itself could
best provide.  Thus the mainstream media failed to meet
their democratic responsibilities of providing a wide range
of opinion on issues of public importance and of informing
the public concerning contemporary events.  Since democracy
requires a separation of powers and an independent media,
the combination of the Bush administration, military, and
media all pushing for war undermined the democratic system
of checks and balances and intensified the crisis of
democracy in the United States.


                           Notes

[1]  See Entman (1989) and Kellner (1990) for documentation
     of how network television in the 1980s advanced the
     interests of the conservative Republican political
     regimes of the epoch.  In Television and the Crisis of
     Democracy, I indicate how the conjunction of the
     growing power of television in elections and the
     manufacturing of public opinion with the capture of the
     state and media by big business, which systematically
     used these institutions to further their own interests,
     constitutes a crisis of democracy.  I sometimes refer
     to the "mainstream media" as "corporate media" because
     they are owned by big corporations like GE, ABC/Capital
     Communications, and CBS/Tisch Financial Group and
     express the corporate point of view; corporate media
     include the three major television networks, national
     newsmagazines like Time and Newsweek, and national
     newspapers like The New York Times and Wall Street
     Journal.

[2]  On the manichean frames of U.S. popular culture, see
     Jewett and Lawrence (1988, second edition) and Rogin
     (1987) who analyzes how Reagan manipulated these frames
     and political demonization to manufacture consent for
     his policies.

[3]  See Stockwell (1978, 1991) on the U.S. search for
     enemies to legitimate an aggressive foreign policy and
     national security state and Keen (1986) on the
     construction of political enemies.

[4]  Ann Norton noted the sexual innuendoes in the media
     discourse constructing Saddam Hussein in a November 26
     Teach-In at the University of Texas and suggested that
     this discourse presented him as a sexual monster and
     threat, and thus as abnormal.  Whereas, she continued,
     Bush's "incursion" into Panama was presented as
     "normal," as consensual intercourse whereby the
     territory entered solicited the U.S. penetration,
     accepting its rough trade "moves," even though several
     barrios were largely destroyed, and much damage was
     suffered.  Again, media reports of Saddam Hussein
     stressed his "naked aggression," one of the Bush
     Administration's most frequently used terms, and also
     his dangerous "big gun," a cannon that could allegedly
     deliver artillery hundreds of miles, his missiles, and
     other lethal weapons, thus using fear of sexual power
     as part of the imagery mobilizing people against Saddam
     -- whose name was usually mispronounced by Bush,
     revealing his contempt and hatred.

[5]  Even popular biographies of Saddam Hussein were
     villainizing him in absolute terms; see Miller &
     Myrolie (1990).  For more scholarly critical studies of
     Hussein, see Karsh & Rautsi (1991); Henderson (1991);
     and Darwish & Alexander (1991).

[6]  For criticism of the bias against Arabs and Islam in
     media presentations, see Said (1981); on the anti-Arab
     stereotypes that dominate U.S. popular culture, see
     Shaheen (1984).

[7]  For feminist analysis of the media presentation of the
     Gulf crisis and war, see Enloe (1990) and Roach (1991).

[8]  Buchanan was attacked by A.M.  Rosenthal on the New
     York Times Op-Ed page for claiming that Israel, its
     supporters, and U.S. hawks were leading the country to
     war (September 14, 1990).  Rosenthal accused Buchanan
     of anti-semitism, which might be seen as a legitimate
     charge in view of Buchanan's record of defending
     ex-Nazis, but such a dismissal suppresses the issue of
     what the Israeli policy actually was and what influence
     it actually exerted on U.S. policymakers and public
     opinion leaders like Rosenthal.  After this
     controversy, Buchanan disappeared from "CrossFire" for
     a brief period, but soon returned; Rosenthal went to
     Israel during November to make sure that he continued
     to accurately portray the Israeli point of view in his
     op-ed pieces.

[9]  Studies by the media watchdog group FAIR report that
     such discussion shows as ABC's "Nightline" and PBS'
     "The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour" characteristically
     contain only a small range of views from establishment
     sources, drawing on the same small pool of white
     conservative males from conservative Washington "think
     tanks" and former government officials.  It has also
     been pointed out that PBS features only conservative
     talkshows, with no liberal or left alternative.  An
     initial FAIR study of the Gulf crisis reveals that once
     again "Nightline" and "MacNeil-Lehrer" drew on the
     usual small pool of "experts": not one critic of the
     U.S. military intervention appeared on either program
     during the first month of the crisis; about half of the
     guests were current or former government officials and
     two-thirds of these were Republican; almost all were
     white males.  See Extra!  (Nov-Dec 1990), p. 4.

[10] On the pool system, see the articles by Ruffini (1991),
     Schanberg (1991), Browne (1991), and the somewhat
     apologetic piece by Lamb (1991); see also the articles
     in the Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1991,
     pp. 23- 29; Index on Censorship, April/May 1991; Le
     monde diplomatique, Mai 1991, pp. 11-18; and the New
     York Times May 5 and 6, 1991.  I am indebted to an
     unpublished article by Robin Anderson, "The Press, The
     Public and the New World Order" from which I have taken
     some examples.

[11] Jesse Jackson managed to get to Iraq for an interview
     with Saddam Hussein, which won him a few minutes of
     airtime to criticize the U.S. intervention, though he
     later complained: "Since [the invasion of Kuwait on
     August 2] I have talked with Saddam Hussein for six
     hours, two hours on tape.  Longer than any American.  I
     met with Tariq Assiz for almost ten hours.  I took the
     first group of journalists into Kuwait, negotiated for
     the release of hostages.  And when we got back, there
     was not one serious interview by a network.  A
     categorical rejection.  Now why is there no interest in
     what we saw, observed, and got on tape?"  (Columbia
     Journalism Review, March/April 1991, p. 28).  The only
     Congressperson whose critique I encountered during the
     first month of the crisis was that of San Antonio
     representative Henry B. Gonzalez who blamed the U.S.
     government and banks for funding much of Hussein's
     military build-up and who called for immediate
     withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East (Austin
     American-Statesman, Aug. 4, 1990, pp. 1A and 4A).
     Later, during the Gulf War itself, he produced a
     resolution to impeach Bush, but this too was ignored by
     the mainstream media.

[12] The latter phase of the crisis and the war itself will
     be analyzed in Kellner, forthcoming.


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