War Made Easy Critical Essay

Most P.R. practitioners think of public relations as a field that helps a company get in touch with the needs and wants of the publics it serves. However, some people have a less favorable impression of public relations. Public relations has also been linked to the idea of spin, or lying to audiences to get them to feel a certain way about an issue. The government has been notorious in its use of propaganda and getting the American people to think favorably of their actions, especially in terms of going to war. The film War Made Easy reveals how propaganda and government relations tactics are used to turn an audience’s attitude in favor of something as destructive as war.

The government uses the tactic of making America look like the good guy and demonizing its opponents to gain the American people’s support in going to war. President George W. Bush labeled the people of Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and the Taliban as a part of an “axis of evil”, a “cult of evil”, and said that the U.S. going to war with Afghanistan would be a “monumental structure of good vs. evil” (Alper & Earp, 2007). The American government shows its enemies to be monsters so that the American people will not sympathize with them but, rather, see them as a threat to our safety. Even back during the red scare the government was demonizing a different way of life. There were television shows saying communism was “dirty, godless and evil” (Alper & Earp, 2007).

The American government tries to make itself look like a martyr by going under the guise of going to war for the sake of democracy for the American people. Various presidents such as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush were shown saying that they “love peace and hate war” and “we will liberate these people” (Alper & Earp, 2007). The government gives the impression that we must go to war for the sake of a free country. U.S. presidents lie to us by telling us that they will liberate the people we are warring with even though we are slaughtering civilians and destroying countries that have different views than we do about religion and life.

The film War Made Easy reveals a darker side of government relations through exposing the use of propaganda to gain support from the American people to go to war. U.S. presidents and media pundits have been swaying the American people to be enthusiastic about going to war and view it as a sense of patriotic duty. The American public is never given the full story about why we are going to war because the government knows they would lose support if they released all of the facts. We need to learn to demand the facts before permitting ourselves to be brainwashed into believing that war is our only answer.

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Bibliography

Alper, L. (Producer), & Earp, J. (Director). (2007). War made easy: How presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death [Motion Picture]. United States: The Disinformation Company Ltd. .