How America’s soldiers are required to believe their government’s lies

Eric Zuesse

James Joyner is a Professor at the U.S. Marine Corps University (MCU). He trains Marines. Prior to coming to MCU in 2013, he was Managing Editor of the Atlantic Council, which is the main PR agency for NATO; and, so, he was selecting there the propaganda they publish for NATO. Currently, he’s also an Editor at the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) propaganda-blog, “Outside the Beltway,” which is read by MCU’s students, and by many U.S. soldiers.

On February 6th, Joyner wrote for that blog “Secrecy and Democracy: How do we know when our government is telling us the truth?” He argued there that the AP reporter who, at the State Department’s February 3rd Press Briefing, had said that the U.S. Government should not expect the nation’s press to automatically trust the truthfulness of its allegations against another country, was wrong, and that the function of America’s press is to broadcast the U.S. Government’s accusations, and never to raise questions about those allegations’ truthfulness, but to instead treat all of them as being established facts against America’s alleged “enemies,” so as never to aid the anointed (by the U.S. Government) enemies of America.

I posted to Joyner’s article the following reader’s comment:

The Biden White House has lied about many things, such as that there was no coup that brought the new (anti-Russia, pro-U.S.&EU) regime to power in Ukraine in February 2014 (see the evidence that it indeed WAS a U.S. coup at https://archive.is/cU1oa ); so, why should the public now be trusting the Biden Administrations’ (like the Obama Administration’s) narrative that Russia, instead of U.S., was/is the aggressor there, and that America was/is the defender there? Isn’t this matter another example of the ‘Saddam’s WMD’ lies, from the George W. Bush Administration and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden — NONE of whom has since ever admitted that they were lying to the American people and destroyed Iraq by their lies? “Fool me once … but fool me twice?” You want this now-routine lying to continue to be accepted and tolerated by the American public? Ring, ring, it’s the MIC calling! Just hang up the phone on them.

When I subsequently checked back there, to see any reader-responses to it, my comment had been removed.

So, I contacted Joyner by email, and asked him:

“Why did you remove this reader-comment?”

As-of-now, I’ve received no reply.

UPDATE: Just now (15 hours after I wrote this article), I did receive a reply from him: It says: “The system automatically sends first comments from a name/email address combination to moderation. ” He allowed my comment, and it is now posted there.

The viewpoint that Joyner had presented in his blog-post (and to which I had responded) was that “There is legitimate need to keep secrets from the American public, lest they fall into the hands of our enemies.” However, if the Government is, itself, the public’s enemy, then how truthful is that excuse? He went on in his article to say “But too often, information is classified ‘just to be on the safe side’ and then remains classified for far too long.” But still he was coming down against reporters doubting the truthfulness of their Government’s allegations regarding international relations, since that could help ‘the enemy’. If Congress has not declared war against a country, then there IS no “enemy,” and so no Constitutional excuse such as “There is legitimate need to keep secrets from the American public, lest they fall into the hands of our enemies.” Then it’s simply the Government against its own public.

Was not the U.S. Government’s Big Lie to the American people in 2002 and early 2003, against (and that destroyed) Iraq, sufficient proof that the U.S. Government CAN be the enemy of its own public (and not ONLY be the enemy of its ‘enemies’, such as Iraq)? Furthermore, many subsequent instances of the U.S. Government’s lying to the American people have likewise subsequently become disclosed. A few such instances are here and here and here and here and here and here and here. The U.S. Government routinely lies through its teeth regarding international relations (and even regarding some domestic matters), but it especially lies to its public regarding international relations (which is specifically the field that Joyner was saying the U.S. Government NEVER lies about to the American people). Joyner’s article takes an extremely hostile position against a press that isn’t propagandistic for its nation’s Government. In a response that he gave there to one of the reader-comments, he said: “There were other ways for Ellsberg to whistle-blow that I would have preferred. But he differs from Manning, Snowden, and others in that he was discrete in what he released. He vetted the documents rather than simply releasing everything he could get his hands on.” Obviously, the name “Assange” is missing from that response, but he has provided no indication that he opposes the U.S. regime’s demand that UK extradite Assange to an American death. Joyner’s expressed attitude is totalitarian. The U.S. military hires him to teach the elite Marines. What does that say about American ‘democracy’ and even America’s ‘Constitutional democracy’?

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.