As the U.S. midterm elections approach, the gap between Western media’s depiction of the war in Ukraine and the actual war waged on the ground appears to be widening more dramatically.
Voting Day. (Danny Howard, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
We are urged at every turn to dismiss everything Vladimir Putin says as upside down to the truth. Those of us who keep our heads, while all about us others are losing theirs and blaming it on us, risk dismissal when we take the Russian president seriously.
Never mind. It is time simply to dismiss those who dismiss.
In his long interviews with Oliver Stone five years ago, Putin observed that it is impossible to work with the Americans because everything is held hostage by their election cycles. So true. Too bad so many among us are not capable of listening to the Russian leader on this point and learning from it something about how our post-democratic system malfunctions.
Domestic politics — what plays in Peoria and all that — determines foreign policy. This was Putin’s point. And when electoral politics determines foreign policy, foreign policy becomes presentation, which is to say unserious, because all the good people of Peoria ever get from Washington pols are unserious presentations of events and policies that have little to do with reality.
America has started wars because of what political candidates think will play in Peoria at election time. Countless lives have been sacrificed to the cause of this or that political candidate or party.
As the late Robert Parry and Gary Sick established, there is ample reason to suspect that the Reagan campaign conspired with Iran during the 1980 presidential campaign to delay the release of American hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran until after the Nov. 4 elections.
Whatever happened between Reagan’s people and the clerics governing Iran, the Great Communicator went on to present himself as the strongman savior of the hostages, who were released on Jan. 20, 1981, the day Reagan was inaugurated after trouncing Jimmy Carter at the polls.
Now we have the Ukraine case, and we need not bother with “ample reason.” It is open-and-shut evident at this point that we witness two wars as the Armed Forces of Ukraine face off with the Russian military. There is the presented war, the meta-war, you might say, and there is the waged war, the war taking place on the ground, nothing meta about it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and filmmaker Oliver Stone in 2017. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The Biden administration has been committed from the first to fighting the presented war, the war of appearances, because maintaining public support for this dreadful folly is essential to keeping it going. And with the midterm elections near, the administration and the clerks in the liberal press serving it are pressing the presented war with the vigor of D–Day generals.
“Stay with us, all you wavers of blue-and-yellow flags. Forget about inflation and what you have to pay for a gallon of gas or a box of Wheaties. We are getting this done. The tide has turned. The good, courageous, self-sacrificing Ukrainians are winning against those looting, war-crime committing, village-destroying, brutal — they are ever and always brutal — Russian forces. Don’t lose heart. Support us on Nov. 8 as we support Ukraine.”
This is the pitch, the presentation.
Parenthetically, I do not think this rubbish will make a whit’s difference when those Americans foolish enough to go to the polls next week. But the White House and the Democratic field have to put this across because Republicans are hammering them daily about the irrationality of their profligate commitment to a proxy war that simply cannot be won on the ground.
Front-Lines Coverage Ban
A bus burns on a road from Kharkiv to Kiev. as Russia invades Ukraine on Feb. 24. (Yan Boechat/VOA)
The presented war has been at variance with the waged war more or less since the Russian intervention began on Feb. 24. This is why Western correspondents, in any case apparently short on guts and integrity, are pleased enough to conform to the Kyiv regime’s ban on coverage from the front lines. By and large, these correspondents report the presented war.
But the gap between the presented war and the waged war now appears to be widening more dramatically.
On one hand, the Ukrainians’ celebrated counteroffensives, launched in August, appear to be exhausted with no significant gains achieved. You also have Russia’s call-up of as many as 300,000 reservists and the appointment of Sergei Surovkin, a no-nonsense general who led Russia’s campaign against the Islamic State in Syria, as the overall commander of the Ukraine operation.
On the other hand you have … you have the midterm elections. Since the summer, as the Democrats’ prospects on Nov. 8 grow ever dimmer, those prosecuting the presented war have grown ever more incautious in their departures from the waged war.
I could be wrong, but this latest phase in the presented war began on Oct. 12, the midterms a month away, when The New York Times quoted Lloyd Austin saying Ukraine’s offensives will continue well into the winter and that Russia’s recent attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure have fortified the West’s unified resolve to continue supporting the Kyiv regime.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Oct. 12. (U.S. Secretary of Defense)
“I expect that Ukraine will continue to do everything it can throughout the winter to regain its territory and to be effective on the battlefield,” the U.S. defense secretary said after a meeting of NATO officials in Brussels, “and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that they have what’s required to be effective.”
Austin’s comments seem to me to mark an important point of departure from reality. Neither of the above-quoted assertions is true according to all available evidence. Ukraine’s counteroffensives, after its forces pushed through an open door in the northeast, have nothing to show for themselves and are in for a debilitating winter. The West’s resolve, no secret to anyone — even the Times — looks increasingly wobbly.
But here’s the thing about the presented war: What is said in its cause does not have to be factual or in any way true; it simply has to be said over and over again.
Turning the Tables
The New York Times building. (Thomas Hawk, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
On Sunday the Times published a long piece by Andrew Kramer under the headline, “With Western Weapons, Ukraine Is Turning the Tables in an Artillery War.” The subhead was even bolder: “In the southern Kherson region, Ukraine now has the advantage in range and precision guidance of artillery, rockets and drones, erasing what had been a critical Russian asset.”
Wow, I said over my fourth morning coffee. Turning the tables, erasing Russia’s superiority in artillery: This is a lot of turning and erasing.
Kramer’s report rests on interviews with a Ukrainian lieutenant, a first lieutenant, a major, and a Polish consultant sitting in Gdansk — all of them, fair to say, troops in the presented war. They are full of ballsy, let-me-at-’em remarks: “We can reach them and they cannot reach us,” “One shot, one kill,” “It will be Stalingrad in winter for them.” Which tell us precisely nothing.
Kramer’s assessments, all nothing more than echoes of the above-noted sources, are in this same line:
“There is no mistaking the shifting fortunes on the southern front….
Ukraine now has artillery superiority in the area….
This firepower has tipped the balance in the south…”
These statements are absolutely perpendicular to what one reads from sources other than Kramer’s — and he should be ashamed to present them as reliable.
Here’s a doozy from the first lieutenant: “We hear a lot of rumors they are abandoning the first lines of defense.”
Kramer seems accurate here: The first lieutenant is almost certainly hearing a lot of rumors to this effect. But that’s it. I read a lot of reports that Russian forces, having evacuated many residents of Kherson, are sending in engineering brigades that are assiduously fortifying the city in preparation for whatever defense may be necessary in coming months.
I tell you, it has got to the point that when I read Kramer’s pieces I need a safe place where they have cookies, board games and fluffy blankets — and no mainstream dailies, no NPR and no BBC. His work is the presented war as it is fought, ever more fantastically, as the midterm elections approach.
Alexander Mercouris, the London-based podcaster, spends an hour each evening analyzing the state of things on the ground in Ukraine, using all available sources with the due caution this work requires.
These sources are many-sided: Western mainstream, Western independent, Russian mainstream, Russian independent, Ukrainian of all kinds, other sources entirely. He is to be credited for the exceptional granularity of his reports and his often nuanced political analysis — as, for instance, his recent take on the collapse of the Ostpolitik tradition in German politics.
Mercouris astutely points out that the Russians are little concerned with the presented war and prosecute the waged war according to substantive, tactical and strategic considerations alone — not what any given move will look like when Western media get their hands on it.
In his view, Ukrainian forces have nearly shot their bolt, the Western powers are running out of weapons to send them, Russian forces are beginning gradually to advance once again, and the buildup of Russian troops and matériel — anyone who looks can see — may portend one or another kind of major assault, possibly a knockout blow, in coming months.
While I have not reported directly on any of the questions raised here, the preponderance of the evidence presented leaves me to conclude reports such as Mercouris’ are far more accurate than what Western media offer and that these media trade primarily in the propaganda of which the presented war is made.
It will be interesting to see what happens to American media’s reportage from Ukraine once the midterm elections are over and there is nothing more for the Democrats to win or lose. At a certain point the realities of the waged war will be too large and imposing to distort, obfuscate, or leave unreported.
In the case of Russiagate, when the Times and all the media that ape it had finished all their lying and disinformation and the house of cards collapsed, they tiptoed quietly out the side door. I see no chance of this in the Ukraine case. American media helped to make up Russiagate out of whole cloth. The Ukraine conflict is too real for all that.
In my expectation, the administration and these media will, post-elections, wage the presented war with less intensity, possibly bringing it at least slightly more in line with the waged war. They will have to think of something as, gradually but almost certainly, reality catches up to them and they cannot make a war disappear.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
“War as Presentation”
Perhaps “Presentation as War” would prove more illuminating and strategically appropriate ?
I overall enjoy these articles however, the comment about ‘no significant gains’ while ironically also talking about the ‘actual waged war’, shows a disconnect from the reality over there. Geography matters and to excuse the Russian retreat as anything but strategic, poorly reflects the gains and losses suffered. Sometimes it is necessary to get a deeper picture than the top-down approach that generalizes the reality. The war is going terrible for both sides. From the individual to the country/ies. Russia presently is suffering from military prestige. It is being poorly organized by the Russian military. Fortunately for the Russians, they have deep reserves and can wait everyone else out but presently they are losing. Anything short of a complete victory for them is a defeat for them.
I wonder whether Patrick has lost his sense of outrage and believes that quietly reassuring the converted that they’re still not alone is about all the good that remains for him to do while he seeks comfort in milk, cookies, and fluffy blankets. Does his gorge not still rise when the PBS NewsHour’s intro emphasizes honesty, balance, and trust and continues with icon Judy Woodruff fully ensconced as an aging presstitute who isn’t merely required to read what she’s fed but manages the material herself, proving that if she ever had an ounce of journalistic integrity it evaporated long ago.
This increasingly turbulent cesspool of mainstream news propaganda is hardly based upon the coming U.S. election (which as usual won’t make a hell of a lot of difference even here unless external events open up more fluidity) but on mounting fear among the world’s power elite that the U.S. may finally have over-reached in its military adventurism in a manner that may upset their comfortable world order and create one less to their liking. That’s why mainstream news in the U.K., France, Germany and elsewhere exhibits the same frenetic denial (“Nothing to see here. Move along, move along”) along with increasing restrictions on freedom of speech.
My understanding was the deal with Iran to keep the hostages until Reagan’s election was brokered by Mossad. Reagan was vulnerable to the story he trading hostages for the Presidency getting publicized. The Neocons flooded into the administration.
I’m sorry to report that the MSM has not forgotten or given up on Russiagate. In fact, today’s (Nov 2, 2022) New York Times contains a long article on Russiagate, which is explicitly presented as an actual attempt by Russia to collude with the Trump campaign. The absence of hard supporting evidence does not affect the narrative. It’s hard to imagine the Russophobes ever shutting it down.
The author (of this article) places too much importance on certain details of the press coverage. A better issue to focus on would be the matter of why and how democratic nations/countries (some distinction is important here but I have not the time) produce the causes that lead to the selection of leadership. And what does the press have to do with this? I know the coverage is bad; there is no dispute there. The Ukraine war is about the brutality of the Russians. The Russians are a menace to the world. The U. S. is an established country, which has had considerable influence for a century or more. Russia is a backwater, and a country behaving with astonishing cruelty. That is the main story.
Repost just in case some AI in your ‘moderation’ is suffering from indigestion:
I wonder whether Patrick has lost his sense of outrage and believes that quietly reassuring the converted that they’re still not alone is about all the good that remains for him to do while he seeks comfort in milk, cookies, and fluffy blankets. Does his gorge not still rise when the PBS NewsHour’s intro emphasizes honesty, balance, and trust and continues with icon Judy Woodruff fully ensconced as an aging presstitute who isn’t merely required to read what she’s fed but manages the material herself, proving that if she ever had an ounce of journalistic integrity it evaporated long ago.
This increasingly turbulent cesspool of mainstream news propaganda is hardly based upon the coming U.S. election (which as usual won’t make a hell of a lot of difference even here unless external events open up more fluidity) but on mounting fear among the world’s power elite that the U.S. may finally have over-reached in its military adventurism in a manner that may upset their comfortable world order and create one less to their liking. That’s why mainstream news in the U.K., France, Germany and elsewhere exhibits the same frenetic denial (“Nothing to see here. Move along, move along”) along with increasing restrictions on freedom of speech.
For once, I disagree with Mr. Lawrence, and Mr. Putin too, I guess. It’s not elections and the necessary performance shows for votes that determine US foreign policy. I wish it was! If it was, at least the performances would be directed towards what the people may actually want.
But American foreign policy is determined entirely by what’s good for MICIMATT … nothing else matters. The performances, from the MSM “news” to the incessant “arguments” between the Rs and the Ds serve primarily to dissemble. When the time comes to vote for war, all of them, from the pwogwessives to the nonconservatives vote for the Complex and its jobs and profits.
The election time kabuki is just a show … they would rather lose than change their actual policies. Happily for them, they usually get to keep their job AND the money!
Maybe the US media will.have it’s wake-up moment soon enough, like Walter Cronkite did after Tet: “I thought we were winning this war!”
Don’t look now, but the NYT is tripling down on Russiagate, with an article today claiming to connect Trump’s “subservience” to Putin with the war. It’s Putin infiltrating our Precious Bodily Fluids, all over again…
The Democrats in Congress are said to be ready to spend another $50-60 billion in Ukraine aid after the elections.
One wonders what the U.S. could have done with the $18 Billion it has so far invested in the war in Ukraine. Biden and Congress are fools to be doing this. Meanwhile the poor in the U.S. and the rest of the world continue to search for food and water; and corporations grow richer.
FIREWOOD, WARM CLOTHES AND HOT SOUP
Every now and then the presenters lose their place in their script and give us a peek
into the waged war. One source informed us that the soldiers wanted firewood, warm
clothes and that they were trying to make their own weapons. Former General David
Petraeus remarked that the Ukrainian army always has the advantage because other
Ukrainians will always give them hot soup. One wonders if our giant defense contractors
could put together a package to deliver these items!! (For profit, of course,)
As Lawrence eloquently points out there is little information about the real war, the
waged war, which seems that the Ukrainian army is indeed losing. But Zelensky was an actor and
he knows that he must play his part to the end and pretend that more and more weapons
will somehow win the war for the Ukrainian army.
I doubt it!
Thanks Mr. Lawrence. You are spot on as always. Me thinks the whole thing will come crashing down at some point post mid-terms.
The totally negative effects of the American propaganda – their PR can even get you to believe the world really is flat.
Over twenty years President Putin has carefully explained the position of Russia but of course even Oliver Stone’s interviews are rubbished by the everyday US citizen (at least the Democratic Party followers!)with his or her personal view that of course the Russians are evil and Putin is the worst.
Reading Putin’s speech at the Munich Security conference in 2007 and all relevant speeches ever since with an open mind(!) tells us that his suggestions are sensible, relevant and could be of benefit to all of us interested in peace and fairness. Of course this is the point! The USA wants to run the globe and any deviation is unacceptable. Russia may not have security rights when NATO is in charge. China may not advance technically and have influence over other nations (who voluntarily join the BRI) because we are the boss. Look how well we have managed the world so far!!!
I wonder whether Patrick has lost his sense of outrage and believes that quietly reassuring the converted that they’re still not alone is about all the good that remains for him to do while he seeks comfort in milk, cookies, and fluffy blankets. Does his gorge not still rise when the PBS NewsHour’s intro emphasizes honesty, balance, and trust and continues with icon Judy Woodruff fully ensconced as an aging presstitute who isn’t merely required to read what she’s fed but manages the material herself, proving that if she ever had an ounce of journalistic integrity it evaporated long ago.
This increasingly turbulent cesspool of mainstream news propaganda is hardly based upon the coming U.S. election (which as usual won’t make a hell of a lot of difference even here unless external events open up more fluidity) but on mounting fear among the world’s power elite that the U.S. may finally have over-reached in its military adventurism in a manner that may upset their comfortable world order and create one less to their liking. That’s why mainstream news in the U.K., France, Germany and elsewhere exhibits the same frenetic denial (“Nothing to see here. Move along, move along”) along with increasing restrictions on freedom of speech.
Here’s an example of ‘presented’ war and ‘waged’ war. A friend of 50 years just happened to join me as I watched Scott Ritter (on the Galloway MOATS show) talking about what’s happening in Ukraine. My friend was genuinely and obviously astounded at the difference between Ritter’s analysis and all he thought he knew from his daily helpings of the BBC and the Guardian. I was gratified to hear said friend say that he took Ritter’s analysis to be the more realistic and convincing. Have to see whether I can get my friend to add CN to his daily fare.
Mercouris is excellent, as are Ritter and Macgregor. But a fully rounded picture of events requires one to distinguish military, economic, and diplomatic levels of four distinct wars, all related like a Matryushka doll: the war between the Ukrainian government and ethnic Russians in the Donbass (begun 2014) contained in the war between Russia and Ukraine (begun February) contained in the war between Russia and US/NATO (begun with NATO expansion in the 1990s) contained in the overarching war that pits China/Russia against the collective West (begun in earnest with Obama’s pivot to Asia). The first war has now been folded into the second, which won’t end until the third war does. This however can only happen if the Europeans break with the Americans or America changes its policy and give Russia the security guarantees it demanded last December and will continue to insist on as the price of peace in Europe. The fourth won’t end until the superior leadership and planning of China and Russia effect a controlled demolition of US financial power and leaves the bozos who run the West no choice but to sue for terms and accept to become part of the multipolar world now emerging.
Excellent comment! I expect the collective powers across the world to unite and do to the US what we have done to Cuba: build a fence around us and keep us locked in the moment of our collapse for a century or more. We’ll be reduced to a defensive position and adopt into perpetuity a culture based on 1950’s to 1990’s culture. It will be the complete infantilization of our populace. I mean it happens to every Empire throughout history – why should we expect it won’t happen to us? Of course, our Gitmo’s will be in the center of each town and city, not on the edge of a contrived legality as we have done in Cuba. There’s a reason why the US has exited every human rights organization it could over the last thirty years. Being the light of the world is a lonely business – we just wanted to join all along the unquestionable justice of state control. Democracy is now just a tea and finger sandwiches event where the sandwiches contain the real fingers of those who need to be purged for their dissent. Julian Assange is a test balloon for the future order.
Austin’s Raytheon and the other war industry corporations reap
billions in profits as long as the U.S./NATO proxy war continues,
so do the elections matter?
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks matter absolutely, but the truthful
publisher continues to be held prisoner by corporate state media.
Image the New York Times printing accurately what the CIA and
FBI have done to him; he’d be out the next day.
Stupidity is leading us to war.
The Biden Mob must be removed before
They fire a nuclear warhead.
So China, you’ll count your dead,
And so will USA from shore to shore.
Americans, do you not realize
The magus you “elected” isn’t wise?
He dreams that he’ll be winning
The war that he’s beginning.
The lights have all gone out behind his eyes.
A related point has struck me over the last few months.
The USA has been involved in Endless Wars ever since Bush/Cheney. And yet, the American public appears to know very little about modern warfare. The discussions that are heard appear to bear more relation to World War II than to modern warfare some 80 years later. This is even more odd, because so many Americans have served time in the world’s largest military that one would think that the basics of modern warfare would be well known in such a militarized society.
A possible reason for this is of course that both the public and the troops are constantly and regularly lied to. Perhaps the ‘troops’ more so than the public. Both also watch a regular diet of comic book movies apparently as well. These two factors, related to each other, would explain why it is that a public that has been at war for over 2 decades appears to know very little about actual warfare.
The USA has been in continuous war since WWII. One could pretty accurately say that the USA has been at continuous war since the country was founded. The USA is a country built by and upon war. The war and holocaust against native Americans were underway long before the USA became a country. These wars continued throughout the Revolutionary War and on through the 19th century. The last Native American to formally surrender to USA forces was Geronimo in 1886. On top of the continuous wars with Native Americans were several other wars throughout the 19th century: the 2nd war with England, the war with Mexico which decreased the area of Mexico by well over 50%, the UnCivil War, the illegal annexation of Hawaii, and the war with Spain. Spain surrendered in 1898 and several formerly Spanish territories fell under the control of the USA but local forces in the surrendered territories from Cuba to the Philippines resisted for several years. All were eventually brought under control, most with severe brutality. The 20th century has obviously not been an exception but has only gotten more brutal.
America: the Earth’s cancer.
“We are urged at every turn to dismiss everything Vladimir Putin says as upside down to the truth.”
Well the “Americans” need to be exceptional in some things since “We the people hold these truths to be self-evident”, except for “Americans” who don’t dismiss everything and hence are “exceptional” in requiring to be urged since “All the people don’t find these truths to be self-evident”, thereby exposing that “The United States of America” are not united except when you conflate contrary types of “exceptionalism”.
There is a difference between being ‘exceptional’ and ‘exceptionable’.
“There is a difference between being ‘exceptional’ and ‘exceptionable’.”
Yes in spelling, but not generally in outcomes, hence the content of MirrorGazers November 1, 2022 at 15:25 in regard to facilitations of enmazement of some through mirror gazing.