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Historical Precedent. American Press Policy in Occupied Iraq.Pdf Historical Precedent? American Press Policy in Occupied Iraq Cora Sol Goldstein Department of Political Science California State University at Long Beach Long Beach, California 90840-4605 [email protected] Prepared for delivery at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 30th-September 2nd, 2007. The American occupation of Germany (1945-1949) stands as a model of a successful exercise in democratization by force. In fact, top figures in the Bush administration, including Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld, have compared the American experiences in postwar Germany and in postwar Iraq. In this paper, I compare American information control policy in Germany (1945-1949) and Iraq (2003-2006).The comparative analysis indicates that the American information control policy was very different in the two cases. In Germany, the U.S. Army and the Office of Military Government U.S. in Germany (OMGUS) exerted rigorous control over the media to block Nazi propaganda and introduce the American political agenda of democratization. With the emergence of the Cold War, OMGUS and its Soviet counterpart, the Sowjetische Militaradministration in Deutschland (SMAD), used all the avenues of mass communications and cultural affairs–newspapers, journals, feature and documentary films, posters, and radio–to disseminate their strategic propaganda and to deliver the messages coming from Washington and Moscow. Therefore, from 1945 to 1949, the Americans were able to shape the content of information in the American zone and sector. In the case of Iraq, the Coalition forces failed to exert a similar degree of information control. As a result of this strategic error, the insurgency and civilian movements opposed to the American presence in Iraq have been able to control information and spread their anti-American messages. The German Case During WWII, psychological warfare played an important role in the American military strategy against the Third Reich. As soon as the U.S. Army entered Germany, the American psychological warfare experts projected consolidation propaganda in occupied Germany. The goal of this campaign was to convince the German population about the finality of defeat and to persuade them to cooperate with the Americans. At the same time, the U.S. Army shut down the German newspapers, journals, and radio stations still in operation in the American zone and sector, to ensure a monopoly over information and propaganda. As a result, the information Germans in the American zone received came exclusively from the American information fliers (Mitteilungblätter), army newspapers, and Radio Luxembourg. After V-E Day, the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme Headquarters, American Expeditionary Forces (PWD/SHAEF) became the Information Control Division (ICD) in Germany (May 12, 1945). The head of PWD/SHAEF, General Robert C. McClure, commanded the new outfit, and kept much of the PWD/SHAEF personnel.1 Initially ICD was independent from the military government, but in February 1946 it became fully incorporated into OMGUS. At first, ICD officers were primarily concerned with the denazification of the media. ICD banned German journalists who were considered politically tainted by their Nazi past from the new German press, and prohibited Nazi, militaristic, and nationalistic messages that could inflame pro-Nazi sympathies and encourage resistance to the American project in Germany. While this vetting process was taking place, ICD began to select and license Germans editors to run newspapers and journals. ICD succeeded in selecting a politically and ideologically heterogeneous group of Germans to run newspapers and journals. By mid-1946, ICD had given press licenses to seventy-three Germans, including twenty-nine Social Democrats, seventeen Christian Democrats, and five Communists.2 Thus, while OMGUS imposed rigid political and ideological censorship to ban the diffusion of Nazi, nationalist, and militaristic messages, it sought political diversity and allowed the development of a variegated political discourse.3 While the licensed German editors were committed to the creation of a new democratic Germany, ICD kept close watch over their publications. Initially, ICD exerted pre-publication censorship, but in August 1945, it switched to post-publication scrutiny. The German editors were free to run their operations, but there was always the possibility of post-production reprimands that could lead to the removal of licenses. Thus, ICD defined and policed the boundaries of the acceptable and the desirable in the political and cultural fields, and monitored and regulated the information that reached Germans in the American zone and sector. The early American press policy in occupied Germany reflects the ideological profile of the ICD press officers during the first two years of occupation. Many of ICD’s psychological warfare officers were scholars with first hand experience in Germany. A significant portion were New Dealers, intellectuals, emigrés, Jews, and leftists enthusiastic about the possibility of helping to build a democratic and pluralist society from the ashes of Nazism.5 Moreover, the majority of the ICD Berlin division were German emigrés.6 Therefore, many ICD officers spoke German, knew about German culture, and understood German society and German history. In 1945, OMGUS press officers welcomed the collaboration of the German Left with enthusiasm and without reservation, as part of the process of creating a new democratic German press and culture. With the Cold War, the OMGUS press policy changed. Occupied Germany became the first battlefront of the postwar chapter of psychological warfare between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. After 1946, the possibility of an independent and united postwar Germany rapidly vanished. Both the Americans and the Soviets began to use the new German media in their respective zones and sectors to attack each other and to spread propaganda messages. For example, in March 1946, OMGUS forced Neue Zeitung, the flagship newspaper in its zone, to change its editorial policy to reflect the American foreign policy stand. Neue Zeitung became a mouthpiece for OMGUS to counteract Soviet propaganda in Berlin.7 By early 1947, most publications that did not follow the OMGUS anti-Communist directives were either terminated or their editors replaced. The ICD personnel changed, and the original press officers were replaced by Cold War warriors. As a consequence, German editors considered suspicious were removed and replaced by a new breed of journalists.9 In August 1947, Emil Carlebach, a Communist who survived Buchenwald and had been given a license to publish the Frankfurter Rundschau in 1945, was fired.10 Der Ruf, a popular political and cultural journal, was shut down because ICD considered it pro-Communist, in spite of the fact that SMAD had denounced the publication.11 In October 1947, General Lucius D. Clay, the American Military Governor, launched Operation Talk Back, a counter-propaganda measure designed to use the German media in the American zone and sector to respond to and combat Soviet anti- American propaganda. A strict anti-Communist line was imposed on the American-licensed German press, equivalent and complementary to the SMAD line that prevailed in the Soviet zone and sector. The Iraqi case The psychological warfare campaign of Operation Iraqi Freedom was successful because it convinced the Iraqi Army not to resist. This allowed the U.S. military to take Baghdad with a small number of troops. However, contrary to the German case, the Coalition forces did not continue their psychological warfare agenda after the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime. Therefore, the Americans did not put in place a full blown and coherent program of information control in Iraq. Instead, the Defense Department envisioned the creation of a “Rapid Reaction Media Team” to oversee the dismantling of the Iraqi state-run media, and to set up the American financed and run “Iraqi Free Media” network. This American-controlled network was to function as the Pentagon’s propaganda outlet for Iraq.12 Saddam Hussein had exerted total control over the Iraqi media. In fact, since 1968 Iraqis were only able to access government-produced newspapers. The Iraqi Ministry of Information appointed all of the country’s journalists. Iraqi journalists had to belong to the Baath Party, and had to be very careful because insulting the president was punishable by death. The Hussein regime was hostile to journalists and did not allow independent media. One of Saddam’s sons, Uday Hussein, chaired the Journalists’ Union and controlled about a dozen newspapers, including al-Thaura (The Revolution), Babil, and al-Jamorriya (The Republic). These papers published front-page photographs of Saddam Hussein every day. Uday Hussein was also in charge of Iraq’s three state-run television and radio stations. In 2003, there were thirteen television stations and seventy-four radio stations, all under sate control.13 The Iraqi government was the exclusive Internet provider, and access was only available in cybercafes strictly controlled by the security police. Satellites were prohibited, although the potentates of the regime had access to satellite news.14 Once Saddam Hussein was toppled, the number of Iraqi publications grew significantly, reaching more than two hundred. Since the Coalition forces did not shut down and secure Iraqi printing presses, everyone who had access to a printing press began publishing. Many of the newspapers
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