Why America Fights

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Why America Fights explores how the U.S. government has sold war aims designed to rally public support throughout the 20th century. On the evening of September 11, 2002, with the Statue of Liberty shimmering in the background, television cameras captured President George W. Bush as he advocated the charge for war against Iraq. This carefully staged performance, writes Susan Brewer, was the culmination of a long tradition of sophisticated wartime propaganda in America. In Why America Fights, Brewer offers a fascinating history of how successive presidents have conducted what Donald Rumsfeld calls "perception management," from McKinley's war in the Philippines to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Her intriguing account ranges from analyses of wartime messages to descriptions of the actual operations, from the dissemination of patriotic ads and posters to the management of newspaper, radio, and TV media. When Woodrow Wilson carried the nation into World War I, he created the Committee on Public Information, led by George Creel, who called his job "the world's greatest adventure in advertising." In World War II, Roosevelt's Office of War Information avowed a "strategy of truth," though government propaganda still depicted Japanese soldiers as buck-toothed savages. After examining the ultimately failed struggle to cast the Vietnam War in a favorable light, Brewer shows how the Bush White House drew explicit lessons from that history as it engaged in an unprecedented effort to sell a preemptive war in Iraq. Yet the thrust of its message was not much different from McKinley's pronouncements about America's civilizing mission. Impressively researched and argued, filled with surprising details, Why America Fights shows how presidents have consistently drummed up support for foreign wars by appealing to what Americans want to believe about themselves.

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Ontdek de fascinerende wereld van militaire geschiedenis met het boek Why America Fights van Susan A. Brewer. Dit paperback boek van 342 pagina's biedt een diepgaande analyse van hoe de Amerikaanse overheid oorlogen heeft gepromoot en publieke steun heeft weten te mobiliseren door de jaren heen. Met een focus op de 20e eeuw, onthult Brewer de strategieën die presidenten hebben gebruikt om oorlogen te rechtvaardigen en de publieke opinie te beïnvloeden. Dit boek is een must-read voor iedereen die geïnteresseerd is in de complexe relatie tussen oorlog en propaganda. De belangrijkste kenmerken van Why America Fights zijn de gedetailleerde analyses van oorlogscampagnes en de rol van media. Brewer onderzoekt hoe presidenten, van McKinley tot Bush, gebruik hebben gemaakt van perceptiebeheer om hun oorlogsinspanningen te verkopen. Het boek biedt inzicht in de strategieën van propaganda die zijn toegepast, inclusief de creatie van de Committee on Public Information en de Office of War