Glenn Greenwald, theintercept.com [Original article contains links.]
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Excerpt:
This is standard fare in U.S. war propaganda: we fixate on the Americans who are killed, learning their names and life stories and the plight of their spouses and parents, but steadfastly ignore the innocent people the U.S. government kills, whose numbers are always far greater. There is thus a sprawling, moving monument in the center of Washington, D.C. commemorating the 58,000 U.S. soldiers who died in Vietnam, but not the (at least) 2 million Vietnamese civilians killed by that war.
Politicians and commentators condemning the Iraq War always mention the 4,000 U.S. soldiers who die but rarely mention the hundreds of thousands (at least) innocent Iraqis killed: they don’t exist, are unmentionable. After a terror attack aimed at Americans, we are deluged with media profiles and photographs of the victims, learning their life aspirations and wallowing in the grief of their families, but we almost never hear anything about any of the innocent victims killed by the U.S. ...
By dramatizing the deaths of Americans while disappearing its victims, this technique ensures that Americans perpetually regard themselves as victims of horrific, savage, tragic violence but never the perpetrators of it. That, in turn, is what keeps Americans supporting endless war: these savages keep killing us, so we have no choice but to fight them. ...
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