There’s something about Bush declaring a smackdown of Hezbollah that reminds me of the Pharoah Ramses II and his truthiness version of the battle of Qadesh. In 1273, Ramses declared victory over the Hittites despite massive Egyptian casualties and the loss of Syria. Lo and behold, as Bush does his hamster dance of hegemony, here comes Hezbollah’s announcement of historic, strategic victory.

It’s exceedingly difficult for the average person to draw rational conclusions about what’s going on between Israel and Lebanon. The pundits have placed almost as much emphasis on the meta-analysis of the media war as the actual, physical, bullet-wound-causing conflict.

In the Israeli corner, we have doctored photos and cries of Hezbollywood.   In the Hezbollah corner, we have Israel’s obsession with getting out the message and Israeli propaganda pamphlets raining from the sky (I saw this on the news last night - sorry, no link).

Israel’s “right to defend itself” is countered by the bodies of civilian martyrs. The reluctance of Lebanon to recast their freedom fighters as terrorists is countered by the tarring of all Islamic countries as tribal throwbacks that condone such hideous practices as honor killing.    

As I watched the news last night, it was clear that the terms of the cease-fire were dictated by Israel. They issued the demands, and they were keeping all the Lebanese prisoners. Was my first thought “Israel won!” No, my first thought was “this will never be over”, because the focus is on defining the winner instead of solving the problems. Anyone who has been watching the news from the Middle East for the last couple of weeks knows that it’s highly unlikely that Hezbollah will allow Israel just to count coup. Egregiously inaccurate spin is just likely to crank up passions-of-no-return on both sides.

It’s time for someone to say it: framing is the same thing as spin - in fact it’s spin on the word spin that helps the people working on your campaign to see their efforts to manipulate the media as somehow more morally righteous than the “smears” and “swiftboating” coming from the other side. Framing is about positive partisanship, the alternative to wishy-washy compromises of civility - but it also enables way too much asshattery.

In the political realm there’s a very thin line between spin and an outright lie. There’s nothing so disheartening to the voting public as an opportunistic lie (except maybe a nest of cronies dedicated to propping up an obvious lie). Standing on a lie is a standing invitation to merciless mockery.

PR spending DOUBLED under the Bush regime. Honestly, there’s a point where all the words and images don’t even have any meaning anymore. I swear every time I turn on the news now, all I hear is “blah, blah, blah…” I’m suffering from spin-exhaustion.

Israel is currently in a conflict with neighboring states. There is a complex history behind this conflict that involves numerous wrongs by all parties. Israel is now making hard decisions about when to attack and when parry: whether these decisions are righteous, necessary, or Machiavellian is not for the American TV audience to decide. The only thing the “media war” can achieve is public pressure for the U.S. to throw its weight around on one side or the other. It seems to me the U.S. shouldn’t be throwing its weight around at all here. This is something that needs to be worked out between the parties involved, and with all the media manipulation at hand, U.S. intervention on behalf of the side with the best “message” is likely to a) make the situation worse by inflaming passions over media misrepresentation, and b) encourage even more manipulation of the media now that the media has proclaimed itself a crucial arena for “warfare”.

If Israel runs roughshod over Lebanon with their superior armed forces, then they may have to deal with strained relations with their other neighbors. Or maybe those neighbors will prefer to make nice with Israel, downplaying Islamic ties in favor of practical statecraft. This is Israel’s call to make. Turning this into a “media war” in the U.S. is just another way to make global affairs all about “us” (and our Media Power) and not “them”.