Diversions
By Mowahid Hussain Shah

On October 23, 1983, Washington was rocked by the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 US military personnel, the deadliest single attack on Americans since World War II.
Two days later, on October 25, Reagan invaded with 7,000 US troops the tiny Caribbean island of Granada “to restore order and democracy.” When Reagan won reelection by a landslide, Grenada had “replaced the bitter memory of the massacre at Lebanon,” according to PBS News.
On August 17, 1998, President Clinton admitted to a grand jury that he had had an “improper physical relationship” with Monica Lewinsky in an escalating scandal. Three days later, on August 20, he launched missiles at Afghanistan and Sudan, which only ended up destroying the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum. Lawmakers from both parties rallied behind the President’s actions, according to the Washington Post, although it was also speculated that this was a diversion from a huge domestic embarrassment.
The White House today is mired in scandal and legal difficulties. Missiles were fired into Syria on April 13, ostensibly to knock out chemical weapons producing facilities. On April 14, CBS-TV News’ Seth Doane, the only network correspondent inside Syria, visited the site of the US missile strike on the Barzeh complex in Damascus and found no evidence it was being used for developing chemical weapons.
While the Palestinian agony endures in Gaza, to bypass the topic, a new agenda-driven inauthentic crisis is being drummed up about tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, with the concurrence of the Arab Establishment.
In the instant communication digital age, attention is easily distracted. It is easy, thereby, to pivot public attention to the mundane from the core, wherein the ordinary is made to appear extraordinary, and the trivial is presented as significant.
The easy propensity to use force marks a failure of the Western alliance and of the supine UN, with its veto element making it, in effect, a tool of big powers.
In 2003, already embroiled in the Afghan quagmire, the Bush administration artificially inflated the specter of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction leading, in effect, to the war of mass distraction in Iraq with a predictable outcome of destruction. The buildup to the Iraq invasion of 2003 shows how easy it is to inflame public sentiment and manipulate the media, with skillful packaging and marketing.
Social media, too, has played a part in eroding attention span and impeding ability to think clearly. In its negative side, it has become a platform for disinformation hindering the capacity for deep, contemplative thought.
Pertinent to this discussion was the 1998 movie, “Wag the Dog”, which depicted how an embattled US President wanted to change newspaper headlines by manufacturing a fake international crisis with Albania. The choice of Albania was significant because it was a country about which Americans knew little, hence the chances of the White House escaping critical public scrutiny was excellent.
The strategy of distraction, according to Noam Chomsky, is: “Maintaining public attention diverted away from the real social problems, captivated by matters of no real importance. Keep the public busy, busy, busy, no time to think.”