Modern American history From Cold War to the Present

Modern American history From Cold War to the Present

The below is the analysis of all the books relating to the history. The main thing that I have noticed while preparing for this essay is that American history reveals the significance of democracy and the role of media in highlighting the Cold War.

Susan Brewer Book Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda

Brewer guides the reader through the major U.S. conflicts of the past century in an engaging narrative that analyzes how various presidential administrations devised and conducted propaganda campaigns to rally public support for the Philippine War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003).  Devoting separate chapters to each of these conflicts, she finds that the government's “strategies of persuasion” follow a general historical pattern featuring a narrative that cast the president of the United States in the lead role of a Manichean drama where the United States reluctantly took up arms to defend liberty, democracy, and civilization against a relentless and barbaric enemy who threatened not only U.S. interests, but also the very existence of American society (p. 12).

The decision to send troops to fight overseas invariably provoked public debate about both the wisdom of going to war and the extent to which the purpose and conduct of the war lived up to national ideals.  To contend with dissent, potential and actual, U.S. officials have managed the news in varying ways in order to better define and settle disputes on their own terms.  To this end, the state has taken advantage of its role as the source of official information and its power to censor the news.  The mass media, the author finds, has historically abetted rather than impeded government propaganda campaigns.  In some cases, the media found the state's dramatic narratives depicting heroes and villains too compelling and marketable to pass up.  In others, the government simply imposed restrictions to prevent journalists from conveying unwanted truths to the public, such as the official ban on using the word “retreat” in reporting during the Korean War (p. 162).

The Second World War, according to Brewer, temporarily diverged from the general pattern when the Roosevelt administration originally defined the target audience for wartime propaganda as an educated, informed citizen who needed to be persuaded of the viability and righteousness of Uncle Sam's plans.  However, this idea neither survived the war, nor was it resurrected in subsequent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq.  These limited conflicts, unlike the total mobilization of 1941-45, required relatively fewer contributions or sacrifices, and as Brewer observes, less civic participation.  Indeed, the author advances a compelling, if disturbing argument that since 1945, civic participation in wartime has declined to the point where citizens are asked to serve only as spectators and cheerleaders (Brewer, 2009).  The mass media, she contends, has usually failed to challenge the official line in any meaningful way until discrepancies between the official narrative and reality became so evident (as occurred ...