Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteConsider the "Primary Story" the one conventionally observed through the Big Media and associated "straight journalism" lens and interpreted at face value.
Simple enough?
It would seem so: if we trust the reporting to have been accurate, then we may trust our filters to have responded to news appropriately (according to how we were raised, educated, and informed), and in doing so move along secure in our similarly conventional wisdom.
In the open societies at least since World War II, the elements of Big Media may have at times come to blows over the meaning of events, but by and large the receptive public accepts at least the facts and overall impression of events and their portent, leaving enthusiasm for wildly alternative reporting and conspiracy theories to clever and imaginative pundits if not exactly a crackpot fringe.
We're not only unaccustomed to informational flim-flam from the main body of reporters, we're most certainly not familiar with any elected government creating an impression adverse to our interest to cover an intent well within our interests.
By and large, we have taken U.S. President Obama's vaunted realignment with Islam and glaringly public snarls, snubs, and stops involving israel's government in the same vein.
What we've seen a year and a half into Obama's administration would seem to be what we're getting, and for conservative Jewry, which looks out for all of the Jewish community, what we've seen doesn't look good.
However, entertaining the concept of the "Double Story" takes us into the ideation that creates out of any given set of facts an entirely improbable possibility.
Americans, Jews, and, I like to say, Danish Cartoonists generally find themselves on the receiving end of the double stories floating out of the many quarters of the Islamic Small Wars: not Al Qaeda, don't you know, but the CIA and Mossad took down the Twin Towers, an elaborate "false flag" operation to pave the way for making war on Islam, a preposterous theory--even Noam Chomsky has debunked it--but fashionable for some as a double story with its own persistent "9/11 Truth" movement.
The double story, my term for a class of narrative containing two tales--i.e., a sensible primary story accompanied by many squirrely thoughts racing around beneath it on facts reported, borrowed, and invented--may be played by . . . guess who?
What if, for example, Obama's egregious treatment of Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has been largely for show and with some domestic Israeli pain added for emphasis?
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Well here comes the "Blair Resignation" involving the now former, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, wihch brings up a name frequently paired with his as an antagonist: John O. Brennan, also a top advisor to the Obama Administration. Lately, Brennan, as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, has been talking of reaching out to elements within the terrorist organization Hezbollah, talk that may be taken as yet another slap in Israel's face.
However, just about two years ago during Obama's election phase, Brennan also demurred from selection for an Administration role over his record of support for Bush-era CIA-approved practices like waterboarding and "rendition" for terrorist suspects.
Whatever Brennan may believe today about Bush's "War on Terror" and his role in it, he's had his bona fides as some kind of hardliner for a while--it's doubtful he's traded in the fundamentals of his career character at this stage.
Then too given the military relationship between Washington and Jerusalem, notes like this one referring to trade in military technology pop up in the news now and then (this is just one I could find quickly on the web):
This aid serves an American interest, of course: It wants its allies, including Israel, to all use compatible operational systems and logistical infrastructure. Therefore, Washington wants Israel to acquire F-35 aircraft. Should the U.S. Air Force, which will be primarily using F-35s in the coming years, need to deploy squadrons to Israel during an emergency, it would want to find suitable maintenance here (Oren, April 29, 2010).
While Obama greets Binny at the back door and Clinton puts down her foot, the U.S. military and the IDF continue working on the same nifty rides and planning for adventures in the years ahead.
Were a Palestine created without a state military, Israel and the United States and allies would have to keep secure its exterior boundaries, and if there's something, anything, other than diplomatic signal in the slights, the appeasing talk, the so-called realignment, and general appearance of inaction in the shadow of aggression, pray tell what it was or is.
Writing for Haaretz, Amir Oren seems to suggest that America's leverage of Israel's defense assets weakens the posture of Israel's conservative government, but here the double story might apply: the superficial look of circumstances involving an American turn to the far left accompanied by outreach into factional competitions within the Islamic Small Wars from al-Shabaab rivals in Somalia to elements within Hezbollah looks like change, but such may not represent anything changed within the realpolitik of the engagement with militant Islam and its associates.
It's possible that all that has changed is the public impression of states of affairs formed out of spotlighted moments of political stage craft intended to "show the hand of peace" as promised and make of it a convincing show and argument.
For the time being, it remains far in the interests of the open societies to avoid accelerating or intensifying hot conflicts, ongoing or potential, associated with the Islamic Small Wars while feverishly--and this a little bit to a lot under the news radar--grinding and realigning militant edges or de-energizing their motivation.
The same thought applies to feigning away from any premature direct challenge to Tehran.
The double story as psychologically reactive to information may remain forever a common but marginalized phenomenon in the folk life of the open societies--and pray they remain open!--while the notion that such may be deliberately constructed has been with us since the invention of magic shows, propaganda, and public relations. In this suggested double story scenario, instead of producing a reassuring Yankee Doodle impression of its diplomatic and military strategy, Obama's Administration has given at least conservative analysts a most sinister sequence of signals, and yet the whole shimmers between "real and believe it"--and, so far, the writers I read have taken that track-- and "staged" (and all will turn out well).
If all turns out well indeed, and whether near or far in the future, the world at large may dispense with its indulgence in elaborate conspiracies and fantasies woven out of the atmosphere produced by characteristically autocratic, opaque, and secretive governments and ersatz thugocracies.
Reference
Associated Press. "Intelligence director to resign." Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2010: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2010/05/ap-source-intelligence-director-to-resign.html
Mazzetti, Mark. "Blair to Leave Intelligence Post After Rocky Tenure." The New York Times, May 20, 2010: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/us/politics/21intel.html
Greenwald, Glenn. "John Brennan and Bush's Interrogation/Detention Policies." PolitiFi, February 6, 2010: http://politifi.com/news/John-Brennan-and-Bushs-interrogationdetention-policies-173939.html
Greenwald, Glen. "John Brennan and Bush's Interrogation/Detention Policies." Salon, November 16, 2008: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/11/16/brennan/
Oren, Amir. "U.S.-IDF Relations are much warmer than U.S.-Israel ties." Haaretz, April 29, 2010: http://www.haaretz.com/magazine/week-s-end/u-s-idf-relations-are-much-warmer-than-u-s-israel-ties-1.287443
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