In the 1920s, it was quite fashionable for those in Western political circles to openly gloat that they were imperialists the same way Cecil John Rhodes boasted of being a colonial master in East London in the late 1890s.

Equally in the 1930s, just before Goebbels outclassed Western propagandists from the Allied Forces, the term propaganda was used openly as an acceptable methodology of propagating doctrines and ideology.

After World War II and during the Cold War, the term propaganda, just like the now despicable terms – colonialism and imperialism – assumed a rancid and fetid sense of irresponsibility and immorality.

The control of the public mind has become central to the goals of those running international propaganda institutions, and this is the central power centre that drives Western foreign policy.

In a well functioning propaganda system, consent is manufactured and not earned.

People are made to believe that when the United States uses force against Iraq and Afghanistan, it is because the US observes the principle that the illegal occupation of Kuwait and the "human rights abuses" of the Taliban as well as the tyranny of Saddam Hussein are evils that must be met by force.

After all, the Taliban are seen as a terrorist group that protected Osama bin Laden and his dreadful monster called Al-Qaeda.

The people in the West do not see and are not allowed to see what would happen if those principles were applied to US behaviour on the international scene.

That is the spectacular success story of propaganda and the manufacturing of consent.

In 2002, there was a media build-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion and people in the West were made to swallow the nonsensical lie that a defenceless Saddam Hussein running a peasant army was an awesome threat to the existence of this planet.

In August 1990, media coverage in the West centred on Saddam’s aggressive behaviour towards Kuwait but they kept unheard the voice of Iraq’s exiled democratic opposition to Hussein.

The leaders of this opposition had actually visited Washington in February 1989 with a plea for some kind of support for a demand of calling for a parliamentary democracy.

This was the time Saddam Hussein was still elder George Bush’s favourite friend and trading partner and accordingly, the visiting Iraqi opposition politicians were totally rebuffed, because the United States had no interest in their cause.

They were not as lucky as the Zimbabwean opposition politicians who visited Washington in 2001 asking for sanctions against their own country.

In these, the junior George Bush found a lot of interest and they were accordingly tasked with the rewarding task of drafting a sanctions law later named the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act.

There was no reaction in the public record to the rebuffing of the Iraqis in 1989 and that was not surprising.

There was saturating coverage over the Zimbabwe sanctions law when the Bill was being presented to Congress.

Again this was not surprising.

This is how propaganda manufactures consent for aggression.

The Iraqi opposition only became relevant in August 1990 when the US suddenly turned against Saddam Hussein after years of admiration and support for his aggression towards Iran and many of the people that opposed his meaningless war with his neighbour.

When the Iraqi opposition declared that they were against the Gulf War and that they did not want their country destroyed in the name of democracy, their newly found favour with the United States suddenly vanished into thin air.

They maintained war against Iraq was not an option and they were hopeful that a peaceful resolution to the Hussein problem could be achieved.

That was a wrong view and they lost favour.

Nothing was heard about them in the Western mainstream media ever after.

That is the spectacular achievement of propaganda.

It manufactures consent just like it manufactures truths.

By silencing the voices of those seen as holding a wrong view, what is achieved is the exclusion of alternative views and when this happens nobody notices it.

It is like the US media not reporting on the mass exodus of its State Department officials whenever President Mugabe or Hugo Chavez takes to the podium at each session of the UN General Assembly.

Attacks from such "mavericks" must be

excluded from the public domain.

The idea is that nobody should notice the exclusion of alternative sources of information.

Of course, it takes a deeply indoctrinated population not to notice that they are not hearing the voices of those that are perpetually attacked as the children of Satan by their own government.

If the people in the West escape the propaganda net and ask the question, Why? They obviously will find the answer pretty obvious.

It is always because those excluded by the propaganda system have their own thoughts, they agree with the resistance to Western domination of weaker states.

If one looks at the reasons offered for the Gulf War, they will see that the rationale was that aggressors cannot be rewarded and aggression must be reversed by the quick resort to violence.

That was the official reason for the Gulf War and no other reason was ever advanced.

Could this be taken as the reason for the war? Does the US in reality uphold the principle that aggressors cannot be rewarded and that aggression must be reversed by a quick resort to violence? Palestinians would really want a speedy answer to this question.

There is no need to waste the time of readers by running through the facts in answering these questions and the indisputable reality is that the argument that the US upholds such principles as outlined above will be refuted in two seconds even by a barely literate teenager.

This is despite that the questioning of the US’s commitment to these principles is never evident in Congress debates.

The US did not oppose its own aggression in Panama, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan and many other countries and none of those senators has ever insisted on the bombing of Washington to reverse these aggressions.

When apartheid South Africa invaded and occupied Namibia in 1969, the United States did not impose sanctions on food and medicines and neither did they go to war.

They did not dump apartheid Pretoria as they chose to pursue a gruesome 20 years of "quiet diplomacy" – a method Washington has widely condemned when adopted by the post-democratic South Africa in resolving the problems in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

Despite the fact that apartheid South Africa killed an estimated 1,5 million people in Southern African countries; just in the years Reagan and Bush senior were in power; the US still maintained their "quiet diplomacy" rhetoric. They even ended up with ample rewards for the aggressors.

They were awarded the major port in Namibia, Walvis Bay, and they got plenty of advantages related to the security of the apartheid system.

The propaganda network in the US and many of the Western countries has created a totalitarian system so effective that the US and its allies can literally go to war without bothering to give a reason and that without many people noticing as well.

It is a frightening reality.

It is a reality fascinatingly admired by some in Zimbabwean opposition political circles as we have heard voices and seen people hankering for Western intervention in the affairs of the country.

In a way, it is a result of propaganda combined with blind political venturing.

Many of the issues that have been raised at political rallies as part of the principles of democracy are nothing but naked propaganda designed to manufacture a following of raving fanatical hysterics that are dying to destroy anything related to Zimbabwe's liberation legacy and anything related to the political character of President Mugabe.

This is how you manufacture consent.

People are whipped into hysterical perceptions built and formulated on empty and vapid slogans such as "change" or the "struggle for democracy".

These vapid slogans blind people. They cannot open their eyes.

They cannot make people make apparent and glaring comparisons.

The people in the West could not make comparisons between Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles hitting Israel and their own warships causing havoc in the Gulf.

Saddam Hussein's arguments were the same as those of senior Bush.

Bush argued that the occupation of Kuwait was unacceptable aggression that he could not stand and Saddam Hussein was arguing that he could not stand Israeli aggression towards Lebanon and Palestine.

He could not stand the annexation of Syria's Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, all in opposition to the unanimous agreement of the Security Council.

Saddam could not stand this aggression and Israel had occupied southern Lebanon since 1978 (until 2002).

During this period, Israel attacked Lebanon at will and America backed each aggression with the arrogance of an absolute monster.

Saddam's heart was probably bleeding for his fellow Arabic brothers but no one made the glaring comparisons.

He was condemned for sending scud missiles into Israel and he was painted the most primitive aggressor of the twentieth century - that by the undoubted record holder of the highest number of invasions and aggressions, the United States.

Given the traditional blockades on sanctions against Israel at the Security Council by the United States and the UK, Saddam seemed to have had more valid reasons for resorting to force than Bush had over Kuwait.

After all, he had won the sanctions against Hussein.

The point is that not many people made these comparisons.

Those who did, people like Noam Chomsky were labelled anarchists and intellectual dissidents.

This is how propaganda manufactures consent.

How many people have questioned the coincidence that Zimbabwe's land reform programme came with the firebrand hellfire gospel that there is lawlessness in Zimbabwe and that "the regime" drinks the blood of its own people? How many have questioned the role of sanctions in the destruction of Zimbabwe's economy? How many have questioned the funding of opposition to the Government of Zimbabwe by the West?These questions have featured at African forums like the Africa Union and Southern African Development Community but are treated as apologies of Mugabe in the West.

A simple Google search will show that this writer has many times been labelled a Mugabe apologist and even his "army commander" just for raising these questions.

The question that needs a speedy answer is who has manufactured the consent among Zimbabweans and what is that consent.

If the consent is the agreement over the inclusive government then there is need to know if this consent is a result of the people's initiative or a manufacturing by forces bent on achieving selfish goals over our nation.

The people of Zimbabwe are guided by their historical bonding and achievements and all that is rooted in the legacy of the liberation struggle - itself a product of the nationalism that drove us to break the yoke of the brutalities of colonialism.

This is the path that defines our national interest and any of our politicians that question this logic is a dissident by definition. This agreement is not and cannot be centered on the hope of accessing foreign funding.

It is an insult for a country to plan its future on the good will of its oppressors, present and erstwhile.

Zimbabwe needs a team of thinkers and political practitioners with exceptional skills to establish systems of production and trade that are in line with the salient principles of sovereignty and self-determination and anyone who thinks this is too difficult must exit the political sphere without any further delay.

Zimbabweans, we are always one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit www.rwafawarova.com

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