The Audience Goebbels Wanted

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." – Joseph Goebbels

Even today, Joseph Goebbels remains the acknowledged master of propaganda. He understood the devastating effect of British propaganda in WWI, particularly surrounding the fictional Belgian atrocities, and resolved that Germany would never again be victimized by words. At the end of 1943, a very difficult year for the Third Reich, Goebbels brazenly proclaimed:

"The enemy did not succeed in the past year in affecting in a serious way our war effort in any critical area. If the great test of a war is that it brings challenges that can only be met by using all moral and material resources, the German people passed the test in the past year. It will doubtless go down in history as the most glorious of this great struggle for our existence.

"It will forever be the greatest shame of the century that England and the United States joined with Bolshevism in their hate-filled battle for military success against our venerable continent. They will also not gain victory; to the contrary, at most they will ruin the economic foundations of their own nations. Only shame will remain. Perhaps it must be that way to speed along the inner decay of this rotten plutocratic government system."

Compare the master’s words to that of another propagandist, Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri:

"We want to tell all the Muslims and the mujahidin al-Qaida, thank God, is expanding and increasing in strength…All the lies that Bush tries to delude the Americans with, saying that he destroyed half, or three quarters of al-Qaida are but nonsense merely in his own head.

"Iraq is a catastrophe for America and Americans will leave, it will only be a matter of time.

"I say to (President) Bush: you entered Iraq with lies, you will lose Iraq and lie about it and you will leave with the pretext that you have completed your mission ... America only has to decide on the number of (troops) it wishes to lose before withdrawing."

Two enemies reeling from strategic defeats, each in their third year battling the United States, employing propaganda in a last ditch effort to convince the public that good things, not bad things, are happening. The only difference is that in 1943, no one in the United States of America echoed the words of Joseph Goebbels or even dignified his New Year’s Eve broadcast with a response. In 2005, not only does Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri hear an echo in the United States, he hears a chorus from the political Left.

"The idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong.

"Bring the 80,000 National Guard and reserve troops home immediately. They don't belong in a conflict like this anyway. We ought to have a redeployment to Afghanistan of 20,000 troops, we don't have enough troops to do the job there and it's a place where we are welcome. And we need a force in the Middle East, not in Iraq but in a friendly neighboring country to fight Zarqawi, who came to Iraq after this invasion. We've got to get the target off the backs of American troops." - Howard Dean

"And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children." - John Kerry

"Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region." - Jack Murtha

There are, at this very moment, thousands of men and women fighting an enemy whose motivation comes directly from the words of Howard Dean, John Kerry and Jack Murtha. Some of these soldiers, sleeping on concrete and dirt in a foreign country defending our freedom, will die because of the hope that the words above gave to a Muslim fanatic. And Dean and Kerry say what they say for one reason: political opposition to George W. Bush. They are the elite "superior leaders" who cannot grasp being out of power and refuse to acknowledge the damage they do with words.

"Propaganda is a means to an end. Its purpose is to lead the people to an understanding that will allow it to willingly and without internal resistance devote itself to the tasks and goals of a superior leadership." – Joseph Goebbels

Welocme to the information age... stay on your toes!

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