Divert, Distract, and Demonize: The War Party's strategy to sink Barack Obama

The War Party has a reliable strategy when faced with a rising political figure who threatens their monopoly on American politics, one that is time-tested and invariably successful: when all else fails, they bring out the Smear Bund.

This is a term coined by John T. Flynn, I believe, in the run-up to the outbreak of the Second World War: it gives a name to his thesis that a number of pro-war groups had coordinated a campaign to smear and destroy the anti-interventionist America First Committee. Flynn started out his pamphlet, The Smear Terror, with this admonition: "Would you believe that there are in this country several outfits that specialize in the destruction of reputations?"

Today, of course, such a declaration seems naïve: we all know about "swift-boating," and, much to the dismay of Flynn's ghost, no doubt, the pattern runs true to form down through the years. Anyone who argues for a fundamental change in American foreign policy, away from interventionism and toward a more rational view of world affairs, is targeted – and destroyed.

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12769