- In thinking about the possible war with Iraq, one must
not lose sight of the fact that it is not ordinary men and women who begin
wars, but a very limited class of men and women: politicians.
-
- Unfortunately for the human race, and more specifically,
for those unfortunate men, women and children living in Iraq, politicians
are not known to have an affinity for truth-telling, and are very fond
of calling one another "liars."
-
- The White House web site has a helpful link to the provocatively
titled document: "Iraq: Apparatus of Lies."
-
- American national security adviser Condoleeza Rice has
authored a piece provocatively titled: "Why We Know Iraq is Lying."
-
- In this piece, Dr. Rice writes that:
-
- Iraq's declaration even resorted to unabashed plagiarism,
with lengthy passages of United Nations reports copied word-for-word (or
edited to remove any criticism of Iraq) and presented as original text.
-
- Clearly, any regime which participates in such "unabashed
plagiarism," by copying texts word-for-word, and presenting it as
"original text," is populated by liars.
-
- And yet Colin Powell's United Nations speech was based
upon 12-year-old information which the British government plagiarized from
a private research paper.
-
- As CNN reports, Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics
at Cambridge, told a British television station that ten of the 19 pages
were taken from an article by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a researcher in California.
As Rangwala told CNN,
-
- The information he was using is 12 years old and he acknowledges
this in his article. The British government, when it transplants that information
into its own dossier, does not make that acknowledgement. So it is presented
as current information about Iraq, when really the information it is using
is 12 years old.
-
- The British government's response: "We have learnt
an important lesson."
-
- One would have thought that British government officials
had learned about plagiarism, as well as outright acts of deception, a
long time ago.
-
- Not to be flustered, the spokesman for the British Prime
Minister sought to save the case for war by adding a bit of propaganda:
"this issue does not take away to any degree from the accuracy of
the information in the report nor does it negate to any extent the core
argument put forward that Iraq is involved in deliberate acts of deception."
-
- Preposterous. First, if the information reported by Colin
Powell is 12 years old, it is not accurate. Second, notice that the spokesman
claims the act of deception "does not negate the core argument"
for war. This is a very different thing from claiming that the document
affirmatively supports the American position.
-
- And yet that is precisely the claim which Colin Powell
made to the United Nations. As CNN also reports, it is the plagiarized
and outdated British document which was "highlighted by U.S. Secretary
of State Colin Powell at the U.N. as a 'fine paper...which describes in
exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities.'"
-
- Please never mind that the document is based on information
from the time of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
-
- Assuming for the sake of argument that Saddam Hussein
and other Iraqi politicians are liars, shall we follow lying British and
American politicians to war with such liars?
-
- Remember, Condoleeza Rice herself condemns as "unabashed
plagiarism" the lifting of text word-for-word and presenting it as
"original text." This is precisely what the British government
has acknowledged doing. And this is precisely the basis of Powell's speech
to the U.N.
-
- In this regard, consider the Bush administration's stance
of war at all costs in relation to the cheerleading, sycophantic, lap dog
American media (sorry to be repetitive; there is a point to be made). As
Nobel prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek notes in The Road to Serfdom
(see Chapter 11 - "The End of Truth"),
-
- If the feeling of oppression in totalitarian countries
is in general much less acute than most people in liberal countries imagine,
this is because the totalitarian governments succeed to a high degree in
making people think as they want them to. (p. 168)
-
- George Bush and Jonah Goldberg repeatedly tell us that
"Americans are free people," do they not? Nothing to worry about
here!
-
- The deception practiced by politicians comes with a terrible
price, Hayek argues:
-
- The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda which
we must now consider are, however, of an even more profound kind. They
are destructive of all morals because they undermine one of the foundations
of all morals: the sense of and the respect for truth. (p. 170; emphasis
added)
-
- As Hayek continues, totalitarians must propagandize not
only about values (e.g., placing the government above individuals), but
about facts as well. The government's "values" must be connected
to genuine values held by the people, and the people must be spoon-fed
government's view of the "facts" so that the government's desired
conclusion appears inevitable. (See page 170)
-
- So politicians tell myths (or, to use Plato's term, "noble
lies") to con the people into supporting certain acts.
-
- In the process, however, Hayek observes,
-
- The whole language becomes despoiled, and words become
empty shells deprived of any definite meaning, as capable of denoting one
thing as its opposite and used solely for the emotional associations which
still adhere to them. (p. 174)
-
- The word "truth" itself ceases to have its
old meaning. It describes no longer something to be found, with the individual
conscience as the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the
evidence (or the standing of those proclaiming it) warrants a belief; it
becomes something to be laid down by authority, something which has to
be believed in the interest of the unity of the organized effort and which
may have to be altered as the exigencies of this organized effort require
it. (p. 178 - 79)
-
- Hayek, writing in 1944, provides a helpful analysis of
where the West stands today. Hayek warned of the dangers of propaganda
in The Road to Serfdom.
-
- His warnings about "totalitarian propaganda"
apply very nicely to the propaganda currently served up for gullible consumption
by the American and British governments.
-
- Lying American and British politicians proclaim that
Iraqi politicians are liars, and that such lying justifies war.
- Nothing could be further from the truth.
- Mr. Dieteman [solovar@go.com] is
an attorney in Erie, Pennsylvania, and a PhD candidate in philosophy at
The Catholic University of America.
- © 2003 David Dieteman
- http://www.lewrockwell.com/dieteman/dieteman141.html
|