-Caveat Lector-
~~for educational purposes only~~
[Title 17 U.S.C. section 107]
Liars vs. Liars
by David Dieteman
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. 17879)
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.
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