"Politicians are obliged from time to time to conceal the full truth, to bend it and even distort it, where the interests of the bigger strategic goal demand it be done. And don't get too offended by it; we all make these decisions every day in our business and personal lives."Setting aside what you may think about Blair and the Northern Ireland peace process (which is the context for the above quote), is it in fact the case that larger goals justify concealment, bending and distorting? Is there a trade-off between truth and effectiveness (even if we hope otherwise)?
It would be easy to mock Blair's statement (and many are) but there is a deeper conversation worth having about the relationship of argument and action, what it means to tell the "truth" and the consequences for being perceived not to have done so. Blair is correct that such decisions are part of our every day lives.
For my part, I took strong issue with Blair's selective use of intelligence in the case of the decision to go to war in Iraq, discussed in The Honest Broker. At the same time I appreciate his candor. Do democratic politics offer a corrective to politicians whose liberties with the truth go too far? Sounds like great material for my graduate seminar this term.
21 comments:
If it is a truth about, say, the deployment of a military operation or a source of vital intel, then yes.
If it is about scaring people into doing something not supported by facts, then no.
Oh loveley.
The end justifies the means?
Saddam Hussain's a massive threat to his neighbours (Well, the one's friendly to us, Iran doesn't count), so he needs to be removed. Our lefty colleagues won't have any truck with something that smacks of colonialism and the Turks aren't keen on the Kurds, so we can't use his murdering of them as a reason, so let's say he's got WMD that could possibly threaten Europe now and the USA in a year or two, job done.
Al Capone's a viscious, murderous criminal, but we can't nail him on that, so let's get him on tax evasion.
Hitler was voted into power by the people, thus they can't be trusted with making important decisions.
Bliar and Truth seem to be an oxy-moron.
"Hitler was voted into power by the people"
No, he was not. It was a backroom stabbing, double crossing maneuvre between Hitler, Von Papen, Schleicher and Hindenburg that brought the little corporal into power.
The decision to go to war in Iraq was irrational on its face. There was no disguising it as legitimate. But I agree that the line is not as bright in some situations. Early on the oil that spilled into the Gulf was described as not as dangerous as that of the Exxon Valdez accident. And the reporting from the first days of the spill simply did not paint a picture of devastation that we were expecting. But It would have been a mistake to speak too early of a disaster that was less than had been projected, I believe. It was important to focus BP on taking the problem seriously, and to calm the fears of the citizens with a massive and concerted effort to mitigate the effects of the spill. I hoped Obama would wait for the scientists to describe their findings before he pronounced the crisis under control. I do think he weathered the politics of this situation, to my relief. Nevertheless, it's abhorrent to me (in moments of reflection) that any silence or active deception would be considered necessary or appropriate in any democracy. It's a thorn, for sure.
Yes, politicians must strategically lie as if they are at war. However, we are permanently at war now, and the media propaganda reflects that. The war is between the corporate world (and its politicans) and private citizens. Carbon trading is a prime example.
I would guess that Blair is less popular in Britain than Hitler ever was. He was much worse than simply leading Bush and Powell into the Iraq war.
He sold off the Defence Research Establishment to the Americans and had a far too close relationship to the Russian criminal classes, essentially provoking a new cold war. The name Rothschild springs to mind there. The following article is historical dynamite.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
The Sunday Times can identify Lord (Jacob) Rothschild as the secret holder of the large stake in Yukos that was previously controlled by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil company’s chairman.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article1101531.ece
Blair now earns millions of dollars a year selling global warming for banks and insurance companies (that's the reason for the hurricane and other weather lies).
His wife is a judge. On her first day at work, she was caught avoiding her train fare (stealing). Sums the Blairs up nicely.
The real power in Britain was Peter Mandelson, who had the wrong sexual orientation and ethnicity to be elected. He is a friend of Rupert Murdoch's daughter. Murdoch in turn is basically a front for junk bond criminal Michael Milkin, who put up the money for Fox. Milkin is a major supporter of Israel.
"The junk finance Milken provided for Murdoch to meet the $2.7bn cost of Fox and other deals alongside it was far beyond the limit of what could have been raised by a similar company entirely subject to US accounting rules"
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1028190,00.html
Mandelson was a member of the The British American Project for the Successor Generation, a Pew sponsored CIA project which began with a meeting involving Rupert Murdoch, Ronald Reagan and the head of the CIA himself.
Yes, the CIA really do exist and I used to know something of their activities in this area. There was a large submarine base in the area at one tme and a major airport (Prestwick) more or less dedicated to the USAF.
The BAP's own website on the Pew family (the most right wing family in American corporate history ? Major sponsors of global warming.)
http://www.baponline.org/historyp7.htm
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/06/usa.politics1
The CIA and New Labour
http://tinyurl.com/c92wv
Whether justified or not, it's human nature. But it's the partizan progression that can get us into trouble:
1. They start to believe their own lie because either it is more ideologically pure than the truth or they just can't bring themselves to admit a mistake.
2. Growing fanatical support of the myth fueled by irresponsible media looking for scary headlines and a public with poor memories and lots of latent prejudice.
3. The myth becomes popular "fact". Wars happen, money is wasted, economies collapse, people suffer.
Take the first comment here and change it to 'If it is about scaring people into doing something not supported by facts, like say, the deployment of a military operation....' then that represents the real truth of most of these futile conflicts over who gets to pitch their tent over a patch of barren dirt, including Blairs adventure. He may even have forgotten what the real truth was.
The decision to go to war in Iraq was justified and the world is far, far better off today because of it. The elimination of Saddam's nuke program in Libya, the neutralization of the mad nuke scientist in Pakistan, the establishment of democracy in a muslim country in the area, and the elimination of Saddam's WMD programs in chemical and biological warfare are all monumental achievements. Not to mention the future benefits of the public learning of the UN's vast corruption and the cynical betrayal of the US by our purported allies.
BTW, when we analyze the use of lies by political leaders, the lying by Obama and other Democrats for partisan political purposes certainly deserves extensive discussion.
jgdes
Blair has the ideological purity of a starving alligator. His appointment of his tennis partner Lord Levy as his personal representative to the middle east was beyond scandal.
Look no further for a reason for the Iraq invasion. Unless you investigate the Pentagon Office of Special plans crew of Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. None of whom are Arabs.
Like selective use of evidence to argue for public promoted action on climate change?? hmmmm.
In politics as in commerce there is a widely recognized caveat emptor. In science, up until recently, the process meant that such a warning was redundant. Alas, Gresham's Law seems to be at work.
On most policy decisions there will be multiple reasons for pursuing a policy, one or two of those reasons will 'resonate' with the public while the others may not.
So the politicians will blather on endlessly about those reasons that resonate and not really mention those reasons that don't resonate.
In the 'Energy Debate', Climate, Green Jobs, Energy Security and Cheaper Then Coal have all been trotted out by various advocates and have resonated to varying degrees.
My personal favorite, 'Cheaper Then Coal' is location dependent, easily extractable coal isn't geographically distributed and coal is expensive to transport. So depending on where one lives, 'Cheaper then coal' could be a powerful argument(New Jersey where coal costs more then $100/ton) or it could be nonsense(Wyoming where coal costs $12/ton).
It would be more significant an admission coming from a different politician. The first years of Blair's tenure in 10 Downing Street were almost defined by 'spin' (as practiced by Peter Mandelson, who also has a recent book out). Even at the height of New Labour's popularity, there was widespread recognition that much of the government's agenda was really just hype.
Is a conjuror a liar? No. And Blair is less of a liar, precisely because people all along knew they were being lied to, and voted for him anyway.
strategic goal demand it be done
=
$$$ and/or
just plain nuts,
99.99% of the time
Ain't no one knows that more so than moi.
Yeah know, 99.99% of the time when I use a fraction it's 99.99%.
Agree with much of Gerard Harbison's comment above - Blair, Mandy, Campbell and the New Labour agenda was really much more about presentation than about substance. Blair was the perfect front man for this, with all the scruples of a used car salesman but a great deal more 'charm'. He was really the ideal PM for the dumbed down 90s and 00s - looked good on TV, was in touch with his emotions and generally with a populist feel. All this hid the fact that behind the facade wasn't very much - kind of the opposite of Gordon Brown who had the intellectual power but not the package to present it.
As for the specific paragraph, in the world of realpolitik, obviously the general public can't be privy to everything for any number of valid reasons. Therefore I have no issue with the suggestion of not revealing the full truth. As for bending the truth and distorting it, this moves in to a much more grey area, as it really depends on why you would want to do that.
A time when it might be legitimate would be at a time of eceonomic uncertainty, where a politician may choose to emphasise any more positive indicators and de-emphasise the negative - as much of the western economies (particularly the UK) is based on speculation on currency and shares, maintaining or building confidence is important to create a 'virtuous circle' - confidence = more investment = economic growth = increased confidence. Definitely bending the truth, and possibly moving as far as distortion.
Where such truth bending becomes highly questionable is when the gain attained is not for the 'greater good' (economic benefits for the majority of the population, direct national security, as in the case of Northern Ireland peace accord [for which the Major Government should take a good deal of the credit anyway] or in removing the Taleban and Al Qaeda from Afghanistan [not that that has necessarily been very successful in execution, but the security imperatives existed for this to be necessary]) but for personal gain (or the benefit of a few), whether electoral/party political, financial or as a political legacy.
Quite what Blair hoped would come out of supporting the US adminstration in the invasion of Iraq is something only he really knows - perhaps he genuinely thought regime change was a good enough reason to be involved, perhaps he was the victim of selective or distorted information from the intelligence services, or perhaps he thought a quick and clean war would build him a Churchill-esque political legacy.
The problem is that as it currently stands, the British political system, combined with our media who are themselves far from above distorting the truth either for financial gain or for the benefit of their political allies, make it very difficult to come up with a democratic method of correcting the political path - we mostly knew Blair was two faced, and had blatantly lied in the run up to the Iraq invasion, yet he still won two more elections before finally falling victim to infighting within his party
Out of interest Roger, will you be letting any more paranoid jewish conspiracy theories through from eric144?
Agree with much of Gerard Harbison's comment above - Blair, Mandy, Campbell and the New Labour agenda was really much more about presentation than about substance.
I'm not entirely sure I agree with this. There was a lot of spin to be sure, but there was substance behind it. Take the Iraq war and foreign policy in general - you can't say that this was simply presentation; Blair has very strongly held convictions in this area (rightly or wrongly). I think there was a gradual realisation with Blair that there was something behind the spin, it just turned out to be unpalatable to a lot of people.
SteveF
I apologise for the comment. I shouldn't have strung the information together in a conspiratorial manner. It wasn't planned, but a lot of it centres around Blair, and it coalesced in an unfortunate way. The following galvanised the general principle.
Alan Rusbridger (Guardian editor) recently appeared in a a Channel Four Dispatches documentary on a similar subject.
Pro-Israel lobby group bankrolling Tories, film claims 50% of MPs in the shadow cabinet are Conservative Friends of Israel members, according to Channel 4's Dispatches
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/nov/16/pro-israel-lobby-conservatives-channel4-dispatches
The Guardian is not known for its anti Semitic conspiracy theories.
The frightening reality of the Pentagon Office of Special plans was revealed in the Glasgow Herald and elsewhere.
In an interview with the Scottish Sunday Herald, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Larry C. Johnson said the OSP was "dangerous for US national security and a threat to world peace. [The OSP] lied and manipulated intelligence to further its agenda of removing Saddam. It's a group of ideologues with pre-determined notions of truth and reality. They take bits of intelligence to support their agenda and ignore anything contrary. They should be eliminated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans
Here's a topic best not touched with the proverbial ten foot pole.
Stepping back a bit - if 'the truth' is so important to you, I assume that when the time comes, you will tell your wife "Yes, dear, your ass really does look fat in those jeans."
If politicians had to tell the truth all the time, countries would fall apart. Grown-ups understand this.
Will the British public allow Tony Blair to enter the British political arena for a second time?
http://www.helium.com/items/1962056-tony-blairs-legacy
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