Are you, dear reader, paying attention to what is going on the middle-east? The people there want out from under the thumbs of autocratic rulers. In Bahrain, the majority population, Shiite Muslims, are kind of fed up with being ruled over by the minority Sunis, who make up the ruling class and make certain that all of their family, relatives and friends are well taken care of with jobs and positions in society.
Have we all come to notice that the United States government has been the prop, the guarantor of these corrupt governments for decades? Yes, anyone paying attention knew that before, but now it is painfully obvious that our government is standing on the wrong side of elemental justice, human rights and, perhaps, progress within the region toward more modern, productive societies.
I was not among those who called G.W, Bush a liar about Iraq during his term of office. It seemed too harsh and, besides, lying can also be a state of mind. A child, for example, sometimes is unable to lie, because the child might not realize what is actually true. (I do not want to imply that the “childhood exception” should be applied to Bush, of course.) The latest events in the middle east, however, have set me to thinking about the whole issue anew.
Was Bush guilty of telling the biggest lie of all, that he wanted to spread democracy in that region while, at the same time, protecting and endorsing, even hand holding with, those oppressive regimes? If, one could ask, he wanted to spread democracy, could he have not simply stopped supporting the dictators under America’s very broad wing? How about withdrawing military and financial support? Well, you couldn’t do that, of course, because American defense contractors would be very upset to loose a few billion dollars in business.
Since at least the 1950s, the American government has made peace with the oppressive regimes on the middle east in the name of international politics. They sold it on the idea that we couldn’t try to shape the world and, besides, without these tough guys in office, the whole place could go to hell. Besides, we needed their oil. Well, now it is going to hell and hell looks like it might be a better place than where we have been all these decades.
The lie about our stance and policies in the middle east, pursing democracy while backing oppressive regimes, falls under the heading of instinctive lying, something that government, big corporations, parents, school systems and most institutions do reflexively, without thinking. Starting from the premise that everything I do is moral and based on good intentions, I don’t even stop to consider inherent contradictions in what I say versus what I do. Those institutions which cloak themselves the righteous intentions, like non-profits and public minded agencies, tend, in my view, to be the biggest liars, because they put on blinders to their own actions. Government defines itself as acting for the greater good, so it is rather difficult to get from that point to the conclusion that it might be evil.
The kind of fake out the Bush II pulled is a bit like parents who tell their kids never to smoke, or never to do this or that, then secretly light up cigarettes or take drugs when the kids can’t see them. Fake right and go left, like a basketball player. If you are good and really, really quick, the poor guy opposite you doesn’t even know what happened to him.
IT IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT TO VOTERS AND PUBLIC OPINION.
Our American foreign policy apparatus was long ago captured by the American elite. For much of the 20th century, it was the province of New England WASPs who came from the right families and went to the right schools. This opened up a bit from, say, the ‘70s on, when a broader selection of elite schools came into play, like Stanford. Foreign policy was thought to be so complex, so very difficult, that ordinary people couldn’t understand it. This placed matters largely in the hands of the presumed elite who figured they could be take care of things without undue consultation with voters. Jolly good, in other words.
Thinking and writing about foreign policy in an obscure, off putting way became the norm. Foreign Policy magazine weighed about a pound, but the prose weighed several tons, easy. The idea was not to enlighten, but to hide ideas and make them available only to those who were willing to spend the requisite years in graduate schools to break the code. This is the same kind of high blown nonsense that many professions engage in to limit those who may come into their club. Less competition.
Partly as a result of these efforts at obscurantism, foreign policy has been walled off from voters. Reporters who covered the diplomatic beat were expected to act and dress like diplomats themselves and they, too, joined a club of knowledgeable insiders. Voters, the ultimate decision makers in a democracy, were left in the dark and still are. One reason that so many people see everything about what we do around the world as grand is that they are uninformed about basic facts of our role, particularly in the middle east. It is a lot easier to be certain about how wonderful our intentions are if you don’t actually know what we have done here, there and everywhere. We have been in bed with dictators for so long, we have to have a some fleas on us, don’t we?
Few in government had any interest in making matters more transparent. Just the opposite, in fact. Government officials spoke in public about foreign policy in ways deliberately intended to mislead or obscure. Henry Kissinger, the guiding light for huge chunks of policy over the last 40 years, seemed always to develop a heavier German accent when speaking to the media. His cadence became slower, his sentences longer, so that by the time he finished a thought the listeners had forgotten the starting point. He must be brilliant if the average person can’t understand what he is saying, right?
The lack of general knowledge of what our government is doing around the world means that those in the pinstriped suits have been pretty much free to do whatever they want, aided and abetted by the cloak and dagger guys at the CIA. The British were chased out of the middle east by the end of WW II, but before they left they created most of the national boundaries, and many of the boiling hostilities, in the region.
Many of the nations, like Iraq, are not so much nations as they are the fantasy of map drawers in London. In the wake of the British withdrawal, the U.S. stepped in support the existing powers. With many ups and downs and permutations along the way, this has taken us to 2011, where we are in dramatic, fundamental conflict with what we say we believe in as a people and a nation.
Yes, it was a long, long lie to talk about supporting democracy while sleeping with dictators. Bush II told that lie bigger and perhaps better than others. I will still, however, not say that he was intentionally lying. I think he probably was, but I don’t know. I don’t know his state of mind and I don’t know his state of knowledge at the time he talked about spreading democracy with American troops. Maybe he just blocked out the apparent contradiction. I do know that he was wrong about his general assertion, the idea that we could topple Saddam and force a democracy to grow in the desert sand with our tanks and Pedator drones.
It is now time for the American government to come clean. All the way. All of the documents relating to 30 years of support for the dictatorship in Egypt should now be released. We need to have a clear, focused debate about America’s role in the world and what we want it to be going forward. It is time to take control away from a selected elite (they can get back to doing their business after we give them new instructions) and put it in the hands of the American voters. Never again should we, our government, be allowed to sit on its hands, or even stifle, the aspirations of people around the world for freedom and dignity. We are a better people than that and our “national interests” extend well beyond the benefits of keeping people enslaved under autocrats and dictators.
The other very important reason that voters should have a major say in foreign policy is that whatever our country is doing around the world inevitably moves toward conflict and wars. If we don’t have a say in what is done in our names, then we don’t know when and why we are being taken into shooting battles. Various presidents pop-up to take us into costly wars and it comes as a surprise and shock to the voters. Lacking background information about how we arrived at that point, most simply go along. Even many military leaders in America would agree that we need fewer wars with better results.
Doug Terry, 2.17.11
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