by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
“Darkness isn’t the opposite of light, it is simply its absence.” – Terry Pratchett
As we’ve previously discussed in the Propaganda Series, The Sound of Silence, propaganda is not always language or images. Sometimes it is the lack of words. It is just as important to “listen to what is not said” as it is to “listen to what is said”. Sometimes though, propagandists try to time travel. They employ a tactic in an attempt to change the present by attempting to change the past. I say “attempt” for reasons that will be clear soon enough.
When a propagandist tries to pull off this particular trick, they don’t need a fancy machine or a black hole or a magic potion as is the staple trope of science fiction and fantasy time travel. They need nothing more complicated than a pen or a typewriter. In the present, a word processor and some basic HTML coding skills will serve that purpose. Maybe Photoshop or GIMP. When a propagandist tries to change the present by changing the past, they don’t call it time travel. No. They don’t call it anything, because they really hope you don’t notice what they are doing. Silence will work often, but they are not above a bit of misdirection. Well executed propaganda does, after all, have much in common with stage magic.
When we citizens and media consumers catch their slight of hand, we don’t call it time travel either. We call it historical revisionism. Just this week, the Obama Administration was caught red-handed doing precisely that in relation to the Edward Snowden case.
First, let us consider what exactly is historical revisionism. Is the term itself value loaded language? Is it always a bad thing? Is it always propaganda? The term in common usage certainly has a connotative meaning that is not the same as its denotative meaning. As with the word “propaganda“, the connotative meaning is usually pejorative and implies lies, falsehoods and distortions of past events. Also like the word “propaganda”, the term “historical revisionism” has a larger denotative meaning that may or may not be value loaded.
At one level, historical revisionism is simply a scholarly endeavor to rewrite history based on new research or theories that either modify or contradict earlier historical writings. There is nothing wrong with that. Historical revisionism in that context performs a valuable function in the study of history although it is usually hotly challenged within academia as history is an often soft social science where the status quo holds a lot of sway. That challenging environment is also not a bad process by connotation as the process itself of claim and counterclaim often results in a refinement of both theory and the understanding of new evidence in context as well as eliminating false assertions and whole cloth fabrications from being incorporated into our understanding of history as fact. Even so, the study of history faces certain challenges in addition to access to new data. There is (what I find to be most interesting) the challenge that new information from other fields of science present. Genetics, paleoclimatology, paleontology, archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, chemistry . . . even astronomy – all can, do and have changed our understanding of history. There is also some psychological and intellectual challenges to the study of history that can impact historical revisionism. In fact, there are two logical fallacies that historians often fall prey to: the eponymous Historian’s fallacy – when one assumes that decision makers of the past viewed events from the same perspective and having the same information as those subsequently analyzing the decision – and presentism – where present-day ideas, such as moral standards, are projected into the past. Historians also have to contend with the context of the society in which they live. Contemporaneously popular ideology and culture may skew historical revisionism as can political considerations like nationalism. However, as useful as historical revisionism as an academic endeavor can be, it has a dark side and that dark side can most often be seen in how contemporaneous ideology, culture and politics can make history a lie about the past designed to serve the present.
This kind of historical revisionism is what most think of when they use the term as a pejorative. There is a special word for this kind of manifestly bad historical revisionism – negationism. Derived from the French term négationnisme, which means Holocaust denial, the basic idea applies to more than just Holocaust denial, but to making anything a “never was”. This is basic denial as a propaganda strategy/tactic. Negationism also includes the propaganda strategy/tactics of deception, distortion, relativism and trivialization, very often executed to varying degrees as part of the same campaign. The Nazis engaged in wholesale historical revisionism in the form of book burning, altering history and science texts to provide examples of “Aryan superiority”, distorting their history and the history of the Jews and Roma to provide relativistic rationales for their persecution and to trivialize the true scale and horrific deeds done in the campaign of genocide they called “The Final Solution”. This suite of tactics is not unique to the Germans. The Chinese did the same thing during the Cultural Revolution. The Japanese did (and still do) teach revisionist history about the events leading to World War II. The Soviets made historical revisionism into a propaganda art form. In America, we teach grade school and high school kids a sanitized version of American history that does a great disservice to the truths of the effective genocidal campaigns against the Native American peoples.
Clearly, historical revisionism is a value loaded term and, while it can be a good thing for the academic pursuit of history, it can be as a political practice a very dangerous very damaging form of propaganda.
In 2008, Obama had a website that detailed his vision for reform. Until very recently, this website was linked to on the White House official website and provided a valuable tool for comparing Obama’s promises to his performance. According to the Sunlight Foundation, that website in that form could last be viewed on June 8, 2013. Remember that date. It’s about to be relevant. That link to Obama’s agenda and promises is no longer on the White House website and the Change.gov of today is this non-comment of a splash page with a link to http://change.gov/content/home that returns a blank page reading :
Sorry, File Not Found: 404
Invalid URL /content/home
All of the website’s pages are now and have only recently become inaccessible from the site. What was the Obama Administration so interested in making disappear? What needed to be never was? Perhaps they wanted to remove all record of Obama’s campaign promise to strengthen protections for whistleblowers. In case you don’t recall, his promise, once found in the Agenda/Ethics section of Change.gov, went like this:
Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.”
June 8, 2013 was two days after the first revelations were made about the NSA’s phone surveillance program by the then unrevealed Edward Snowden.
Apparently the Obama Administration and their flunkies have no idea how technology really works, but you can’t be held accountable for a promise you made if you (try to) erase all record of it, can you? That’s the whole point of making something never was. Unfortunately for them and their propagandist historical revisionist tactic but fortunately for actual history, memory in the digital age is persistent. The original home page for Change.gov can be seen here and the original content of the Agenda/Ethics page (quoted above) can be seen here.
As noted by Luke Johnson at the Huffington Post, “Prior to the Snowden leaks but after Pfc. Bradley Manning gave classified information to WikiLeaks, the Obama administration launched the Insider Threat program to combat leaks, in part by asking coworkers to keep a close eye on their fellow employees. The program also ordered more protections for those who use proper channels, but four national security whistleblowers have said that they became targets of Justice Department investigations after bringing concerns to the Department of Defense Inspector General.”
I think historical revisionism as a political propaganda methodology is in many ways worse than a simple lie.
Was this an attempt at historical revisionism in the most pejorative sense?
Is there another explanation that defies the timeline of removal?
Could there be other promises made they wish to “never was” in addition to the promised protection for whistleblowers?
What do you think?
Source(s): Huffington Post, Wikipedia, Change.gov, The Wayback Machine Web Archive (1, 2), Sunlight Foundation, http://www.mcclatchydc.com, Firedoglake
The Propaganda Series;
Propaganda 105: How to Spot a Liar
Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Streisand Effect and the Political Question
Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Sound of Silence
Propaganda 104: Magica Verba Est Scientia Et Ars Es
Propaganda 103: The Word Changes, The Word Remains The Same
Propaganda 102 Supplemental: Get ‘Em Young
Propaganda 102 Supplemental: Holly Would “Zero Dark Thirty”
Propaganda 102: Holly Would and the Power of Images
Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Child’s Play
Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Build It And They Will Come (Around)
Propaganda 101: What You Need to Know and Why or . . .
Related articles of interest;
Mythology and the New Feudalism by Mike Spindell
How about Some Government Propaganda for the People Paid for by the People Being Propagandized? by Elaine Magliaro
Is Freedom of the Press Dead? by Lawrence E. Rafferty
~submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
David,
Gnaw on this bone….And yet Bush, Cheney and other top administration officials claimed repeatedly for years that Saddam was behind 9/11. See this analysis. Indeed, Bush administration officials apparently swore in a lawsuit that Saddam was behind 9/11.
DavidM,
As we both know, it is possible to lie and mislead without actually saying the words. Dr. Milton Erickson was a psychiatrist and master of the indirect suggestion in hypnosis. For example, you could be having lunch with him, and he could get you to pass the salt without asking directly. Instead of asking you to pass the salt, he would look around and comment idly, “I don’t see the salt.” Without even thinking, you would hear that as “Please pass the salt.”
Dr. Frank Luntz has mastered the psychology of key words and indirect suggestion; checking them out on focus groups before handing them to his clients.
“I’m not going to argue with that either, because connecting Iraq with terrorist groups and individuals involved with Al Qaeda who were responsible for the attacks will naturally cause people to assume that there was a connection.”
Yes. If you connect one party with another, and bang on about terrorism and 9/11, it is just about vaguely possible that people might get the idea that there is a connection. Who would have thought?
So maybe it wan’t strictly a lie so much as it was “the least honest truth”?
.
As for the absolute lies, the intelligence on AQ connections, WMD, missiles and nuke development that indicated they did not exist got somehow reworked to say that they did.
SlingTrebuchet wrote: “So maybe it wan’t strictly a lie so much as it was “the least honest truth”?”
I don’t see it as a “least honest truth.” There were terrorists in Iraq, and Hussein was a threat, so it made sense to communicate that attacking Iraq would be an important step to securing freedoms in our war against terrorism. There are many reasons we haven’t even begun to discuss that supports this viewpoint.
What I do see as a lie is claiming that the Bush administration publicly blamed Iraq for 911. It is especially egregious when someone states this falsehood and then claims that Bush lied when he said it. He didn’t say it, so he couldn’t have lied, and even if he had said it, you can’t prove he said it in order in order to purposely deceive the public. If Bush did believe in the connection personally, then we would have to conclude that he used enormous restraint perhaps because he had no solid proof for that belief.
Anon – did you miss putting in a link to an analysis? It is possible that Bush himself believed Iraq was connected, but he never presented that belief to the public if he did believe that. The lawsuit thing involves a Havard graduate author named Laurie Mylorie (see http://www.lauriemylroie.com/) who actually worked as a consultant to Bill Clinton. A lot of left wing propaganda outlets present her as part of “Team Bush” which leads people like you to say that she was part of the Bush Administration, but I have not seen any confirmation that there is that connection. Dr. Mylorie believes in the Iraqi connection with terrorist actions, including Al Qaeda, and especially the 1993 World Trade bombing, and she has written books about this. Attributing her to Bush does not seem proper to me, but if you can link to information that might correct my understanding here, I would appreciate it.
“I’m not going to argue with that either, because connecting Iraq with terrorist groups and individuals involved with Al Qaeda who were responsible for the attacks will naturally cause people to assume that there was a connection.”
Yes. If you connect one party with another, and bang on about terrorism and 9/11, it is just about vaguely possible that people might get the idea that there is a connection. Who would have thought?
So maybe it wan’t strictly a lie so much as it was “the least honest truth”?
.
As for the absolute lies, the intelligence on AQ connections, WMD, missiles and nuke development that indicated they did not exist got somehow reworked to say that they did.
Here is a peer-reviewed journal article in Perspectives on Politics, the official publication of the American Political Science Association.
Here is the abstract:
Gershkoff , A., & Kushner, S. (2005). Shaping public opinion: The 9/11-iraq connection in the bush administration’s rhetoric. Perspectives on Politics, 3(3), 525-537.
Link to the original published document below (PDF warning, may load slow):
https://sgadaria.expressions.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Iraq-article_Gershkoff_Kushner.pdf
OS – great article. Thanks for the link. The pertinent statement in that study in regards to whether or not Bush lied to the American public in claiming that Iraq was responsible for 911 is the following:
“President Bush never publicly blamed Saddam Hussein
or Iraq for the events of September 11, but by consistently
linking Iraq with terrorism and al Qaeda he provided the
context from which such a connection could be made.”
This particular WordPress bog is shooting down comments.
Let’s see if this gets past………
Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President Pro Tempore of the Senate
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/print/20030321-5.html
March 21, 2003
Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)
On March 18, 2003, I made available to you, consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), my determination that further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq, nor lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
I have reluctantly concluded, along with other coalition leaders, that only the use of armed force will accomplish these objectives and restore international peace and security in the area. I have also determined that the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organiza-tions, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. United States objectives also support a transition to democracy in Iraq, as contemplated by the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338).
Consistent with the War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148), I now inform you that pursuant to my authority as Commander in Chief and consistent with the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1) and the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), I directed U.S. Armed Forces, operating with other coalition forces, to commence combat operations on March 19, 2003, against Iraq.
These military operations have been carefully planned to accomplish our goals with the minimum loss of life among coalition military forces and to innocent civilians. It is not possible to know at this time either the duration of active combat operations or the scope or duration of the deployment of U.S. Armed Forces necessary to accomplish our goals fully.
As we continue our united efforts to disarm Iraq in pursuit of peace, stability, and security both in the Gulf region and in the United States, I look forward to our continued consultation and cooperation.
Sincerely,
GEORGE W. BUSH
Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President Pro Tempore of the Senate
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/print/20030321-5.html
March 21, 2003
Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)
On March 18, 2003, I made available to you, consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), my determination that further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq, nor lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
I have reluctantly concluded, along with other coalition leaders, that only the use of armed force will accomplish these objectives and restore international peace and security in the area. I have also determined that the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organiza-tions, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. United States objectives also support a transition to democracy in Iraq, as contemplated by the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338).
Consistent with the War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148), I now inform you that pursuant to my authority as Commander in Chief and consistent with the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1) and the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), I directed U.S. Armed Forces, operating with other coalition forces, to commence combat operations on March 19, 2003, against Iraq.
These military operations have been carefully planned to accomplish our goals with the minimum loss of life among coalition military forces and to innocent civilians. It is not possible to know at this time either the duration of active combat operations or the scope or duration of the deployment of U.S. Armed Forces necessary to accomplish our goals fully.
As we continue our united efforts to disarm Iraq in pursuit of peace, stability, and security both in the Gulf region and in the United States, I look forward to our continued consultation and cooperation.
Sincerely,
GEORGE W. BUSH
Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President Pro Tempore of the Senate
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/print/20030321-5.html
March 21, 2003
Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)
On March 18, 2003, I made available to you, consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), my determination that further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq, nor lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
I have reluctantly concluded, along with other coalition leaders, that only the use of armed force will accomplish these objectives and restore international peace and security in the area. I have also determined that the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organiza-tions, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. United States objectives also support a transition to democracy in Iraq, as contemplated by the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338).
Consistent with the War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148), I now inform you that pursuant to my authority as Commander in Chief and consistent with the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1) and the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), I directed U.S. Armed Forces, operating with other coalition forces, to commence combat operations on March 19, 2003, against Iraq.
These military operations have been carefully planned to accomplish our goals with the minimum loss of life among coalition military forces and to innocent civilians. It is not possible to know at this time either the duration of active combat operations or the scope or duration of the deployment of U.S. Armed Forces necessary to accomplish our goals fully.
As we continue our united efforts to disarm Iraq in pursuit of peace, stability, and security both in the Gulf region and in the United States, I look forward to our continued consultation and cooperation.
Sincerely,
GEORGE W. BUSH
David,
You taking something for tht selective memory….. Involved in too many bar fights…. Got dropped on your head once too many….. You’re the one spreading misinformation…. Bush and Cheney both indicated and stated that saddam Husain was responsible for this…. And that they WMD….. Trip on man…. You’re funny…. You don’t happen to teach any children do you….. Or are you at Hillsdale…..
Anon wrote: ” You’re the one spreading misinformation… Bush and Cheney both indicated and stated that saddam Husain was responsible for this…”
No they did not. You are the one with the misinformation. Show me one quote where both Bush and Cheney said that Hussein was responsible for the attacks on 9/11/01. You won’t be able to find that quote because you are basing your belief on unsubstantiated propaganda.
OK. The upfront from Bush was just the AQ connection and that Iraq would have given WMD/chemical weapons to AQ to attack the US.
The rest of the lies stand.
I think you are still straining at the meaning of the word “lie”.
By your logic, Congress committees who are lied to by the likes of Clapper and Alexander are complicit in those lies.
Although…. you have a point if you mean that they not making formal complaints of an offence and demanding prosecution would make them complicit.
It is their job to oversee. They have so far failed to do that.
Similarly, Obama is complict in the abduction and torture of innocents as he failed to prsecute those responsible.
.
More on the justifications for the Iraq invasion and on the examination of those reasons..
http://www.cfr.org/iraq/iraq-justifying-war/p7689
SlingTrebuchet wrote: “OK. The upfront from Bush was just the AQ connection… The rest of the lies stand.”
I do appreciate the concession, but I hope you understand that I don’t have a lot of time to get into the nuances of the other so-called lies. Whether or not they are lies are in my opinion debatable. A lie implies a conscious effort to deceive, and it is plausible to me that he suffered from confirmation bias, believing what he already thought was true. I don’t really know and I don’t think our discussing it will resolve that matter.
My position on Iraq is that we needed to do something about Saddam Hussein. I consider his history of invading other countries, his demonstrated ability to build up a large army, the tremendous bloodshed he perpetrated on his own people, and his belief that he was the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar and was chosen by God to restore Babylon to its former glory. In my opinion, he was basically another Adolf Hitler in the making.
In my opinion, when Bush stood on that aircraft carrier and declared victory, that should have been the end of it. Troops home. Other nations fear and respect America. End of story.
Unfortunately, Bush let the Harvard lawyers and military conspire and persuade him that we needed to do some nation building, that we needed to create democracy in the Middle East so that their interests would be more aligned with ours. That effort was doomed to failure, especially when they draft new constitutions for these governments that make them Islamic republics, thus making a religious book of Scripture, the Quran, the supreme law of the land. It seems mighty strange to me that we learned for ourselves what a mistake this conflation of church and state is, yet we think it will be okay for Islam to do it. They basically were creating a so-called democracy with completely different rules from our own.
I don’t think “lie” means what you think it means.
Politicians who vote based on information that they are given and believe to be true are not lying. They are voting.
People who give information, knowing to to be untrue are lying.
Major lies told included that
– Iraq was invoved in 9/11
– AQ were supported by Iraq
– Iraq had WMD that could be deployed by missile within 48 hours
.
For some pointers to the legal/illegal question see,
http://www.robincmiller.com/ir-legal.htm
This has links to views for and against
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6917.htm
This for a quick read – including Annan saying “illegal”.
What you are at is the sort of semantic dancing we have seen recently from Clapper and Alexander.
It the kind of dancing that turns torture into enhanced interrogation.
It is the kind of dancing that has lying to congress as not lying but giving the least dishonest answer.
It is the kind of dancing that has indiscriminate harvesting of everything as inadvertant and not under that program.
SlingTrebuchet wrote: “Iraq was invoved in 9/11”
I assume you are still talking about Bush’s alleged lie. This so-called lie is actually the lie. You realize that, right? Bush never claimed that Iraq was involved in 9/11. You are repeating something falsely put out to deceive people like you into believing that Bush said that when he never did.
For what it is worth, I know what a lie is. When these members of Congress vote to support action based on intelligence they have vetted, intelligence not directly allowed to be viewed by the normal citizen, and that intelligence is a lie, then they are all complicit in that lie (if one actually exists at the root of it). As common citizens, we have no ability to vet the information ourselves. We rely upon them to evaluate it and determine the truthfulness of that information. Therefore, when they tell us it is good, we rely on them for that. Maybe they made a mistake, and therefore it would not be a lie, but if they made a mistake, the so did Bush. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t single out one person and claim they knew better and tricked the others without additional evidence to substantiate that claim.
“Bush never claimed that Iraq was involved in 9/11. You are repeating something falsely put out to deceive people like you into believing that Bush said that when he never did.”
Davidm,
You continue to beg the question distorting the reality of the era. The Bush Administration clearly conflated 9/11 with Iraq and there are quotes from Dick Cheney clearly connecting the two. The polls of the era show the American people clearly believing that Iraq and 9/11 were connected. Shall I give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you are purposely being disingenuous, or should I disrespect your intelligence to state that you really do not understand the nature of what went on?
Mike Spindell wrote: “The polls of the era show the American people clearly believing that Iraq and 9/11 were connected.”
I understand this to be the case as well, but this is not the same as saying that the administration put out the story that Iraq was involved with the specific terrorist act of 911. The tremendous harm caused by 911 woke us up about threats in the Middle East. Iraq was obviously one to come to mind, and the recent invasion they made in Kuwait was still fresh on a lot of people’s minds. People responded to polls that asked if it was LIKELY that Hussein was involved with the attacks.
Mike Spindell wrote: “The Bush Administration clearly conflated 9/11 with Iraq…”
I’m not going to argue with that either, because connecting Iraq with terrorist groups and individuals involved with Al Qaeda who were responsible for the attacks will naturally cause people to assume that there was a connection. When making allegations of lying, however, it is important what the administration actually said. If the administration did not say that Iraq was responsible for 911, and if instead they said that invading Iraq would be consistent with our “war on terrorism,” then it would be a lie to claim that the administration blamed Iraq for the 911 attacks.
Cross posted as a relevant example:
“anonymously posted 1, July 31, 2013 at 3:28 pm
Bradley Manning Revealed Crimes Far Worse Than the Ones He Supposedly Committed
by John Glaser, Editor at Antiwar.com
07/30/13
WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning has been acquitted of the most serious charge against him, that of aiding the enemy. But the 20-something other charges, including espionage, have stuck and could land him a sentence of more than 100 years in prison.
In the media world, even national security hawks like The Daily Beast’s Eli Lake concede that Manning’s leaks had “a lot of public benefit.” But very few have argued Manning should go free.
Did Manning break the law? According to the letter, yes he did. But since when did we presume to hold people in government accountable to the law?
The Bush administration lied to the American people in order to justify the war crime of attacking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That crime qualified, in the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal, as “the supreme international crime differing only from other crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Trillions of dollars and the death and suffering of millions of people were the consequences of that crime.
The Bush gang also secretly ordered warrantless surveillance of Americans’ domestic communications without involving the courts, a blatant violation of both constitutional and statutory law. And don’t forget the setting up of a worldwide torture regime that directly violated longstanding international law as well as domestic law, specifically a Convention against torture, passed by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan, which specifies that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever… may be invoked as a justification of torture.”
Yet, nobody but the most marginal voices in our politics ever dared to suggest the Bush administration should be prosecuted according to the letter of the law.
Many of these types of crimes have extended into the Obama era as well. The Obama administration’s penchant for secret legal interpretations of when the Bill of Rights applies and when it doesn’t conflicts with basic principles of the rule of law.
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, recently committed perjury when he lied to Congress about whether the National Security Agency collects information on American citizens, a federal crime as it turns out. He issued an apology, but otherwise faces no consequences.
In the U.S., there are crimes the government approves of and those it doesn’t. Contrast Bradley Manning’s punishment, for example, with that of the commander in charge of the torture at Abu Ghraib. Manning was subjected to abusive detention and faces more than a hundred years in prison. Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who oversaw the brutal torment of hundreds of detainees got an $8,000 fine.
Bradley Manning’s leaks revealed crimes far worse than the ones he has supposedly committed. The Collateral Murder video shows the sickening slaughter of a group of people in Iraq, including journalists and rescuers.
One State Department cable revealed to the world for the first time that U.S. special operations forces raided a house in Iraq in 2006 and summarily executed one man, four women, two children, and three infants — all shot in the head. Although Phillip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, brought the incident to the attention of then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration failed to respond.
Manning’s leaks also revealed the fact that the Obama administration colluded with the Yemeni dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh to execute a secret war without the consent of Congress and systematically lie about it. Yet Manning, who blew the whistle on this criminality, is the only one facing legal prosecution.
The lopsided nature of our legal system is well-known to any close observer of American politics. The law is for the powerful to defy with impunity, and for the weak to be punished with.
History, at least, will look very kindly on the actions of Bradley Manning and harshly on the crimes of the overlords he challenged. The real task is for Americans to get to the point where the country — and its government — is ruled by law, and not by men.”
__________
Thanks, ap.
Gene H quoted John Glaser: “The Bush administration lied to the American people in order to justify the war crime of attacking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq… The real task is for Americans to get to the point where the country — and its government — is ruled by law, and not by men.”
This is a clear example of revisionist history.
If Bush lied, then so did Hillary Clinton along with 40% of House Democrats and 58% of Senate Democrats who voted to take military action in Iraq.
For good or for bad, there is probably not a better example of the “rule of law” than the Iraq war. The entire action was the result of numerous laws being broken by Iraq and of numerous votes taken to uphold the rule of law. Furthermore, numerous investigations and debates both domestically and internationally have sought to examine the legality of the invasion. Our own federal courts determined that the action was legal. No international court of administrative body of any kind has issued advisory positions or legal findings that would make the attack illegal. Certainly there are individuals who have had issue with it, but none have been persuasive enough or shown what law was broken, nor even what law needs to be established to prevent such an event again. When it comes down to it, if a person has the position that the Iraq war was unjustified, they can in no way claim that it happened because of a violation of the principle of “rule of law.” Indeed, it is the “rule of law” that perhaps resulted in the Iraq war.
Consider the hypothetical situation that we did not have the principle of “rule of law,”.and instead we had the rule of man. In that case, the United Nations under Kofi Annan would have prevented the attack, or if it took place, Kofi Annan afterward would have held those many nations involved in the aggression accountable for war crimes. The reason the Iraq situation ended up the way it did was because of the rule of law instead of rule under a person who had the perspective that the Iraq war was wrong.
“If Bush lied, then so did Hillary Clinton along with 40% of House Democrats and 58% of Senate Democrats who voted to take military action in Iraq.”
Davidm,
Another example of the arguing technique that you do so well, if so wrongly. G.W. Bush was the President. He lied to Congress and to the American people and did so when the horror of 9/11 was still fresh in American minds. Of course many prominent Democrats and liberals supported him believing his lies that there was evidence that Iraq was behind 9/11 and had weapons of mass destruction. This was another triumph for the propaganda of which Gene writes.
What your point really is David yet another piece of propaganda on your part because you only mention Hilary Clinton among many prominent Democrats who voted for the war. Your aim is transparent since many think that Clinton will be the next Democratic Presidential candidate. Silly David. Don’t you get that this is not a liberal, or Democratic Party website? I personally do not like Hilary Clinton and I really didn’t like her husband. However, when it comes to the Iraq War, the totality of which I not only consider a War Crime, but also an example of stupid foreign policy, far too many people relied on the lies spread by a reckless Administration and it is hard to blame them for it.
Apparently Hairboy isn’t above a little historical revisionism himself, albeit even more incompetently executed than that of the Obama administration:
Mitt Romney On 47 Percent Remark: ‘Actually, I Didn’t Say That’ About Personal Responsibility
Elaine,
Thanks for that pertinent addition. That Jefferson was a sharp guy. Greenwald’s not bad either. 😀
Gene,
Interesting post. I had not heard that the Change.gov web page had been “disappeared.”
Two years ago I wrote a post about Obama’s DOJ going after whistleblowers. I’m going to post an excerpt from it, which includes something written by Glenn Greenwald:
Promises, Promises: Is the Obama DOJ Going after Whistleblowers?
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/03/06/promises-promises-is-the-obama-doj-going-after-whistleblowers/
Gerstein says the revelation that the government obtained that information about Risen has alarmed First Amendment advocates, particularly in light of Justice Department rules requiring the attorney general to sign off on subpoenas directed to members of the media and on requests for their phone records. And Risen told POLITICO that the disclosures, while not shocking, made him feel “like a target of spying.”
Greenwald says what he finds “particularly indefensible” is how the Obama DOJ is going back into the past to dig up “forgotten episodes.”
This is how Greenwald closes his article:
For a President who insists that we must “Look Forward, Not Backward” — when it comes to investigating war crimes by high-level Bush officials — this anti-whistleblower assault reflects not only an obsession on preserving and bolstering the National Security State’s secrecy regime, but also an intense fixation on the past. And increasingly extremist weapons — now including trolling through reporters’ banking and phone records — are being wielded to achieve it. As Thomas Jefferson warned long ago: “Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.”
lol
Gene,
It is all Lincoln’s fault! 🙂
MM,
You tangentially raise a good point: in the information age, historical revisionism is practically impossible without mainstream corporate media collusion.
The corporate media’s collective decision not to air their film footage of street riots that took place during Deputy Dubya Bush’s first inauguration parade surely qualifies as propaganda by simply not showing what actually happened. Michael Moore, on the other hand, made devastating usage of that same network news footage simply by showing it at the beginning of his movie Fahrenheit 9/11. The United States clearly does not actually have an independent news media. Instead, corporate collusion — clearly in violation of anti-trust laws and the quaint notion of a “free market” of ideas and information — clearly enforces a uniform pablum of vapid commercial uniformity in America.
Oky1: We don’t need ink anymore. Type some numbers into a secure computer system and the money is “created.” We have virtualized the printing press.
The poverty is a result of people not getting a fair share of the profit for the work they do. They used to get a more fair share, but the rise of corporatism in the world and the shifting of jobs all over the globe to the lowest bidder with the fewest safeguards for workers has reduce the amount of money the workers get — hence poverty. Poverty here because other countries like China and India allow virtual slavery; and poverty there because their workers are virtually slaves.
It isn’t that hard to figure out, just follow the money, and stop trusting what the people with money keep telling you. And stop trusting what their hired stooges are telling you.