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Betrayal of Trust
George Lakoff, September 27, 2003
The
question of the L-word keeps coming up. Did the president and his chief
advisors lie? I think this is the wrong question to be asking. The real
issue is betrayal of trust.
The president has been
criticized for using the following as justifications for the Iraq war.
We went to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction that threatened us. He was reconstituting his nuclear
weapons programs (the aluminum tubes, the uranium from Africa). He had
huge stocks of chemical and biological weapons that could be launched
quickly in aerial vehicles that threatened the U.S. Saddam was working
with Al Qaeda. Iraqis had "trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and
poisons and deadly gases."
It appears these
were all falsehoods. The tubes couldn't be used for enriching uranium,
there was no uranium anyway, and no reconstituted nuclear weapons
programs. The vast stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons have
not been found, and would be well past their use-date anyway. The
aerial delivery vehicles could not go more that a few hundred miles and
could not threaten the U.S. There is no evidence that Saddam had
anything to do with the Al Qaeda attack on the U.S., or that there was
any cooperation between Saddam and Al Qaeda, although seventy percent
of Americans believe it, according to a recent Washington Post poll,
and perhaps a higher percentage of men and women in the military.
President Bush's
speech on September 7 used language that had the same implications.
[We] "acted first in Afghanistan, by destroying training camps of
terror, and removing the regime that harbored Al Qaeda. ... And we
acted in Iraq, where the former regime sponsored terror, possessed and
used weapons of mass destruction ... Two years ago, I told the Congress
and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a
different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is
now the central front."
Here is the
impression that a great many Americans have been left with, especially
our men and women in the military and their families: We went to war in
Iraq, first, to defend our country against terrorists, second, to
liberate that country – selflessly, at great sacrifice, not out of
self-interest.
These are false impressions, and the president continues to create and reinforce them.
Are they lies – or are they merely exaggerations, misleading statements, mistakes, rhetorical excesses
and so on. Linguists study such matters. The most startling finding is
that, in considering whether a statement is a lie, the least important
consideration for most people is whether it is true!
The more important considerations are, Did
he believe it? Did he intend to deceive? Was he trying to gain some
advantage or to harm someone else? Is it a serious matter, or a trivial
one? Is it "just" a matter of political rhetoric? Most people will
grant that, even if the statement happened to be false, if he believed
it, wasn't trying to deceive, and was not trying to gain advantage or
harm any one, then there was no lie. If it was a lie in the service of
a good cause, then it was a white lie. If it was based on faulty
information, then it was an honest mistake. If it was just there for
emphasis, then it was an exaggeration.
These have been
among the administration's defenses. The good cause: liberating Iraq.
The faulty information: from the CIA. The emphasis: enthusiasm for a
great cause. Even though there is evidence that the President and his
advisers knew the information was false, they can deflect the use of
the L-word. The falsehoods have been revealed and they, in themselves,
do not matter much to most people.
But lying, in
itself, is not and should not be the issue. The real issue is a
betrayal of trust. Our democratic institutions require trust. When the
president asks Congress to consent to war – the most difficult moral
judgment it can make – Congress must be able to trust the information
provided by the administration. When the President asks our fighting
men and women to put their lives on the line for a reason, they must be
able to trust that the reason he has given is true. It is a betrayal of
trust for the president to ask our soldiers to risk their lives under
false pretenses. And when the president asks the American people to put
their sons and daughters in harm's way and to spend money that could be
used for schools, for health care, for helping desperate people, for
rebuilding decaying infrastructure, and for economic stimulation in
hard times, it is a betrayal of trust for the president to give false
impressions.
It is telling what
was not in the President's September 7 speech. He sought help from
other nations, but he refused to relinquish control over the shaping of
Iraq's military, political, and economic future. It was to a large
extent the issue of such control that lay behind the UN Security
Council's refusal to participate in the American attack and occupation.
The reason for the resentment against the U.S., both in Europe and
elsewhere, stemmed from a widespread perception that American interests
really lay behind the invasion of Iraq. Those interests are: control
over the Iraqi economy by American corporations, the political shaping
of Iraq to suit U.S. economic and strategic interests, military bases
to enhance U.S. power in the Middle East, reconstruction profits to
U.S. corporations, control over the future of the second largest oil
supply in the world, and refining and marketing profits for U.S. and
British oil companies. The 'Iraqi people' would get profits only from
the sale of crude, and those profits would go substantially to pay
American companies like Halliburton for reconstruction.
In other words, it
looks like the war was a war for the long-term U.S. control of the
Middle East and for the self-interest of American corporations, and not
a selfless war of liberation. We see this in the administration
arguments that, since the U.S. has shed the blood of its soldiers and
spent billions, it is entitled to such spoils of war. The argument is
an investment argument: The war was an expensive investment and the
U.S. deserves the return on the investment of lives and money. Such
arguments make the war look like much more than mere self-defense and a
selfless war of liberation.
If the real
rationale for the Iraq War has been self-interested control – over oil
resources, the regional economy, political influence, and military
bases – if it was not self-defense and not selfless liberation, then
President Bush betrayed the trust of our soldiers, the Congress, and
the American people. Mere lying is a minor matter when betrayal is the
issue.
GNN contributor George Lakoff
is the author of Moral Politics, Senior Fellow at the Rockridge
Institute, and Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and
Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Read Lakoff's "Metaphor's of War"
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