TRUTH
OR CONSEQUENCES
One such has been the imbroglio surrounding a recent interview given by Paul Wolfowitz, an important member of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s team at the Department of Defense. Wolfowitz is known to be a strategic thinker who has influenced defense policy over the years, including the present administration. What happened was that Wolfowitz was quoted as saying that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. That statement was widely re-broadcast throughout the liberal media world. A prime example was The Guardian, England’s premier liberal newspaper. It’s comments were re-published among the chattering classes, the major television outlets at home and world-wide. There was, however, a problem. Were anyone to read Wolfowitz’s interview, it would have been apparent that the words cited were falsely cited, that is, contextually, the use made of his language was an egregious misrepresentation. What he said was that because Iraq “floats on a sea of oil”, the administration’s economic options differed from the economic options as to North Korea. The Guardian, to its credit, ran a next day correction, in a prominent position. Bully for them but, to my knowledge, only The Guardian did the right thing. But even The Guardian did not fire the reporter or even publish a public reprimand. And The Guardian was but one of hundreds of sources which broadcast this falsehood around the globe. Once loosed, a lie is repeated by the uncaring and the unknowing inflicting repeated damage to the victim. That is why defamation is conduct correctable by a court with a heavy remedy on the liar. To those who carp that the writer may not have known the context of Wolfowitz’s interview, the response should be shame on a reporter for not checking the key fact of an article, especially when the interview was readily available in the New Yorker Magazine. There have been no consequences for the reporter, for the hundreds of other repeaters of the falsehood but there have been negative consequences for Wolfowitz, the Administration and United States policy. Were this an occasional or rare event, it might not be an issue. But it is neither occasional nor rare. It is commonplace and it is corrupt. In today’s American culture, lying appears to have few, if any, consequences. We are each aware of the bald-faced liar: “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” We sometimes recognize, albeit belatedly, the self-styled victim as a liar: “[It’s the fault of] a vast right-wing conspiracy” There is, however, another class of public liar: the expert. Recall those in Congress and academia who predicted the Iraq conflict would cost nearly $100 billion; one Yale economist predicted the cost to be $1.2 trillion. Recall the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s who would be killed in bombing raids; recall the “quagmire”; recall the “lack of planning”; recall the “body bags by the thousands” and more. All loudly set out as immutable happenings; none happened; not one. Such predictions and many more were regularly offered as truth straight from the mouths of “experts”. Few non-experts are cited in the media; the media frequently relies on “experts” thus relieving the media from responsibility. The problem with all that is that the “experts”, are presented as “experts”, irrespective of their track record. Remember the “expert” who predicted the world would run out of oil in the 1990s? Or that there would be insufficient food to feed the world’s growing population around that same time-frame? That, of course, was Paul Erlich, who in 1968, authored a Malthusian best-seller concerning the inevitability of population growth and the inability of the world to cope. It is a totally discredited theory, just look around. Yet some still cite Erlich who, with his wife, actually wrote and had published a sequel in the ‘90s. One of my favorite politicians, Jerry Brown, former Governor of California and erstwhile Democrat presidential candidate, was the promoter of small expectations, following Erlich’s lead. Brown is now Mayor of Oakland, California, a fitting place for small expectations. Similar excesses are easily seen when reviewing the prospectus of almost every single-issue group. The Sierra Club predicts no more trees; the American Civil Liberties Union predicts no more rights; the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund predicts no more tolerance; the Cato Institute demands no more government; the National Rifle Association predicts no more guns. All rant, rave and claim their cause to be the panacea to all ills. Do what we propose and most everything else will fall into its logical place, peace will reign and happiness prevail. Despite the hand-wringing, there are plenty of trees, Americans enjoy their liberties still and guns are available to all who want them. How can this be? How can “experts” be so wrong for so long and yet be deemed “expert” still? Were you or I to be so wrong for so long at our chosen work, we could not long survive. Yet for Americans in the public eye, being wrong does not appear to be considered wrong. Forget humility born of error; that never happens. What does it take to discredit an “expert” so the American public loses confidence? Nothing seems to dissuade some. Murder? See O.J. Simpson; Outright lying? See W.J. Clinton. Americans
are gullible; we want to believe and so we do. Even though we know
we are being spun, being propagandized, being conned, we allow it
to happen. We also allow the same person to do it to us over and over.
Perhaps it is that we have low expectations of public figures. We
expect them to lie. Perhaps, with experts, we accept their credentials,
assume their fallibility and forgive. Whatever the truth, among the
consequences is the confusion created by so many truths. |