It is a dismaying reflection that the facilitators of major violence thus far in the 21st century have been lies told by democratic governments. The lies are continuing to be told, about the supposed "existential" menace posed by
One can say there is nothing new about lies. I would argue that the influence of mendacious official propaganda in the Western democracies is probably greater today than in the last century.
There was a certain utopian innocence in the first half of the last century. The secular utopian promises were truly believed. People were made happy by believing in the romantic futures they were told would follow the seizures of power by Bolsheviks or the Italian Fascists. In
One might have thought there had been a lesson in the brutal and senseless murder of millions in the world wars to deter such ambitions. But again the wars of Yugoslav succession were inspired by lies -- deliberately perpetuated, reawakened lies about the past, fictions about the malevolent ambitions of intimately related fellow-peoples of the former
One might also have thought, at the end of that century, that Mikhail (and Raisa) Gorbachev's inspired visitation by reason and wisdom would provide a decisive lesson about ending the lies. Gorbachev's first liberating proposal was Glasnost -- telling the truth. One might have believed that we would, in the 21st century, still be breathing the oxygen of Glasnost.
It was not so. Injustice and lies in the
Next was the fiction that Hussein's government, during the period of UN sanctions before 2003, was able to secretly construct nuclear weapons, despite the efforts of Western intelligence to detect them or deter him, and the presence of UN inspectors. There were no such weapons.
Another fiction was that if Saddam's
When people insist that this danger from
According to the post-invasion testimony of Saddam's associates, prior to the Gulf War he was interested in weapons of mass destruction -- in order to deter an attack by
The Iraqi dictator, following the Gulf War, decided that obtaining mass-destruction weapons was no longer feasible, but he deliberately cultivated an air of mystery about his intentions as a factor of deterrence of
The American invasion of
U.S. Secretary of Defense
If
Once more, the threat is a polemical invention, intended to frighten American, Israeli (and European) voters and to prompt a preemptive attack on
Available at Amazon.com:
At War with the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes
- Enforcing Human Rights for World's Poor
- The Geography of Chinese Power
- The Rise of Asia's Universities
- On Israel: Obama Playing the Middle East Game Wrong
- What's Happening With Israel?
- Exaggeration of Iranian Threat Could Have Dire Consequences
- Obama's Nuclear Policy Enhances America's Moral Position and Security
- New Obama Nuclear Policy Could Spur Proliferation and Harm America
- U.S. and Russia Should Share Anti-Iran Missile Defense
- Obama's Promise to Work With Foreign Governments
- The NATO Nuisance
- Cuban Cardinal Says Too Little Too Late
- The Starving Armenians
- Arizona's Anti-Immigrant Law Will Spark Hispanic Exodus
- Open Season on Latinos in Arizona
- Obama Criticism of Arizona Immigration Law Ignores Federal Incompetence
- Change for U.S. Nuclear Strategy: Nuclear War Planning and Non-proliferation
- Obama's Nuclear-Weapons Conference Fatally Flawed Before It Began
- Fear Factor: Swine Flu, Nuclear Weapons, Reacting to Doom
- Documents Reveal Al Qaeda Cyberattacks
- Iraq Elections - So What Happened to Iraq?
- Mexico's Big Hope: Get 5 Million U.S. Retirees
- U.S. Latin Policy: Big Gestures and Little Substance
- United States - 5 Ways to Keep America Great
- Iran - Sanctions on Iran
- Securing Afghanistan - Pakistan Connection
- Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai Ungrateful Puppet
- As Iraq Threatens to Come Apart Problems in Afghanistan Mount
- Latin America Must Diversify Trade With China
- Cuba After Fidel and Raul Castro
- China Should Be Ashamed of Its Aid to Haiti
- Pivot to Foreign Policy: American-Russian Cooperation
- Nuclear Roulette: The Obama Doctrine
- Al-Qaeda has Lost the Battle. But has it Won the War?
- Why Natural Disasters Are More Expensive But Less Deadly
- Dangerous Bias of United Nations Goldstone Report
- Greek Financial Debt Crisis Only Part of EU's Woes
- Remember the Pacific War
- Strange Sighting in Iraq
- Mexico Facing Six Wars Not Just One
- Mexican Violence Rising but Less Than in Washington
- Pakistan's Shrewd Shift in Dialogue
- Earthquake May Delay Chile's First World Goal
- Trees for Haiti Campaign Starts -- Slowly
- Haiti: Reforestation Should Be Part of Rebuilding Process
- Pentagon Wrestles With Haiti Relief
- Chile's Sebastian Pinera Unlikely to Be South American Silvio Berlusconi
- Earthquake Buries Progress in Haiti
- Beyond Haitian Relief Effort, How to Fix Haiti
- Haiti Needs a Version of the Marshall Plan
- Tough Love Only Long-Term Cure for Haiti
(C) 2010 William Pfaff