Mistakes and Lies

I just received this video below in an email, on the topic of governments lying about wars to their citizens.

It struck me because of course, Bush lied about the reasons for going into Iraq, a terrible preemptive war, aka the 'Bush Doctrine'.

Bush apparently also lied about the information that was actually known and the warnings prior to 9/11 which should have received his attention instead of his dismissal according to classified documents.



This was strikingly similar to lies about the Viet Nam War, where Daniel Ellsberg blew the whistle on Viet Nam era lies in the Pentagon Papers, releasing classified information to the press.

In late 1969—with the assistance of his former RAND Corporation colleague Anthony Russo and the staff of Senator Edward Kennedy—Ellsberg secretly made several sets of photocopies of the classified documents to which he had access; these later became known as the Pentagon Papers. They revealed that the government had knowledge, early on, that the war could most likely not be won, and that continuing the war would lead to many times more casualties than was ever admitted publicly. Further, as an editor of the New York Times was to write much later, these documents "demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance".^[9]

Had Bush told us the truth, he would never have had a second term, he never would have had the support to go into Iraq, and he might not have even had the support to go into Afghanistan.  He would have been held more properly accountable for his failure to protect this country, for his hubris, his arrogance, his ignorance and his militarism.

ALL of those things are concerns that we should also have for Mitt Romney, who is as bad or worse than Bush/Cheney ever was, substituting Iran for Iraq, and a likely extended war in Afghanistan.

I find myself very torn; we are currently in a status of obstruction of our government, and of attempts to make us more, not less polarized, to make us more divided, not united, from the obstructionist right wing that is composed of extremists and ignorant ideologues who concern me as to their ability to deal rationally because of their aversion to facts.  The opinions of the birthers and the truthers, held in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, the resistance to global warming, the promotion of intelligent design and ignorance only sex ed legislation, the right wing determination to formulate factually inaccurate textbooks and to make it LEGAL for a doctor to blatantly LIE to a patient, in order to control and restrict choices about their lives and health -- that all raises serious trust issues about the judgement of irrational, ignorant and emotionally-driven people.  There are more people who believe odd conspiracy theories and factually inaccurate things that should only persuade the most gullible than we have seen when the right was moderate and, frankly, sane and capable of better reason.

It is hard to trust a political party that is so vigorous in distrusting of a woman's right to choose decisions for her body and her life, that they would behave as offensively and invasivly as possible in those decisions.  That gives the lie to any belief that they trust Americans.

Further, I applaud the actions that Obama took during the Libyan overthrow of Kadaffi; I'm not sure if that would be possible with some of the proposed restriction on Presidential action, where the latitude, properly used, has been invaluable.

So the question becomes, how do we limit the dangerous lies, abuses, and excesses of the Bush'Cheney administrations and any future Republican similar abuses, how do we avoid the Democratic administration lies of an administration like LBJ's, without preventing necessary freedom and flexibility and responsiveness?

It is a difficult thing to create rules to apply, limit, and guide.

I would also be more encouraged to trust democracy as a process if we in this country were more involved; we do in fact have a very poor turnout to vote in this country, compared to other countries.
While that is the desideratum of the right in the hopes of their controlling more power and positions, we must also fight attempts to disenfranchise so very many people.  It is the OPPOSITE of democracy and patriotism to interfere with the premise of one person / one vote.

Until we resolve those conflicts, the irrationality is confronted and corrected, we need to proceed cautiously.