Posted on 02/07/2003 10:27:29 AM PST by JohnGalt
February 7, 2003
OUR NATIONAL GOON SHOW by Thomas Fleming
In an ancient Goon Show skit (aired on March 13, 1956), listeners were warned of an epidemic of boot explosions that resulted from the depletion of "scradje" in the earth's crust. The government issued an emergency warning over the radio:
To prevent yourselves exploding, remove your boots, reverse the buttons on your socks and walk backwards, holding a gas-stove above your head. I do hope this is only a temporary measure. Good night. The Goons (Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe) probably intended a satire on the Cold War obsession with civil defense. Here in America, we school children were sometimes told to get under the desk and put our hands over our heads to shield ourselves from nuclear holocaust!. One New York city teacher was fired, when he refused to take part in the farce.
Governments tell the damnedest lies to the public, often from the highest motives. You want people to take an interest in civil defense, and you also want them to support the West's brave resistance to the Soviet empire. So you reassure them with little white lies, such as President Eisenhower's solemn declaration, four years after the scradje incident, that the US did not send spy planes into Soviet air space. Then Francis Gary Powers started talking, and the President was shown to be a liar.
Ever since Colin Powell's forceful speech to the United Nations Security Council, the reporters of the Yellow Media (FOX, CNN, CBS especially) have been denouncing anyone who expressed skepticism over Powell's cartoon drawings and the transcribed and translated intercepts that purportedly prove that Iraq's military is hiding its "weapons of mass destruction." Powell also tried, once and for all, to connect Saddam Hussein with al Quaeda, by tracing the movements of a one-legged terrorists and describing the activities of an Islamic militant group in northern Iraq.
I do not believe that Secretary Powell is lying, nor do I think that the CIA is deliberately fabricating evidence--though they have done such things in the past. Like most Americans, however, I believe that the Bush administration would suppress evidence that complicated their case, and I am not at all sure that some of the evidence is not being twisted, editorialized, and over-interpreted to prove what cannot yet be proved. Someone should have explained to Secretary Powell that the Islamic militant group he described are the sworn enemies of Saddam Hussein and his regime, and that it is only because of the US that the Iraqi government does not move in to eliminate them.
The answer from the American media is that our only choice is between believing Powell or believing Saddam. The Chicago Tribune's John Kass, better than most editorialists, put it plainly: "It is a question of believing. Do we believe Powell or the rat of Iraq? It comes down to that." But why do we have to believe either? It does not require advanced training in logic to imagine that Saddam might be a complete liar without believing that Powell, who is only, after all, repeating what he has been told, has provided accurate information. If he transmitted false information on the Al Qaeda connection, why do we think his other information is absolutely on target.
I believe Secretary Powell to be a good and basically honest man, but would I kill somehow simply on his say-so? No. And that is what the American--and our allies--are being asked to do: To kill perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on the say-so of our President and his cabinet members. For sane people to agree to such a request, the administration would first have to make as good a case as they could make in trying a single person on a capital offense. If the prosecutor in such a trial tried to introduce an unauthenticated tape with unidentifiable voices speaking a language no-one in the courtroom understood, claiming that it was sufficient proof to condemn the defendant to death, he would not get very far. Unfortunately, little of the evidence presented by the American authorities could stand legal scrutiny. Trust me, they say. My response is: Why should I?
Only a few days ago the same government was telling the people of Texas that if they touched (much less removed) pieces of the exploded Columbia Space Shuttle, they would be poisoned, probably fatally, by contact with residual toxic propellant. We all knew they meant well: NASA wanted to recover the pieces to use in an investigation that might prevent future catastrophes, and they also wanted to insure that no one would be injured from playing with potentially dangerous materials. But, after a fiery descent of 40 miles, the likelihood of any toxic propellant remaining in sufficient strength to kill or injure anyone was highly remote. We knew they lied, albeit in a good cause, and yet no one called them on it. All governments lie, every day in most cases, because they regard their peoples (quite correctly, it seems, in the case of Americans) as too childish to be trusted with the truth. Would you trust Dan Rather or Bill O'Reilly?
Secretary Powell's ostensive mission to the Security was to persuade the doubting Thomases that make decisions in France, Germany, Russia, and China. He failed, as he must have known would fail. None of these countries changed its position; indeed, the French foreign minister said that Powell's evidence only proved we needed more UN inspectors. Why did France remain unconvinced. It was certainly not, as O'Reilly suggested on his radio show, that France is now a Marxist country and, therefore, anti-American. Public opinion in France, Germany, and even England is about 80% against President Bush's policy. This strong opposition is not because of secret oil deals or envy of our superior American way of life--the French and Germans have it better than we do. The overall perception in Europe is that the government of the United States has been determined, from the moment of President Bush's election, to go to war with Iraq. September 11, they believe, is only a pretext. Such an opinion will make little headway in the US, where a majority of the population believes that one or more Iraqis were among the highjackers, but that is the fault of the Yellow Media.
Russian Foreign Minister Ivanov, in the politest way possible, made the most telling point: These were series charges and would have to be investigated by the intelligence services of the skeptical nations. In other words, Our intelligence agents are masters of deception, lying, fabrication of evidence, and they will be the best judges of whether your intelligence agents are up to the usual tricks of the trade.
It is the only possible answer, and Powell must have known it was the answer he would get. Then why did he go to the Security Council, apart from the administration's desire to stage a reassuring publicity stunt that gave talking points to the talking heads? That objective might have been accomplished with a far lower risk. Failure never looks good.
I think the answer lies in what otherwise might be regarded as a major gaffe: Powell's statement that if the members of the Security Council refused to act, they would undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations. Now this was very undiplomatic language--bullying language, in fact--but consistent with the Bush administration's two-track strategy of appealing to the UN while at the same time rejecting its jurisdiction. Obviously, no representative of a second-rate power likes to be reminded that even if all the second-rate powers--Russia, China, France, Germany--agree on something, their collective opinion is worthless compared to the mere whim of an American administration. Powell is not a fool, and he must have known what a sour note he sounded.
Since Secretary Powell is not a fool, we can only conclude that his snub was deliberate, and, sure enough, the Yellow Media within minutes had experts comparing the United Nations to the League of Nations, insisting that unless the Security Council rubber-stamped US war plans, it had failed in its mission.
It is not unlikely that senior members of the Bush Administration have finally been converted by the John Birch Society or Cliff Kincaid (Would that they had!), and would now like to withdraw from the United Nations. On the contrary. But in this crisis, they want to be able to reassure the American people in advance that the UN is irrelevant to any possible solution to the problem of Iraq. This is all public relations and political theater, designed (in the words of an earlier British humorist) to "lend artistic verisimilitude to a bald and otherwise unconvincing narrative."
In 1956, after the usual farcical fiasco, the deadly scradje crisis was solved and the BBC played the following pre-recorded announcement:
Good evening. Since I last spoke to you, the dreaded boot-explosions have ceased. Thanks to the courageous and untiring efforts of Professor Grytpype-Thynne and Mr. Moriarty both of whom are to be knighted. Therefore, as from now, you can all stop walking backwards, put on your boots, and lower your gas-stoves to the ground. [sound of announcer straining to put the stove down]
Posted for ongoing discussion between paleo-libs and paleo-cons in a world without borders or Christian ethics. If you think FDR is the father of modern conservatism and MLK more imporant than Tailgunner Joe, you will probably only confirm what paleo-libs and cons already think.
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