| | Thanks, Peter.
There are knowable facts and then there are interpretive implications of knowable facts (which are most correct after thorough integration of available data). After thorough integration of the data surrounding the decision to initiate Operation Iraqi Freedom, it may be found that there was no genuine skullduggery.
One way for this to be true is if it ever becomes known that OIF was strategically-expedient. It is possible that it could become known that it wasn't, also. Politics is such a hairy mess to get into because it involves not just an answer to what it is that is the next right thing to do, but to how -- if absolutely necessary -- to spin it in order to avoid public outcry.
Another way to move forward on major political decisions is to be straightforwardly transparent: to lay out known premises, believed assumptions, and the short- and long-range goals that an action is aimed at. This type of political action was defended by Rand in her HUAC testimony, available here:
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Mr. Stripling: You have read the letter I read from Lowell Mellett?
Miss Rand: Yes.
Mr. Stripling: Which says that the picture Song Of Russia has no political implications?
Miss Rand: Yes.
Mr. Stripling: Did you at the request of Mr. Smith, the investigator for this committee, view the picture Song Of Russia?
Miss Rand: Yes.
Mr. Stripling: Within the past two weeks?
Miss Rand: Yes, on October 13, to be exact.
Mr. Stripling: In Hollywood?
Miss Rand: Yes.
Mr. Stripling: Would you give the committee a break-down of your summary of the picture relating to either propaganda or an untruthful account or distorted account of conditions in Russia? ...
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Miss Rand: I don't believe the American people should ever be told any lies, publicly or privately. I don't believe that lies are practical. I think the international situation now rather supports me. I don't think it was necessary to deceive the American people about the nature of Russia.
I could add this: if those who saw it say it was quite all right, and perhaps there are reasons why it was all right to be an ally of Russia, then why weren't the American people told the real reasons and told that Russia is a dictatorship but there are reasons why we should cooperate with them to destroy Hitler and other dictators. All right, there may be some argument to that. Let us hear it. But of what help can it be to the war effort to tell people that we should associate with Russia and that she is not a dictatorship?
Mr. Wood: Let me see if I understand your position. I understand, from what you say, that because they were a dictatorship we shouldn't have accepted their help in undertaking to win a war against another dictatorship.
Miss Rand: That is not what I said. I was not in a position to make that decision. If I were, I would tell you what I would do. That is not what we are discussing. We are discussing the fact that our country was an ally of Russia, and the question is: what should we tell the American people about it -- the truth or a lie? If we had good reason, if that is what you believe, all right, then why not tell the truth? Say it is a dictatorship, but we want to be associated with it. Say it is worthwhile being associated with the devil, as Churchill said, in order to defeat another evil which is Hitler. There might be some good argument made for that. But why pretend that Russia was not what it was?
Mr. Wood: Well --
Miss Rand: What do you achieve by that?
Mr. Wood: Do you think it would have had as good an effect upon the morale of the American people to preach a doctrine to them that Russia was on the verge of collapse?
Miss Rand: I don't believe that the morale of anybody can be built up by a lie. If there was nothing good that we could truthfully say about Russia, then it would have been better not to say anything at all.
Mr. Wood: Well --
Miss Rand: You don't have to come out and denounce Russia during the war; no. You can keep quiet. There is no moral guilt in not saying something if you can't say it, but there is in saying the opposite of what is true. ...
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One could reread the above replacing "Russia" with "Iraq" in the attempt to extrapolate what kinds of views Rand might have on our current situation and the policies and procedures of our current leaders. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
In my own "interpretation" however, it appears that the public's trust of the Executive Branch was not an over-riding goal of the current Administration (or else they'd have acted differently than they did). Now, and perhaps most importantly, this kind of a thing (the decisive sacrifice of public trust) might have been the most expedient option available -- i.e., a necessary evil aimed at a higher good. Perhaps time will answer whether that is true, but I'm not holding my breath about it.
Ed
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