Paul J. Balles shows how President Bush has lied, with the collusion of the media and the acquiescence of the public, to achieve his amoral aims, and how presidential candidates McCain and Obama are lying and eschewing morality in order to gain political acceptance by an ignorant populace.
If truth-telling is part of America's moral code, politicians and pundits failed to learn the code. If they did learn it, they sold their souls to Beelzebub for an earthly price.
President G.W. Bush, the inveterate non-stop liar, has already gained a reputation for being the worst president in America's history. His reputation is largely due to his pretence of being a God-fearing moralist while lying. He lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq 29 times. He lied about Iraq being an imminent threat to the USA, and he lied about Iraq being connected to Al-Qaeda.
A new film, "War made easy", based on Norman Solomon's eponymous book, uses archival footage to show the continuity of the propaganda messages that have been used to to justify war from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush
Bush has been caught lying about terrorist threats, about 9/11, about torture his administration authorized, about tax cuts, global warming, his political opponents, and the social security system. There’s not much he hasn’t lied about. As one commentator wrote, “As a ‘moral values’ president, George W. Bush has some explaining to do about bearing false witness.”
Meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and referring to Iran's nuclear development, Bush said, "The first choice is to solve it diplomatically and that's exactly what we're doing." He says that while refusing to meet with the Iranians. Saying one thing while doing another is typical of Bush’s falsehoods.
Bush also said an Iran with a nuclear weapon would be "incredibly dangerous" to world peace. Another lie. Iran has never attacked another country and hasn’t threatened to except in defence. The same can't be said of the US or Europe. Bush’s lies are well documented and continuous enough to make his lying pathological.
What about the pundits? In his book War made easy: how presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death, Norman Solomon makes it clear that the media has been complicit in turning a president's lies into spin. As Solomon points out, "the media assumption largely remains that Washington has laudable motivations”.
Both current US presidential candidates have sacrificed morality for politics: John McCain with outright lies and Barack Obama by sacrificing principle to electability.
McCain has consistently lied about American success and failure in Iraq. He lied about support for victims of the Katrina tragedy. He's changed position on social security privatization and then lied about it. McCain has also lied about other presidential candidates, including fellow Republicans during the nomination debates.
What about Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency? While Obama can't begin to match the pathological liars’ deceptions, he has his own violations of moral turpitude.
Obama's moral code should have inspired him to defend Reverend Jeremiah Wright's accurate reference to the chickens coming home. Instead, he yielded to political expediency and disowned his pastor. In order to get elected, Obama will need to eschew morality again and again in order to gain political acceptance by an ignorant populace.
The display he put on at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention Washington DC, where he heaped nothing but praise on Israel, exemplified the worst kind of sacrifice of morality for political favour. The pundits cheered Obama.
As Richard Neville has pointed out, in a different context, "The situation is critical, but most of us are too overloaded to concentrate. We're trying to get rich, get laid, get famous and/or to sink into an opiated oblivion, with the help of the military-industrial media entertainment matrix."
Paul Craig Roberts asks, "Do we Americans have any honour, any humanity, any integrity, any awareness of the crimes our government is committing in our name? Do we have a moral conscience?" The answer: NO.
When leaders lie and reporters cooperate, both morality and society become the victims. It’s time to cease sacrificing morality to temporary political advantages.
