That Bodyguard of Lies (Trevino / Brussels Journal)

[struggle4progress]

From the desk of Joshua Trevino on Tue, 2009-04-28 14:44

Lost in the controversy over the release of the now-infamous “torture memos,” and the forthcoming release of Abu-Ghraib-style photographs, is the broad question of what, exactly, ought to be classified ... The fundamental presumption of our sort of democracy is that the people, in aggregate, are competent to receive, assess, and act rightly upon information ... If governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” it is difficult to argue that this consent may be anything less than fully informed ...

Where the identification of the enemy gets difficult is in other cases, such as the former ban on the photography of soldiers’ caskets at Dover AFB. Who then is the object of active denial of information? Surely al Qaeda doesn’t get the photographs — but we, the American public, and the media apparatus we patronize are the real and obvious objects. Inasmuch as this makes us “the enemy,” the implication here is profoundly troubling. This is a comparatively stark case, but the “torture memos” and the to-be-released Abu-Ghraib-style photographs differ only in their marginal utility as propaganda for the battlefield enemy. Again, the primary object of denial would seem to be the people at large ...

What is to be done? Deeply unpopular as it is to say so — at least on my side of the partisan aisle — the Obama Administration is taking tentative steps in the right direction in its slow and halting release of information ... Still, as the bias toward withholding information did not yield demonstrable, pragmatic policy gains — to say nothing of strengthening civil society — in the preceding Administration, we might hope for an opportunity to urge a contrary policy bias toward openness.

That this is wartime need not obscure this possibility. The man who declared truth so important that it should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies meant to deceive the Nazis first, and his own people as a regrettable consequence. Inasmuch as modern America seeks the deception of its own people as a primary intent, it is not an America worth the fighting for.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3889

Joshua Trevino worked as a speechwriter for W's crowd -- which in my book is a big black mark against him and a rather good reason never to quote anything he ever says. But as we try to recover from the effects of the 2000 coup, it may be well to remember that some our our political opponents may still share some of our values. Over-classification is a common technique for hiding scandals and burying crimes, and there be a number of conservatives who would support better federal sunshine laws