Invoking history
July 18th, 2003
In justifying a policy, or an act that can’t otherwise be explained, government officials and politicians occasionally invoke history. But it’s not because they believe in its judgment, or care about it. They do so because history’s judgment, if it does come at all, will come much later, sometime in the future. Meanwhile, it’s a convenient way of appearing both moral as well as wise, and of silencing opposition and discouraging questions. Worried about the present? Concerned over what the government’s doing or has done? History will judge—and the best thing about it is that it will be doing so in the dim future.
The Philippine political class, while mostly Catholic, seldom worries about the future. Anyone can immediately see that as policies are made and implemented with nary a thought for tomorrow. The members of this class do believe—or at least most of them claim to believe—in an afterlife, but most of them think that once dead they’ll find themselves in heaven because they went to Church every Sunday (and what’s more, were photographed doing it). What they do the rest of the week is another matter. They can steal from the treasury, rob the people blind, lie, cheat and even murder from Monday to Saturday so long as they’re on their knees before priest or cardinal on Sunday.
Which is another way of saying that for this class—whose capacity and moral right to govern have been tested and found wanting since the Revolution—what really matters is today, not a future of which, being dead, they won’t be a part anyway (although their children and grandchildren might very well be).
This is a class whose members, except for admirable exceptions, did not hesitate to murder Bonifacio, to betray the Revolution at Biak na Bato, and to go over in droves to the Americans once they were firmly in control of the archipelago at the turn of the century.
Elements of the same class, save for a precious few, went over to the Japanese during World War II, and during the martial law period fought each other for the privilege of being in the inner circles of Ferdinand Marcos.
They were the loudest partisans of American instruction in the arts of governance from 1900 to 1941. They were all praises for Japan from 1941 to 1945. From 1946 onwards they proclaimed the virtues of following in the US wake, and tied the country’s foreign and domestic policies so tightly to the US the Philippines remained its de facto colony.
They survived the aftermath of these episodes. They came back stronger, more firmly in control each time—immune, it seems, from the judgment of history.
Which is why Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye’s invoking history in defending the Arroyo government’s total support for the US war against Iraq doesn’t mean much one way or the other. It’s not based on fear of that judgment, or even on the certainty that it will ever be judged.
It does seem to suggest supreme confidence in the correctness of that policy, despite the unraveling of the US-British claims about Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. But being confident doesn’t mean being right, and what’s even more to the point, doesn’t constitute even the tiniest iota of an answer to the questions that have been raised about the wisdom of the Iraq policy.
Bunye’s statement is in fact in the same category as George W. Bush’s “reply” to questions over his claim in his 2003 State of the Union Address that Iraq was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to world peace,” said Mr. Bush. “And there’s no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with its allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power. And there’s no doubt in my mind, when it’s all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth.”
And yet no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, despite repeated and emphatic claims by Bush himself, his Vice President Dick Cheney, his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, and his Secretary of State Colin Powell from mid-2002 to the day of the US invasion of Iraq itself on March 20 this year.
These claims alleged that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons and was going to use them, either against the United States and its allies, or against other states in the Middle East. These claims also alleged that Saddam Hussein was developing a nuclear capability, and that he had negotiated with Niger to obtain uranium to accelerate his nuclear weapons program. These claims constituted the basis on which the United States attacked and now occupies Iraq.
The claims are at best unproven. At worst they were deliberately used to mislead everyone into supporting the US colonial design on Iraq and its vast oil resources. US President George W. Bush now says that his claim about Iraq’s supposed efforts to source yellowcake uranium—tons of which are critical to the development of any nuclear arms program—was cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency, whose director, George Tenet, has admitted responsibility.
The idea is that Bush was speaking in good faith when he made that claim in his 2003 State of the Union Address (16 words saying that “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”), and that it was Tenet’s fault that the claim was made at all.
And yet two things are evident, despite Tenet’s admitting responsibility. The first is that the CIA had balked since October last year at making that claim. The second is that despite Tenet’s supposed culpability, Bush as well as his Vice President and National Security Adviser have expressed full confidence in him rather than publicly calling him to account for allowing Bush to make that claim despite the CIA’s own demonstrated doubts.
The odd thing about Tenet’s statement admitting CIA responsibility for clearing Bush’s claim about Niger uranium is that it took the greatest pains to demonstrate CIA doubts over the truth of the claim itself. Tenet never once said he himself cleared the 16-word Bush statement. Tenet enumerated the dates and times the CIA expressed its doubts about the claim—but ended up lamely saying that the statement was cleared on the basis of claims by British intelligence.
“This should not have been the test for clearing a Presidential address,” Tenet’s statement concluded. “This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for Presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed.”
On the other hand, Bush and his other officials all weighed in to continue to express confidence in Tenet despite calls for Tenet’s resignation—a fact which when taken together with Tenet’s own equivocations suggests that Tenet is taking the fall for Bush and his highest officials’ fraudulent use of intelligence to rally support for an unjust and immoral war.
The consequences of this war are the destruction of Iraqi society, the continuing suffering of the Iraqi people, thousands of civilians dead and military casualties, and what’s worse, Iraq’s colonization by the United States, which has now become the 21st century’s first colonial power.
These are the truths confronting the Arroyo administration as far as its support for the US war on Iraq are concerned. These are not matters whose correctness and morality are for the future to decide, but matters of the here and now.
As the US and British claims about Iraq’s having been a supposed threat to the world unraveled last week, a senator was asked if the Philippines should apologize to Iraq. The senator assumed that by “Iraq” was meant the Iraqi government, and thus said that to do so would be to apologize to the United States, which is now in control of that country.
As true as that is, it is equally true that it is the Iraqi people whom this government has wronged by contributing to their present suffering. It is to them this government has to apologize—to them it must express regret for being an instrument in justifying the violence the US unleashed upon Iraq.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWScom, July 15, 2003)