I've been reading the C.S. Forester Hornblower novels lately. They're good yarns, nice escapist stuff. Forester portrays Hornblower, a British Naval Officer, as a complex man, with a very well defined sense of honor.
Honor is a concept we don't really have a lot of truck with these days, here in the US. Oh, people talk about it, but what do they really mean?
With the resignation of David Kay, and his subsequent revelations to the press, that there aren't any WMD to be found in Iraq. I've been thinking a lot about honor, and what it means.
Read the quotes the US leadership made about the WMD that was supposedly in Iraq.
Cheney: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
Bush: The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.
Ari: We know for a fact that there are weapons there.
Powell: There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction. If biological weapons seem too terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling.
Rumsfeld: We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
Now, I ask you. Some of these are out and out lies. Some may be "technically" true. But some are out and out lies. Even if they were true to the best of our knowledge at the time (as many apologists claim) they are now known to be false.
Why haven't these people resigned in disgrace? I am astounded at how little honor they must have, after strutting around crowing about how Bush was going to "restore honor and integrity" to the White House.
They are dishonorable men, who dishonor the offices they hold. Ari is the only one of them who have resigned, and he has stayed loyal and quiet, not denouncing what is going on.
I maybe be naive to think it, but if you had told me, in the 90s, that Colin F-ing Powell would go before the world, and tell lies to get us into a war, I would have called you crazy.
They have no honor. I can't put it any clearer or simpler than that. And that's sad.