The big news today ... other than Barack Obama's comment about the GOP's love for ignorance, was Ron Suskind's new book, The Way of the World, in which Suskind said that the White House ordered forgery of a letter from Iraqi intel director Habbush to now-deposed and deceased dictator Saddam Hussein.
"The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link."
Of course, the White House quickly issued a statement - technically true, but misleading.
"The notion that the White House directed anyone to forge a letter from Habbush to Saddam Hussein is absurd."
Absurd, yes. But untrue?
After wading through years of inaccuracies, falsehoods, distortions, and denials by the Bush Administration, it's hard to believe anything they say anymore.
Perhaps I'm a bit cynical. But honestly, the Bush Administration told us that they'd do this.
In 2004, it became clear that psy-ops would be an important part of the war on terror.
Indeed, the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence was created, then shut down after concerns arose about the ethics of lying to score political points.
And so, when I received a message from a gentleman in Nashville who claimed that we all need to "get over it" because there are "multiple truths" and it's all about interpretation, I grimaced, then winced, then growled a little.
Epistemology is something of a hobby of mine ... and I'm a post-foundationalist. So, while I admit that truth is in the eye of the beholder, I disagree with the idea that there are "multiple truths". I believe that there are multiple versions of the truth, and that some are more accurate or "closer to the facts" than others.
I realize that there are multiple viewpoints about the nature of truth. I will boil it down to three basic versions:
- The Encyclopaedic view, that knowledge is justified true belief, and that truth is equally accessible to all rational beings.
- The nihilistic view, that truth is "an illusion that we have forgotten is an illusion" (Nietzsche). The nihilistic view is closely connected to the idea that truth is the will to power - i.e., truth is whatever you can convince people to believe is true. (This is a view that would tolerate and even celebrate the Office of Strategic Influence as a truth-making agency.)
- The hermeneutic phenomenological view, that truth is "out there" in some sense, but that all seeing is seeing-as, and that truth and experience are what happened when we are pulled up short by new data, calling our prejudices into question and opening up new horizons.
Now, the very fact that I'm writing diaries on Daily Kos demonstrates that I think the nihilistic view is problematic. I don't agree with the idea that truth is whatever you make it. If I believed such a view, I would agree that the United States has a right to fabricate intelligence about terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. I would agree that it's ok for President Ahmadinejad of Iran to claim that the Holocaust never happened. I would agree that it's ok for John McCain to claim that Barack Obama's energy plan is nothing more than telling people to check their tire pressure. I would agree that it's acceptable - even praiseworthy - for Bill Hobbs of the TN Republican Party to paint Barack Obama as an anti-Semitic crypto-Muslim.
But I don't agree with the nihilistic view. At the end of the day, I believe that there are some facts "out there" upon which we must base our truth claims. I believe that in order to convince someone, you need to begin by finding common ground, rather than simply bludgeoning someone into intellectual submission.
I realize that my view of truth is unique. It's subject to attacks from both Enlightenment rationalists (who will claim that I don't believe in truth) and nihilistic Nietzscheans (who will tell me that there is no text, that truth doesn't exist "out there" and that I just need to get over it). But at the end of the day, I choose to believe that there are points of common ground that can be established - that what unites us is stronger than what divides us.
And it is this viewpoint that makes the American experiment a living possibility. If Rumsfeld, Nietzsche, and McCain are right, then we ought to just hurry up and bomb Iran. We ought to grab all the power we can and figure out how to destroy any challengers.
But if we start accepting this way of thinking as "right" or "normal" or "true," then we might as well give up on the American system and just overthrow the government by force.