Why Leaders Lie (14 page)

The ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will surely dampen the foreign-policy elite’s enthusiasm for reshaping the world at the end of a rifle barrel, but it remains to be seen how much. As a result, it may not be long before the United States marches off on another crusade. There is little reason to think that its basic commitment to running the world will go away anytime soon, which means that United States is going to be deeply involved in global politics for the foreseeable future.

Such an ambitious foreign policy is likely to create numerous situations in the years ahead where America’s leaders feel compelled to fearmonger. Remember, the leaders who are most likely to lie to their publics are those who head democracies bent on fighting wars of choice in distant places. That description obviously fits the United States, and it goes a long way toward explaining the Bush administration’s deceptions in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war. But it was certainly not the first administration to engage in fearmongering and it will not be the last. The United States spends more on its military than the rest of the world put together; it has a robust nuclear deterrent and is insulated from most dangers by two enormous oceans. Given how secure America really is, the only way its leaders can justify ambitious global crusades is to convince the American people that relatively minor problems are in fact dire and growing dangers. Given America’s global ambitions, therefore, we should expect fearmongering to be a constant feature of its national security discourse in the years ahead. This is bad news, because fearmongering not only can have a corrosive effect on democratic institutions, it can also lead to disasters like Iraq and Vietnam.

1
. Mary Dalrymple, “Kerry Avoids Calling Bush ‘Liar,’”
MSNBC.com
, September 24, 2004,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6086823
; David Stout, “Kerry Accuses Bush of Hiding the Truth about Iraq,”
New York Times
, September 16, 2004. “Transcript: First Presidential Debate,”
Washington Post
, September 30, 2004. However, as Dalrymple points out, others involved in the Kerry campaign did not hesitate to call Bush a liar, and Kerry himself did on occasion call Bush a liar, although he was clearly reluctant to use that word. Patrick Healy, “Kerry Camp Lowers N.H. Expectations: Behind in Polls, Senator Now Seeks Spot in ‘Top Two,’”
Boston Globe
, December 8 2003.

1
. Charles A. Duelfer,
Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD
, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, September 30, 2004), 34–35. See also Julian Borger, “Interrogators ‘Botched Hunt for Iraq’s WMD,’”
Guardian
, April 27, 2005; Rupert Cornwell, “Saddam Was Bluffing over WMD Stocks, Says Report,”
Independent
, October 2, 2003; Johanna McGeary, Timothy J. Burger, and Elaine Shannon, “What Saddam Was Really Thinking,”
Time
, October 18, 2004,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/
0,9171,995422,00.html
; Walter Pincus and Dana Priest, “Hussein’s Weapons May Have Been Bluff,”
Washington Post
, October 1, 2003; Alec Russell, “Leaked Report Points to Saddam WMD Bluff,”
Telegraph
, October 2, 2003.

2
. George Tenet,
At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA
(New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 331–33.

3
. Duelfer,
Comprehensive Report
, 34.

4
. In an article discussing “Saddam’s alleged weapons bluff,” Slobodan Lekic writes, “Publicly Saddam denied having unconventional weapons. But from 1998 until 2002, he prevented UN inspectors from working in the country and when they finally returned in November 2002, they often complained that Iraq wasn’t fully cooperating.” Slobodan Lekic, “Aide: Saddam Did Get Rid of Iraq WMD,” Associated Press, August 2, 2003. There is no question that Saddam denied the weapons inspectors access to Iraq between 1998 and 2002, but that is not evidence of bluffing. While the inspectors did sometimes complain about not gaining quick access to certain locations after returning to Iraq, the problems were eventually resolved and the UN was confident that it could assess whether Iraq had WMD if given sufficient time to scour the country. The Bush administration, however, forced the inspectors to leave Iraq before they finished the job so that the United States could invade that country and remove Saddam from power.

5
. Not everyone accepts the argument that it is right to lie to protect an innocent person, as is evident from well-known case of the “lying Baptists.” In 1804, a debate broke out in a Baptist congregation in Kentucky over whether it was permissible for a man to lie about whether he had a wife and children to marauding Indians who would probably kill them. In other words, was it right to lie to protect your family in the face of grave danger? The congregation actually split over the matter, with “truthful Baptists” on one side and “lying Baptists” on the other.

6
. Lanse P. Minkler and Thomas J. Miceli, “Lying, Integrity, and Cooperation,”
Review of Social Economy
62, no. 1 (March 2004): 27–50.

7
. For a powerful statement against lying of almost every sort, see Sissela Bok,
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life
, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1999).

8
. Kenneth N. Waltz,
Theory of International Politics
(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), chap. 5.

9
. Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan
, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1985), 202.

10
. On the pervasiveness of deception, see: Larry Alexander and Emily Sherwin, “Deception in Morality and Law,”
Law and Philosophy
22, no. 5 (September 2003): 393–450; F. G. Bailey,
The Prevalence of Deceit
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); J. A. Barnes,
A Pack of Lies: Towards a Sociology of Lying
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Paul Ekman,
Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage
(New York: Norton, 1985); Michael Lewis and Carolyn Saarni, eds.,
Lying and Deception in Everyday Life
(New York: Guilford, 1993); Clancy Martin, ed.,
The Philosophy of Deception
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); David Nyberg,
The Varnished Truth: Truth Telling and Deceiving in Ordinary Life
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Loyal Rue,
By the Grace of Guile: The Role of Deception in Natural History and Human Affairs
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

11
. That individual would be lying, however, if he purposely left out information that was requested on the job application form. He is obligated in such cases to reveal all the relevant information. For example, in the spring of 1995, Harvard University rescinded its offer of admission to a young woman who did not report that she had been found guilty of killing her mother in 1990. Harvard officials felt that she had a responsibility to inform them of this matter in her application. Fox Butterfield, “Woman Who Killed Mother Denied Harvard Admission,”
New York Times
, April 8, 1995.

12
. Alexander and Sherwin write, “Moral philosophers frequently distinguish between lying and deception and condemn lying as the worse offense” (“Deception in Morality and Law,” 400).

13
. Eric Alterman,
When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences
(New York: Viking, 2004). See also James P. Pfiffner,
The Character Factor: How We Judge America’s Presidents
(College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2004), chaps. 2–3; David Wise,
The Politics of Lying: Government Deception, Secrecy, and Power
(New York: Random House, 1973).

14
. Immanuel Kant,
Ethical Philosophy
, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), 90.

15
. Although bluffing in this book is equated with lying, international-relations scholars also talk about countries bluffing by moving or deploying military forces in ways that falsely signals that they might be used. Even if these shows of force involve no lying, the goal is still to mislead another country. I do not consider such cases,
however, simply because no lying is involved. But if I did, I would be able to point to more cases of bluffing.

1
. This line of reasoning is evident in Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which is the statute that criminalizes false statements. Specifically, “A statement can be considered false for 1001 purposes even though it is ‘literally’ true if it misleads federal agents.” See JaeYoun John Kim, “False Statements,”
American Criminal Law Review
40, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 515.

2
. Harry G. Frankfurt has written a highly regarded book,
On Bullshit
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), which might seem relevant for this book, but is not for two reasons. First, as the author makes clear, bullshitting is fundamentally different than lying. A bullshitter pays virtually no attention to whether or not he is telling the truth. “The truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him…. His intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it.” (55) In the course of telling his story—usually a “panoramic” story—he may say some things that are false, but this is not lying because he is not purposely saying something that he knows to be untrue. (52) “His eye is not on the facts at all.” (56) Liars, in contrast, pay careful attention to the facts, although they do not tell the truth about them. The liar “is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality.” (54–55) Second, there is little evidence of bullshitting in international politics, probably because it is usually easy to recognize and thus unlikely to have much of a payoff. As Frankfurt notes, “Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.” (1) He also notes that bullshitting is commonplace in good part because people often feel compelled “to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.” (63) Statesmen and diplomats rarely find themselves in that situation, which is not to deny that they sometimes make foolish decisions. In short, it does not make sense to treat bullshitting as a fourth category of deception.

3
. Quoted in Corey Dade, Suzanne Vranica, and Kevin Helliker, “Woods Aims to Stem Damage,”
Wall Street Journal
, December 3, 2009.

4
. American Bar Association,
Model Rules of Professional Conduct
, August 2002, Rule 3.3 (a). See also Monroe H. Freedman,
Lawyers’ Ethics in an Adversary System
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975); Robert J. Spitzer,
Saving the Constitution from Lawyers: How Legal Training and Law Reviews Distort Constitutional Meaning
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 11–14. It is worth noting that many legal scholars believe that “the adversary system assumes that the most efficient and fair way of determining the truth is by presenting the strongest possible case for each side of the controversy before an impartial judge or jury” (Freedman,
Ethics in an Adversary System
, 9). In other words, spinning by the rival lawyers is ultimately the best way to find the truth. But not all students of the law share that view. See Stephan Landsman,
Readings on Adversarial Justice: The American Approach to Adjudication
(St. Paul, MN: West, 1988), chap. 2.

5
. James Risen, “Captives Deny Qaeda Worked with Baghdad,”
New York Times
, June 9, 2003. There was further evidence from the intelligence community that cast doubt on the purported link between bin Laden and Saddam. See
Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration’s Public Statements on Iraq
, Report prepared for Congressman Henry A. Waxman by the Minority Staff, Committee on Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, March 16, 2004, 21–25.

6
. According to the United States Code, concealment is criminal behavior when it involves a “trick, scheme, or device.” In other words, there must be an “affirmative act of concealment.” See Kim, “False Statements,” 515. In my classification, such behavior would be akin to lying—indeed it would probably involve lying; it would not fit my definition of concealment, which does not involve an affirmative act.

7
. Quoted in Albert Z. Carr, “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?”
Harvard Business Review
, January-February 1968, 143. For the case that bluffing in business transactions is not lying, see Thomas Carson, “Second Thoughts about Bluffing,”
Business Ethics Quarterly
3, no. 4 (October 1993): 317–41. For the other side in this debate, see Gary E. Jones, “Lying and Intentions,”
Journal of Business Ethics
5, no. 4 (August 1986): 347–49. See also Thomas L. Carson, “On the Definition of Lying: A Reply to Jones and Revisions,”
Journal of Business Ethics
7, no. 7 (July 1998): 509–14.

1
. Although the focus in this book is on the creation and promotion of nationalist myths by individual states, there is no question that ethnic groups that do not have their own state—either because they have never had one or because they lost it—also tell lies about their past. Thus, some of my arguments about nationalist mythmaking apply to stateless nations as well as nation-states themselves.