They sell us the president the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars

–Jackson Browne, Lives in the Balance

There is a story out today about how not only the Tillman family is outraged by how the military lied about the death of their son and used it as a propaganda tool, but Jessica Lynch is also indignant about how the leadership of the armed forces lied about her own experiences, making her out to be a “Rambo GI Jane” and using the incident as a media event. I blogged on the Lynch story back in 2003, and on the Tillman story in 2005, so I don’t need to recount the facts here. But I wanted to comment on the underlying theme behind these fabrications.

It is said that truth is the first casualty of war. I think that some people interpret this to mean that truth gets lost because it is necessary to maintain secrecy and to deceive the enemy. It might be helpful, however, to look at the origin of the phrase, going back to Samuel Johnson in 1758:

Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.

That statement pretty much sums up where we are right now, dovetailing well with Jackson Browne’s lyrics. It seems that truth is less a casualty due to necessary deception of the enemy than it has been destroyed in order to deceive the people of the country waging the war. Just as we saw so often in the cold war, secrets are all to often not kept from an enemy who already knows the truth, as much as they are kept from the dishonest government’s own people, so that they can be kept in line with that government’s wishes. Today, the desire of the government is to wage war in Iraq without interference by the people. And as it has so often in the past, propaganda points inward more than it points outward.

Now, some might say that this is necessary; that war is always ugly, and that if the people knew its truth in full, we would never support the wars that it is necessary to fight. The problem with that stance is that it completely and utterly contravenes the primary principle of Democracy in the most important and vital expression of that principle, the power to wage war and cause mass destruction. If the people cannot decide based upon the clear and true facts in evidence, then Democracy is a sham and we may as well just quit the pretense and admit that we are at least at some level a dictatorship. I am sure that many people would agree that we are already there, to varying degrees.

The founders recognized this when they established the First Amendment and the freedom of the press; if the people cannot be informed of the truth, then Democracy fails. This is one of the reasons why the recent descent of the media is so grave and momentous, why the establishment of propaganda arms like Fox News masquerading as media outlets are as poison to a free and strong Republic. It is because when lies are told to the people in such depth and with such regularity, and when the press is complicit in expressing those lies or even simply does not challenge them, it robs the people of their ability to make free choices.

The free press is supposed to be the bulwark against such deception; instead it has become the method of delivery for these lies. Perhaps this has been true for some time, back to the days of Hearst or earlier. But there is no doubt that there was, for a good deal of time in the 20th century at least, a break from yellow journalism which brought us truth about all manner of government scandal that focused not on irrelevant sexual dalliances but on real malfeasance that harmed the people; truth which helped excoriate corruption; accuracy and fact which enabled Democracy by informing the people and allowing them to decide. But now we have lost so much of that.

We need a free press back. While the right to one has not yet been officially removed, the existence of one most decidedly has.

There is another angle to this problem: national security. Many of the lies told to the people use this as a cover. And the problem is that we do indeed require national security. But it is also clear that a large amount, if not the massive bulk of what becomes classified is not to protect the nation from external enemies, but rather to protect those in power from the indignation and outrage of their own people. But how can we establish the difference between such things?

What is needed is a governmental Ombudsman of record in regards to national security, someone beyond influence and reproach who can decide what truly is necessary to keep secret for the purpose of national security, as opposed to what is kept secret in order to further the political agenda of a government, or protect them from exposure in their corruption. Already Congress is supposed to have this kind of oversight, but there are problems there: first, when Congress attempts to perform oversight, the administration hides much from them; second, when Congress is controlled by the same political party as the president, they become complicit in the cover-up; and third, often it is Congress itself that hides facts that can damage them–we need to know their secrets as well. So one might consider the Ombudsman as a new check-and-balance–not a fourth branch of government, but rather a deeply entrenched and ultimately objective embodiment of the people themselves. Our own warranted wiretap on the government.

Surely such a position would be in full and utter compliance with the wishes of the founders; one might actually feel puzzlement as to why they did not create such an official position in the first place, foreseeing the tendency of all in power to deceive the people. Perhaps they felt that a free press would suffice, and perhaps in their time it did. Perhaps they did not see the potential of the press to become the property of the corrupt themselves, making an ombudsmanship more necessary.

Sadly, it is almost inconceivable that such a position could be created at this stage of the game; it would require positive action by the very powers that wish to avoid such scrutiny. Only a massive surge of outrage by the people could lead to such a change, and only fortune could protect such an office from the corruption that would taint its creation and efficacy.

That, however, does not change the fact that we need one or both such protections if we are to truly be a Democracy and not the cruel facade which now occupies its place.