Editor,
In Inuktitut, a language spoken in the Arctic, the Inuit translate lawyer into a man who is lying for you.
Since their early contact with Western expansionism, the Inuit have understood that colonialism seeks its justification in a self-assisting mendacity that overflows with embellished lies.
A conscience out of sync with itself is capable of the worst atrocities and most blatant contradictions. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales bore ample testimony to this truth behind every lie he was willing to tell until even he got tired of it.
In Attorney General Michael Mukasey, he has found a worthy successor who will do what he can to protect his criminal legacy of making torture a U.S. policy. But not only Mukasey - the whole administration is a showcase.
Bush has just been caught again in the act of lying, this time by the National Intelligence Estimate. The "mushroom cloud" he painted in the sky was his rhetorical ploy to invoke the image of World War III in the minds of a fearful or avenging populace.
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The NIE destroyed his war fantasy with one stroke. NPR's Daniel Schorr referred to the incident as the White House "creation of reality" that stands opposed by the objective reality of everyone else. In an earlier commentary, Schorr was more explicit. The lie is Bush's principal tool of politics. It is the classic and basic device behind every policy.
Words cannot hide facts but only prove the point. Euphemisms are designed to replace honest diplomacy. Americans are caught between official mendacity and occasional detection. Whether they see through a particular lie or not, they do somehow understand U.S. politics in general to be the dirty business of warfare at home and abroad, although blood and injustice are made invisible most of the time.
In war, domestic spying is terrorist surveillance, torture is harsh interrogation and the escalation of the war is a clinical surge. Men, women and children killed by U.S. bombs are simply terrorists. Invasions are acts of liberation. Occupations install freedom and democracy. Dictators are presidents when allied with the U.S. - their brutal regime is a benign democracy.
America's intentions are good. She rarely does wrong. We learn this from the media, which largely assists the government in its corruption of the people. Even when unveiled, the Gestapo methods of nightly house raids in Iraq, arbitrary detention, extraordinary rendition, torture, rape, murder and disappearance, the random mass killings and constant terror by U.S. forces will never stain the mythic image of America for those who believe in the legend of the intrinsically good.
There are always bad apples in the good crop. The problem is not that America has failed to be a good cop, but that she wants to be a cop at all. The Nazi myth of the master race has become America's official self-conception. The inability to admit guilt, accept failure and recognize defeat is America's nemesis. The latest State of the Union address results directly from this fascist mind-set. It cannot admit that there is no sovereignty under brutal occupation.
Only fools and mass murderers make such assertions. It is a hollow claim that contradicts itself every day with hundreds and billions of dollars lost for less than nothing.
Hence, this country has decided to learn Germany's lesson the hard way. The blood-drenched legacy of Bush's illegitimate presidency will haunt this nation for generations to come. The image of the ugly American has replaced that of the ugly German.
Joachim L. Oberst
UNM instructor
