“Hubris” is defined
as “excessive pride or self-confidence;
arrogance.” It is a word descriptive of the attitude of many individuals as
well as many groups, such as corporations or nations. Last month I happened to
see (on MSNCB) a television special titled “Hubris: Selling the Iraq War.” It
was a most interesting, and quite disturbing, documentary about the events
leading up to the war in Iraq, which started ten years ago today, on March 19,
2003.
The TV program was
largely based on the book Hubris: The
Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (2006) by
Michael Isikoff and David Corn, two top-notch American journalists. They were
interviewed in last month’s program, which is also available on six
YouTube videos.
On the day of its
airing, Corn said that “the documentary
goes beyond what Isikoff and I covered in Hubris,
presenting new scoops and showing that the complete story of the selling of
that war has yet to be told.”
In the documentary
itself, Isikoff says, “There is no
question the news media didn’t do its job during the run-up to the Iraq War.
Far too often, the press simply accepted these sweeping assertions by the
highest officials in the government, without looking for the hard evidence to
support it.”
Before the
Introduction in the book, the authors of Hubris
begin with this quote: “How is the world
ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then
believe what they read.” (These words are from Karl Kraus, 1874-1936, an
Austrian journalist and press critic.) That kind of chicanery seems to have
lurked behind the starting of America’s first “preemptive” war ten years ago in
Iraq.
That war officially
ended on December 31, 2011. By that time nearly 4,500 U.S. troops had been killed
and more than 32,000 wounded. The war cost U.S. taxpayers more than
$3,000,000,000,000. Even worse, an estimated 108,000 Iraqi civilians died as a
direct result of the war, and some 15,400,000 were displaced.
Those terrible
results all seem to have been largely due to the hubris and erroneous judgment
of the top U.S. governmental officials. What a shame for America!
Now
in 2013 there are different government executives, but American hubris still
seems to be “alive and well.” Last month Bill Moyers and Michael Winship wrote
a significant article titled “The Hubris
of the Drones.” They charge, “Our
blind faith in technology combined with a false sense of infallible
righteousness continues unabated.”
The
authors also quote
Reuters correspondent David Rohde, who recently asserted that the U.S. “administration’s covert drone program is on
the wrong side of history. With each strike, Washington presents itself as an
opponent of the rule of law, not a supporter. Not surprisingly, a foreign power
killing people with no public discussion, or review of who died and why,
promotes anger among Pakistanis, Yemenis and many others.”
And
then an unnamed former senior military official is quoted: “Drone strikes are just a signal of arrogance
that will boomerang against America.”
Near
the end of their article, Moyers and Winship aver that American “hubris brought us to grief in Vietnam and
Iraq and may do so again” with the current President’s “cold-blooded use of drones and his
indifference to so-called ‘collateral damage,’ grossly referred to by some in
the military as ‘bug splat,’ and otherwise known as innocent bystanders.”
Does
not this nation badly need to repent of its hubris in initiating and conducting
the war on Iraq and to rethink the way drones are now being used?
