How Government Officials Deceive Themselves, To Deceive The Public

Eric Zuesse

Especially the foreign services and the military of any country are being paid like lawyers are standardly paid: they’re paid to make the case for their employer. They’re ‘mercenaries’ wielding words not (merely) arms, who become the more effective to the extent that they can deceive themselves to believe the propaganda (or, in the military case, the justifiability of their killings) that they’re selling to the public. Let’s therefore look at some of these ‘mercenaries’, in a video about U.S. policy toward China, so that we can tell, from their vocal inflections, and also from their facial expressions while they are saying blatantly false things, whether we think that they believe the lies that they are spouting, while they’re spouting them to us:

In the video, which is titled “World War 3 Between America and China — Full Documentary”, appears a former U.S. diplomat to China and to Taiwan, John J. Tkacik Jr., saying, at 9:55, that, “the real reason I think why America has a commitment to Taiwan is because Taiwan is a democracy.”

How, then, can the U.S. government ‘justify’ its longstanding alliance with the Saud family who are the dictators over — and who despotically claim to own — Saudi Arabia, and who champion head-chopping of any dissidents there (and who financed the 9/11 jihadists in the U.S.)? And that’s only one contrary example of our ‘democracies’.

But that official’s lie didn’t stop there. He continued: “It is in fact the most vibrant and dynamic democracy in east Asia. And it’s a democracy that came to fruition under the pressure of the U.S. government primarily the Congress, after forty years of very tight authoritarian rule by a regime that came from mainland China.”

He neatly avoided mentioning that, though “the real reason I think why America has a commitment to Taiwan is because Taiwan is a democracy,” the U.S. was equally allied with Taiwan back under the Chiang Kai-shek “regime” (as Tkacik himself called it), which stole from China “many national treasures and much of China’s gold reserves and foreign currency reserves”, as even the CIA-edited wikipedia allows to be said there.

So: if ‘democracy’ is “the real reason” why America is “committed” to Taiwan, why was America committed to Taiwan during the dictatorial period, 1949-1996, before “the first direct presidential election” took place there?

Obviously, the official is lying.

Furthermore, he is attributing the dictatorial regime to the fact that it “came from mainland China.” He’s indirectly attributing its dictatorship to the communist Mao Zedong. But the reality is that Chiang, and the original U.S. dictator there, Chen Yi, were enemies of Mao, not his allies, and that this is why the U.S. is “committed” to Taiwan — notwithstanding that the U.S. regime in Taiwan was long a dictatorship, which moreover had stolen so much from Mao’s regime on the mainland. (And, even today, the U.S. regime, which stole Taiwan from the Japanese regime, which had stolen it from the previous, royal, Chinese regime, refuses to allow today’s Chinese government to negotiate a re-unification of Taiwan with the country of which it had always been a part, which is China.)

As even the wikipedia article notes, Chen-Yi was set-up as being Taiwan’s dictator by U.S. forces, on 25 October 1945, when the island was freed from the Japanese regime, which was legendarily barbaric, and, “during this time [of Japanese rule], over 2,000 women were forced into sexual slavery for Imperial Japanese troops, now euphemistically called ‘comfort women’.” So: the U.S. established a new fascist dictatorship, to replace the fascist dictatorship that had previously existed there.

The next person to be interviewed in this video is James Liley, former head of the CIA in Asia, who says (11:15) that after World War II, “We were looking for a strong, unified, democratic, China.” Oh, really? “Well, we got two-thirds of it. Strong and unified, not democratic.” He was referring there to the post-Mao regime on the mainland — not to the regime we installed in Taiwan. So, this conquest of Japan gave the U.S. the right to dictate to Mao’s successors, by backing brigands who had stolen from their country? “Now we’re calling China a responsible stakeholder.” Oh, it’s for the U.S. dictatorship to judge who is ‘responsible’, and who isn’t? “We’ve got half of it; we’ve got a stakeholder, but not a responsible one yet.”

People like this are dictators to foreign countries. That’s what America’s fighting forces are serving — U.S. dictators to foreign countries.

Lilley continues: “U.S. feels that we have an obligation, legal, moral, to Taiwan, that we cannot stand idly by and let this be taken over by an authoritarian communist-influenced power. This cannot be.” (He ignores the fact that Britain’s Margaret Thatcher did essentially this in regard to Hong Kong, and that the end-result was peacful, and productive, both for Hong Kong, and for China. By contrast, as the remainder of this video explains, America’s resistance against doing the same thing in itscolony, Taiwan, is now increasingly posing a danger of nuclear war — which would be disastrous foreverybody.)

Isn’t it wonderful to have such a benefactor to the world, as today’s U.S.? Look at our other beneficiaries: Iraq. Libya. Syria. Guatemala. El Salvador. Chile. Argentina. Brazil, South Africa. Honduras. Palestine. Etc. Those people are much better off than are the ‘communist-influenced’ capitalists on China’s mainland? Really?

Here is how U.S. President Barack Obama phrased the matter, to graduating West Point cadets, on 28 May 2014:

“the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. But the world is changing with accelerating speed. This presents opportunity, but also new dangers. We know all too well, after 9/11, just how technology and globalization has put power once reserved for states in the hands of individuals, raising the capacity of terrorists to do harm. Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums.”

There, the aspiring global dictator is telling America’s future military leaders: The U.S. is the only“indispensable” nation; all others are “dispensable,” and the enemies you’ll be fighting against are the dispensable nations now rising to compete economically against us, and which even “seek a greater say in global forums.” Mustn’t allow that, must we?

It’s just the latest version of the old American “gunboat diplomacy.” (Only, this time, with the modern danger of nuclear war, being thrown in.)

This is today’s American ‘democracy’, in macro; it’s this ‘democracy’, in micro. At either end, it’s today’s Sparta; not really today’s Athens (which it pretends to be).

Do its propagandists know they’re lying? Or do they hide it even from themselves?

An interesting fact about the interviewees that were cited here, Tkacik and Liley, is that they’re both retired. Why, then, do they still keep up the lying front (especially since they’re now feeding myths that could produce a nuclear war)? They’re no longer on the U.S. government payroll. But they do receive income as ‘experts’, based upon their past official positions. How much credibility would they now have if they said: “Oh, it was just lying — that’s what I did for a living”? They’re never really free. They’re always like horses that are harnessed to a carriage of frauds. They’ve simply got to keep pulling this carriage, until they die.