Lessons for Canada - consequences of deception

Tale of deception has lessons for Canada
James Travers TheTorontoStar Mar 08, 2007

Ottawa — It's not really surprising that there are warnings for Canada woven through the Lewis "Scooter" Libby cautionary tale about lies and deception. After all, in a world where everything is said to connect, politicians and journalists up here can surely learn a few things from what's happening down there.

Libby's conviction this week for perjury and obstructing justice adds some credibility to the controversial chaos theory that a butterfly's wing beating in Asia may stir an earthquake in, say, South America. In much the same way, the Libby case connects serendipitously to Canada's Afghanistan mission, the wild acceleration of political spin, and relations between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the media.

All three come together in Libby's fib about the big lie. For anyone not following the melodrama, Vice-President Dick Cheney's then chief of staff was caught hiding a few facts from the FBI. Among the most important was that he discredited the Washington diplomat who exposed the empty Bush administration claim that Iraq was shopping Africa for nuclear weapons material.

That tall tale was part of the fictional weapons of mass destruction story that justified the Iraq invasion that in turn distracted U.S. attention from Afghanistan. That led Canada to help fill the Afghanistan vacuum, at least partly to ease relations with Washington strained by Ottawa's refusal to help topple Saddam Hussein.

There are other reasons for Canada's presence in Kandahar and the complex linkages between the U.S. Iraq adventure and Canada's Afghanistan decision that are worthy of book-length analysis. Still, the underlying pattern is as repetitive and instructive even if the scale and implications are smaller.

In the U.S., a war was justified by spin that began with a few selective facts and then spiralled into fiction. In Canada, the Afghanistan mission is still sold as security and reconstruction and not as a gesture of support for the U.S., first by Liberals and then Conservatives.

None of that is accidental. Last fall, Harper's government spent $76,000 testing compelling words to market a distant conflict and the language judged best was the least American.

Governments everywhere practise the persuasive arts and what's wrong with that can be made right by a scrupulous media fulfilling their democratic obligations. That didn't happen in the U.S. and there's evidence of similar Canadian failures.

In Washington, one of the world's most accomplished press corps proved poorly matched against a pair of powerful forces. The incessant beat of war drums made tough questions seem traitorous while obsessive information control exercised by the White House made journalists vulnerable to strategic leaks from high places.

In hot pursuit of the scoop, seasoned reporters were suckered into advancing administration interests by misleading citizens. That fourth estate failure is made worse by the life-and-death nature of the issue and by the gnawing truth that it could have been avoided simply by clinging to the time-tested credo that getting the story right is still more important than getting it first.

As in most things Canadian, political machinations and press missteps here are less earthshaking. But it's hard to ignore that Harper's controlling inner circle is managing the news with zeal that smacks of paranoia and that the media are just as prone to gift-wrapped misinformation.

Along with now ubiquitous dirty tricks – Conservative allegations that Liberals flip-flopped on anti-terror legislation to protect an MP stands out – the government is successfully distracting public attention from a troubled war with flag-waving jingoism. Canadians are encouraged to support the troops – something that's not in doubt – and discouraged from examining how the government extended the mission without extracting from NATO, Pakistan and Kabul the concessions urgently needed for success and safety.

Conservatives can't be blamed for the most outrageous media duping in recent memory. That rests on an RCMP that while under Liberal rule wrongly fingered Maher Arar to U.S. authorities, then anonymously smeared his reputation by whispering in reporter ears.

It's not necessary to stretch the U.S. and Canadian parallels to spot some worrying trends. As is usually the case with two countries sharing a continent, political methods drift north as easily as mass culture and with the same short delay.

What's now in the courts there is in the air here. Look at both ends of the Libby trend lines and find war sold without truth in advertising, spin arcing toward lies and journalists being played like fiddles.

This country's advantage is that cross-border lag-time provides a fleeting chance to disrupt patterns before they become bad habits. Of course, that would require holding someone accountable and that's just not the Canadian way.