WASHINGTON REPORT: Truth and the Big Ditch
Getlein, Frank
WASHINGTON REPORT TRUTH AMD THE BIG DITCH It would be nice if the right wing in this country would some day start calling their answers to rational arguments "rebuttals," or "dissent" or...
...As G. B. Shaw pointed out, the doctrine of papal infallibility is humility kneeling in the dust compared to the sweeping claims to infallibility routinely made by admirals, right-wing nuts and Republican wheel horses heading for the barn...
...That's prologue...
...Basically it's the same problem that has confronted Britain and France and today confronts several of the Arab "confrontation" states in the Middle East...
...Instead, once more, we have been treated to the spectacle of a right-wing self-styled "truth squad" fanning out across the country to bring the people the only meet and just, acceptable and availing unto salvation possible way to interpret the proposed new Panama Canal Treaty...
...All three of those founding fathers have had occasion to regret their creation: Jordan and Syria have both fought the PLO in bitter, extended warfare...
...You'll do no such thing...
...Moreover, the threat of Communism, evoked by today's "truth squad," was specifically rejected by the Crusaders as a reason to retreat from that pirnciple...
...The British and the French were under the illusion— not unlike that of the truth squad about Panama— that since the British and the French had built the Canal, ending forever their long history of enmity and beginning a new one of amity celebrated by "Aida" along with fireworks and those incredible Victorian dinners, that it would always be theirs...
...What kind of world do you think I'm running around here, anyhow...
...To stabilize the area and thus protect their own interests, the British and French proceeded to create a few nations here and there out of the mileage taken from the failing hands of the Ottoman Empire, among them an independent Egypt...
...In came the invaders, the Europeans seizing the Canal, the Israelis picking up the largely unoccupied but strategically invaluable Sinai between the Canal and the Israeli border in the Negev...
...The introduction of the Middle East in a discussion of the Big Ditch and what will become of it is by no means merely one of those digressions encountered on this page occasionally...
...In 1956, the French and British decided to seize it back...
...the Egyptian President has had his life threatened by the people who owe him everything...
...The terms change, perhaps even the purposes change, as certainly do the statements of purpose, but the tone is invariably the same: from the way they talk, the style of argument, and, above all, the easy, automatic assumption that there is "the truth" and that the speaker has it exclusively, you can't easily tell the American right from the Soviet intellectual bureaucracy...
...It is a truism of politics generally that the modulation and graduation of political opinion runs not along a straight line but along a curved one, which, if extended far enough, becomes a circle, the ends meeting to present as close a relationship and resemblance as any other two adjoining positions...
...Signed, John Foster by the grace of God Dulles...
...If the right were capable of making that change, the rest of us might at least consider taking them seriously...
...FRANK GETLEIN...
...Presumably...
...The overriding fact about the future of the Panama Canal, one for some reason mysteriously absent from most public discussion so far, is that the United States determined that future, at least in the broadest terms and quite specifically as far as this country is concerned, way back in 1956 and did so in the Middle East...
...From this mind-set, the idea of the political process as a search for truth through open debate or even as an accommodation of opposing views through compromise is just about unthinkable, can even be seen as treason perhaps worse than wrong-headed disagreement...
...To the end of his life, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, whose long, distinguished career was destroyed by the Suez fiasco, swore that he had had Dulles's assurances of U.S...
...The fact that we ourselves created the sovereignty of said nation only deepens the irony...
...Dulles, himself a kind of proto-truth squadder, was obviously capable of such a reversal and as between Eden's record of personal sacrifice for principle and Dulles's confusion of both truth and democracy with anti-Communism of the simplest kind, it is not hard to choose...
...In practice, extremes not only meet but becomes indistinguishable...
...They cannot distinguish between what is demonstrably true and what they believe to be the most prudent or judicious course of action...
...Sadat could well say, in a Mark Twain variation: "Of course they want to kill me, I gave them life...
...The arguments for the Panama Canal Treaty adjustment, if so it can be called without inviting denunciation for soft-pedaling the clear and present danger of a Commie take-over of the principal water connection between "our" two oceans, are familiar to readers and are convincing enough to me: we are in a new age, one characterized by independence being achieved, increased or otherwise enhanced by many nations that were formerly not nations at all or were nations in subservience to other, larger or more militarily proficient nations...
...tacit approval, active inaction, in the plan...
...The occasion was the fate of another canal, the Suez...
...And if you want another one, simultaneously with Suez, the Soviet tanks were in Budapest destroying the short-lived movement for independence which, if not brought into existence, was certainly encouraged by Dullesian and Nixonian early truth squad ravings about going beyond "containment" to "rolling back" Soviet dominance of Eastern Europe...
...The PLO as "nation" owes its status to Jordan, Syria and Egypt, with, of course, a strong assist from the oil of Libya...
...If we want to hang on to Panama, we have to give Suez back to the AngloFrench-Israeli consortium and the truth-squadders have to reject some of their holiest icons...
...Recognizing this, the United States ought to recognize that its own effective ownership and exclusive operation of the Canal obviously constitute an infringement upon the sovereignty of a supposedly sovereign nation...
...Get those troops out of there right away, if you know what's good for you...
...WASHINGTON REPORT TRUTH AMD THE BIG DITCH It would be nice if the right wing in this country would some day start calling their answers to rational arguments "rebuttals," or "dissent" or "opposing views...
...The point of all this for the present, however, is simply that in 1956, this country under the leadership of the anti-Communist Crusade, adopted as principle that international canals belong to the countries they are in, not to those that built them...
...Perhaps more...
...Most of us think of truth as an accurate account of something that happened, something or someone that or who exists, remarks, actions, whatever...
...Not at all...
...On the other hand, if the right were capable of such a ohange, it wouldn't be the right...
...Outrage in the State Department...
...Here's where we came in...
...At any rate if you are silenced, imprisoned, shot, or merely excluded from those searching for "truth" in political matters by the right, you are just as dead, locked up, put up or not put up with as if those things had been done to you by the left...
...mobilized by the e one side and of certainly be said rdner at least did jiven the present ;d, shot, or merely truth" in political i dead, locked up, ie things had been extremes not only The terms change, is certainly do the ^ is invariably the style of argument, c assumption that speaker has it exmerican right from he political process debate or even as ews through comcan even be seen ng-headed disagreeiral styling of one's own crowd as the "truth squad," with the implication that the others, in this case starting with the President of the United States and including one past-President, military commanders, senators and many others, are— what?—the untruth squad...
...In the fullness of time, independent Egypt brought forth an independent ruler, the military dictator Nasser, to replace the monarchy installed by the British...
...It is not particularly important, just icing on the cake, that the Panama "truth-squadders" this time out include Admiral Moorer, who, as Chief of Naval Operations at the time, so handled the Pueblo Affair as to leave the impression that he wouldn't know truth if it came up and shivered his timbers...
...In the event, of course, as at Suez, the Crusaders backed down...
...Looking about him, Nasser readily perceived that the most valuable property in Egypt was the Suez Canal and in the name of nationhood and sovereignty, seized it...
...They were allied with the Israelis who, after fighting off the attack by the surrounding Arab world in 1948, couldn't think of anything nicer than a buffer zone occupied by two major, European powers between Israel and the Arab nation which had borne the brunt of the '48 fighting and seemed eager to do it some more...
...In their minds, "the best policy" is the same thing as "truth" and that conviction makes political discourse impossible...
...From it, too, comes the natural styling of one's 3 February 1978: 68 a was the place particularly dey level in every it leadership we our problems," re won't put up ks of reshaping nsure that our e to wring our a and pollution, ed, now yellowor some kind of later, the views test of time rethen tended to was daring and the present dip, unning around 7 put of $420 bileem exorbitantly At...
...The further irony there, of course, Commonweal: 69 was that Dulles, leader of the godly campaign against the godless atheists of Moscow, was allied with Moscow in driving out the obviously anti-Communist French, British and Israelis in favor of a Nasser then supplied with Soviet arms...
...Truth squadders think that truth consists in their interpretation of the wisdom of a policy...
...That, of course, is par for the course with right-wingers inclined to form truth squads...
...Gardner had p in this country, 1 in his estimate ry establishment...
...Don't go around creating nations if you are not prepared to deal with them as nations...
Vol. 105 • February 1978 • No. 3
