T
he American film “Oppenheimer” tells the story of the production and dropping of the world’s first nuclear bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan by the US in the last weeks of World War II.
The film’s release in Japan has been delayed multiple times, out of consideration for the country’s national and human sentiments. The Japanese believe that the use of nuclear weapons against their country was unnecessary since the government of the time had already conveyed its willingness to negotiate an end to the war.
However, the US, while it also saw the war as at an end, was focusing on preparations for the post-war era and wanted to showcase its immense power over all its competitors. Dropping nuclear bombs on Japan was America’s way of confirming its dominance in the post-war world.
It was an act that carried brutality and cruelty to an extreme that it is very hard to accept, which is why the Americans claimed that their use of nuclear weapons against Japan hastened the end of the war and saved thousands of lives that would have been lost in subsequent military operations.
The Americans went on to promote this false narrative worldwide, with the result that much of the world believed it, making it the story on which the post-World War II international system was built.
Another American deception unfolded in our region in more recent years, when reports of genocide committed by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein against Kurdish people in the Halabja region of Iraq through the use of chemical weapons started to spread at the end of the 1980s.
However, it later became clear that this narrative was false, and documents from the US intelligence agencies also confirmed that it was not true. There were indeed Kurdish victims in Halabja, but they did not perish as a result of an extermination campaign orchestrated by Saddam Hussein. In reality, during the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran, the area witnessed battles in which both sides used gas attacks, with resulting Kurdish casualties.
Tests conducted by US military intelligence at the time showed that the majority of the casualties were due to Iranian gas attacks and not to the use of poison gas by the Iraqi forces. While the Iraqis employed mustard gas as a lethal component in their chemical weapons, the Iranians used cyanide, and it was this that accounted for most of the Kurdish casualties.
American public opinion became aware of the tragedy of the Kurds in the Halabja region in March 1988, but they did not pay much attention to it due to the preoccupation with the outcome of the war between Iraq and Iran. The war ended in August of the same year, with Iraq emerging victorious. The US feared that Iraq would now come to dominate the region, and it was this that promoted it to initiate its campaigns against the country.
It was in this context that the US claims of Iraqi gas attacks and genocide in Halabja emerged, and they remain widely believed even up to the present day.
All this is to say that the US government lies, as do many other governments worldwide. But what sets the US apart from others is its ability to make the world believe its lies more readily than it does the lies of other nations. The reason for this is that the US lies with greater professionalism than others.
The US gradually revealed information about the Halabja tragedy, first by slowly declassifying documents related to the issue and second by publishing books and articles about it. The dissemination and analysis of such documents was an effective means of strengthening the next lie.
When a regime is thought to be transparent and provides evidence through the release of documents, it offers concessions related to historical facts that have lost their relevance in exchange for enhancing the credibility of its current leadership. People may change their views on old lies that occurred decades ago, but they will still be ready to believe the next big lie – and it is this which really matters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has referred to the US as the “empire of deception” – a highly accurate description, not because the Americans lie more than others, but because they excel at lying to a degree that no one else has reached. They do not just tell lies, but they also ensure that they are believed, at least for a while.
They invest a lot of time and resources not just in generating lies, but also in perfecting and manufacturing mechanisms capable of promoting them. Lies in the US are the oil that keeps the political machine running, preventing its gears from grinding against each other. In other countries, by contrast, lies become a source of malfunctioning. The problem is that there is no oil to lubricate the lies machine, resulting in defective products that few are willing to consume.
American lies are promoted by a professional media apparatus with traditions in investigative journalism, accuracy, and versatility. Therefore, their strength is immense when they converge to propagate a particular narrative, as was the case with the Halabja tragedy in Iraq. The US media turned this into unquestionable truth, casting suspicions of supporting dictatorship, racism, and hatred of the Kurds on anyone who denied it.
The US is adept at connecting its lies to noble principles and values, concealing the interests that lie behind them.
In the US, lying is a privilege granted by the system to a select group occupying the highest and most sensitive positions in the country. The lies of these individuals receive support, reinforcement, and promotion, transforming them into facts. Junior employees or officials in the US cannot expect similar support if they lie for petty gain. They will be exposed to public shame and left to their fate.
This exposure of small lies strengthens the credibility of the US system overall and makes people more willing to believe the next big lie. These big lies are few, but they are meticulously crafted, making them difficult to distinguish from the thousands of true news stories that there are out there, and causing them to be even more dangerous for other nations.
The writer is an adviser at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 21 September, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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