In 1966,
unable to receive straight answers from the Johnson Administration about the
course of the Vietnam War, J. William Fulbright helped give wide public
currency to a phrase that had been gaining traction among Washington observers:
a “credibility gap” covering the distance between what officials said and the
reality on the ground.
In the
decades since then, presidents and their advisers have certainly trimmed the
truth. But aside, perhaps, from the Watergate era, I’m not sure that
“credibility gap” has been used much. It is certainly time to bring that phrase
back, as well as another one that Senator Fulbright popularized: “the arrogance
of power.”
In Lyndon
Johnson’s college days, biographer Robert Caro revealed, the future President’s
friends nicknamed him “Bull Johnson” because, as one classmate said, he “just
could not tell the truth.” But LBJ’s mendacity has been exceeded thoroughly by
Donald Trump, who can barely
move his lips without uttering an untruth.
Trump’s
secret sauce as a liar? Lie so fast, so often, so much, without fear that one
day’s statement might contradict an earlier one, that it will be impossible to
keep up and eventually inure the public to what he says.
Trump
voters could console themselves, based on the lack of new military commitments
abroad in his first term, that his deceptions were at least not putting service
personnel at risk. That assurance is now gone.
Trump’s
credibility gap is a necessary precondition for aggrandizing not just America’s
power but his personal sway. He couldn’t get the correct synonym for the
invasion of Iraq (it’s “incursion”), but for him it might as well be an
“excursion,” a holiday from history and truth.
Throughout
these first few weeks of the war, it’s been bad enough that he hasn’t been able
to offer a consistent rationale for the invasion, but he simply lied about the
nature of the threat posed by Iraq. While it was true that Iraq’s stockpile of
weaponry posed a threat to Israel, it in no way endangered the United States.
The “arrogance of power” and “the credibility gap” have particular consequences in matters of war and peace, not only because of lives endangered but also because of violations of international law that endanger order between and even within nations through shredding human rights.
(See, for instance, Marc Weller’s mid-January analysis for the London-based think tank Chatham House, which explains why,
despite Trump’s second-term disregard for the concept, without international
law, “The aim of predictable and stable relations, and clear pathways for
international transactions, would be destroyed.”)
In his
book The Arrogance of Power, Fulbright offered a defense of
international law that has, sadly, been forgotten over the past decade:
Law is
the essential foundation of stability and order both within societies and in
international relations. As a conservative power, the United States has a vital
interest in upholding and expanding the reign of law in international
relations. Insofar as international law is observed, it provides us with
stability and order and with a means of predicting the behavior of those with
whom we have reciprocal legal obligations. When we violate the law ourselves,
whatever short-term advantage may be gained, we are obviously encouraging
others to violate the law; we thus encourage disorder and instability and
thereby do incalculable damage to our own long-term interests.
