by John Hilley
Aliran Monthly Vol 25 (2005): Issue 8

	How about starting with: “My reasons for imprisoning innocent people under the ISA were deplorable.” John Hilley

Imagine if you can this future admission by George W Bush: “My reasons for invading Afghanistan and Iraq were dishonourable.” Imagine that the ex-President went on to admit the real purpose of killing thousands of innocent people. Imagine the fallout from his revelations of how oil and corporate-military interests were the true motivating forces behind Operation Iraqi Freedom. Imagine, on hearing his contrition, what you would feel towards that individual.

Improbable as this scene is ever to play out, it allows us to think about the possibilities of reflective admission and the psychology of denial in political life.

For example, when Dr Mahathir Mohamad castigates America and Britain over their actions in Iraq, are those moral criticisms compromised by a failure to admit his own human rights abuses? I believe they are. Mahathir recently complained that his rights were being denied by those opposed to his speaking at a Suhakam (National Human Rights Commission) gathering. Many NGOs, quite correctly, refused him that courtesy. In a quite different pique of indignation, the British High Commissioner to Malaysia also walked out in protest at Mahathir’s appearance. Again, many, quite rightly, refused to endorse that little hypocrisy.

But was a bigger opportunity to highlight suffering in Iraq sacrificed here for moral consistency? MGG Pillai has criticised those refusing to share a platform with the ex-PM. Surely, he argues, exposing the slaughter in Iraq is more immediate and critical than raising objections to Mahathir’s past. Pillai does not, of course, excuse Mahathir’s sins. Rather, he makes the not unreasonable claim that when multiple lives are being lost, we should not waste time in denouncing the denouncers. More bitingly, he asks, why should we support those Western apologists and “narrow” NGOs who vilify Mahathir while turning a blind eye to US/UK atrocities? Fair point.

But, would Mahathir’s j’accuse not stand rather better inspection if it was accompanied by some personal political penitence? How about starting with: “My reasons for imprisoning innocent people under the ISA were deplorable.”

Systemic guilt

Contrary to the ‘here and now’ argument, Mahathir’s violations cannot simply be excused or put to one side. The problem is not just one of relative abuses, but of wider systemic guilt. Mahathir may conceivably come around one day to purging his conscience over the Anwar affair. But would he ever link any such admission with the political-corporate network that sponsored it? Likewise, he can safely denounce the dark practices in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, but not what goes on in Kamunting and the system of power that allows it. Indeed, for all its proclamations, Suhakam, one of Mahathir’s creations, is itself part of that denial, serving to soften-out the hard edges of the BN system. And with such denial comes diminishing room for other admissions on the deficiencies of Mahathir’s great Vision society.

The issue here is not only about select political crimes, but the structural oppression that such people help build and maintain while in office. Bush may have been shamed, post Katrina, into admitting Federal negligence and the truth of racial poverty in New Orleans. But he is unlikely ever to connect the underfunding of flood levees with priority war funding, or the crude disregard for the country’s black underclass with the ‘every man for himself’ logic of America’s corporate order.

Too often we see elder statesmen filling out their retirement on the informal political circuit as emissaries, charity icons and would-be doves, serving to block out the memory of their own murky pasts. Bill Clinton’s current initiative (with a Scottish business philanthropist) on African poverty might, to a less obsequious media, seem inconsistent with his bombing of an aspirin factory in Sudan. But this is part of the same homely deceit that can distinguish the Democrat version of “progressive ” US “muscular internationalism” from Republican neo-conservative militarism. In truth, both uphold the same system reinforcing principles of American exceptionalism. And both are unapologetic about what they will do to preserve that system.

A better template for reflective admission is, perhaps, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. This may have been a painful exercise for the families of the murdered and those brutalised by apartheid. Yet, it compelled those responsible not only to reveal their crimes but to expose the regime’s systemic functions. Potential renewal comes about, thus, not just through admission of personal culpability, but through recognition of how individual complicities help form an unjust order.

State contrition

The main problem with political admission is that an already sceptical public see little genuine feeling in grand apologies by leaders or states. Typically, state contrition is safe regret for past oppressions, such as Blair’s apology for Britain’s indifference to the suffering of Irish people during the 1840s potato famine. In a more contentious act of state evasion, Australian leader John Howard has expressed “regret” for the suffering of Aboriginal people, while leading the claw-back of land rights won under the (Native Title) Mabo ruling and avoiding calls to redress their multiple deprivation.

Likewise, the history of war apology and reparation has rarely been sincere or constructive. Punitive post WW1 reparations imposed on Germany helped give rise to Hitler. While Japan has proffered various apologies over WW2 and relinquished its standing army, there remains deep, if unfounded, fear of Japanese militarism. Of course, the US has avoided such pitfalls by never actually apologising or offering recompense for its crimes in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Likewise in Latin America. And there seems little prospect of any genuine apology or payout from the British state over its atrocities in Malaya, Kenya and other colonial outposts.

When faced with gross genocidal truths, elites will also seek refuge in institutional denial. Recently, the United Nations gave forth a defining proclamation on terrorism, possibly one of the most vacuous statements ever issued by that body. Subject to bullying dilution by John Bolton, Bush’s neo-con placeman at the UN, this part of its newly-negotiated charter provides, like many others, safe semantic haven for state terrorists. No place here for state contrition for past actions or recognition that America, Britain and Israel are a key part of the global terrorist equation.

State contrition is further obviated by mainstream academic discipline, with its cold, realist abstractions. As Pilger puts it: “...so much of western scholarship has taken the humanity out of the study of nations, of people, congealing it with jargon and reducing it to an esotericism called ‘international relations’, the grand chess game of western power that scores nations as useful or not, expendable or not...It is this rampant orthodoxy that determines how power speaks and how its historians and reporters report.”

Pride and prejudice

Personal political admission is also subject to suspect motives and uncertain outcomes. In these days of hyperspin, politicians are viewed as little more than on-message clones. So, any admission is likely to be viewed as just a new form of political affectation. The additional problem in ‘coming clean’ is that judgement is cast not only on one’s past actions, but on the potential sincerity of future ones. The ‘repentant’ can, in turn, proclaim their new-found ability for self criticism. But they still risk living under the cloud of suspicion.

Another cynical form of reflective admission is the accrued set of inside notes and witnessed situations saved for tell-all books and media exposés. This can often be of public value in revealing state mendacity, particularly when it involves intelligence matters and high politics. Richard A. Clarke’s book Against All Enemies: the Inside Story of America’s War on Terror, detailing Bush’s determination to implicate Iraq for 9/11, is a useful example. Yet, what can we say of the former White House adviser’s unwillingness to blow the whistle on this catastrophic decision when it was being made? Does eventual disclosure absolve the author from complicit silence? Here, we see how royalty cheques and career interests take priority over mass suffering.

But, the reluctance to admit personal culpability and mistaken judgement runs deeper than protecting one’s job and self image. It underpins our very psychology as market competitors. In this we are deeply conditioned by corporate life to absorb multiple notions of the individual self and uphold prejudicial ideas of the threatening other. Like the road-rager seized by righteous indignation even when in the wrong, we feel compelled to defend our space, status and personal honour.

September 11 and its global aftermath has seen many writers and public figures retreat into this sanctuary of denial. Many remain there, intellectually stuck, even as the damning evidence stacks up against Bush and Blair. Christopher Hitchens is one such figure. A once sparkling doyen of leftist polemic, Hitchens’ caustic barbs against American empire have been replaced by an ingratiating defence of ‘free world’ idealism. As cultural editor at Vanity Fair, one might understand his rapport with America, particularly New York. But, did 9/11 solidarity preclude critical questioning of unsolicited killing in Afghanistan and Iraq? And so, like many vacillating liberals in the US who took cover behind Homeland dogma, Hitchens is left defending the indefensible, his only fallback a spurious casting of the anti-war left as Saddam supporters and apologists for fascist theocracy.

Bob Geldof’s unwillingness to admit the wanton failure of the G8 summit is a similar case in point. As George Monbiot has pointed out, had Geldof shown humility at the summit’s conclusion, admitting that he and other campaigners had been manipulated, his moral standing would have been enhanced. By declaring it a success, he helped perpetuate the deceit, undermining his own credibility in the process. Observers will be left to judge what part pride and protective vanity played in that calculation.

Contrition as compassion

How, then, can political and intellectual admission be sincerely offered? The true route to genuine contrition, one might argue, is assertive compassion. Contrition is an intrinsic part of compassion, the essence of which is not only forgiveness and understanding, but a capacity for human reparation. In other words, it is not sufficient to express regret and sympathy for the victimised. Real compassionate renewal requires an effort to act on behalf of that wronged person or community. MediaLens editor David Edwards elaborates the idea in ‘The Colour of Compassion’:

“Compassion, or more properly great compassion, is the urge to take personal responsibility for the relief of suffering. [It] has the power to eliminate the self-centred, egotistical motives that distort so much of our thinking. It has, for example, the power to induce academics and journalists to brush aside concerns for status, wealth and privilege in order to do what seems most likely to be of help to others.”

Recently, mathematics professor John Allen Paulos wrote an impressive e-mail to MediaLens expressing regret over his dismissal (in a Guardian article) of the Lancet report’s estimate of 100,000 dead in Iraq. The Lancet study has been disparaged by Downing Street and dutifully ignored by the mainstream and liberal media, with little consideration of the scientifically respected procedures underpinning it. MediaLens note how similar methods were used by the same researcher, Les Roberts, to calculate 1.7 million deaths in the Congo, a figure accepted without question by the media. In this vein, Paulos concedes that he should have looked more closely at the study’s context and methodology — offering, in a subsequent message, constructive suggestions on how to raise its profile. In a fitting response, MediaLens acknowledge his admission, seeing it as a small, but sincere, act of compassionate redress.

Yet, from media academics to slavish editors, laudable admission still seems a rare event. Through mutual networks and safe exchange, the journalist, policy specialist and politician absolve each other from exposing, calculating and preventing mass killing. Mired in the same self deceit, the Guardian cannot bring itself to demand Blair’s resignation and indictment over Iraq. Thus, given respectable refuge by such accomplices, we are unlikely to see a genuine mea culpa or true act of compassionate reparation from Bush, Blair and their associates. In any event, the words ‘responsible’ and ‘sorry’ for their actions would have to be spoken directly to an international court. And they would have to bear witness to the system of power which allowed those crimes to occur.

In similar ways, self preservation and attachment to the BN system outweighs any likelihood of Mahathir’s late repentance. Again, selective denial and establishment discretion provide the customary closure. But maybe that too is an uncompassionate denial of everyone’s ultimate capacity for moral renewal. Perhaps we may still yet see Mahathir campaigning actively for repeal of the ISA and compassionate justice for those who suffered during his tenure. How much more convincing would his standing on Iraq look then?

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Glasgow-based Dr John Hilley is the author of Malaysia: Mahathirism, Hegemony and the New Opposition (London: 2001)

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