Lies, Damned Lies, and Threat Perceptions: Kriegsgrunde (1941) Revisited, in Light of Iraq
Titel:
Lies, Damned Lies, and Threat Perceptions: Kriegsgrunde (1941) Revisited, in Light of Iraq
Auteur:
Haglund, David G.
Verschenen in:
Comparative strategy
Paginering:
Jaargang 24 (2005) nr. 1 pagina's 1-22
Jaar:
2005-01-01
Inhoud:
Scholars generally concede that “misperception” can be a ubiquitous problem in the making of any country's foreign policy. At the same time, many observers (including scholarly ones) are prepared to believe that leaders frequently lie when taking their countries to war. The 2003 Iraq war is a case in point, as the failure of US and British soldiers to find any significant trace of Saddam's mooted weapons of mass destruction has led many, including some who supported the war, to complain that they were “misled” by duplicitous leaders in Washington and London. The charge of duplicity in high places is not a new one. This article seeks to shed comparative light on the Iraq war and its announced casus belli, and does so by examining an earlier instance in which an American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was said by many to have been “lying” his country into war. The earlier critics, and perhaps even the most recent ones, fail to notice that lies—even “damned lies”—are not at all identical to misperceptions.
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