Two Wrongs Do Not Make A Right!


27-04-2013 09:38 PM

** Is it true that a politician is an honest person who lies for his country?
** Lies that conceal the truth and lead to devastating mayhems are Weapons but of Mass Deception (WMD)
** "The end justifies the means”- another BIG fat Machiavellian lie


By Bilal M. Ayasrah- London*

The fallacious aphorism: “two wrongs infer one right” is almost three centuries old; it harks back to 1734 where it appeared in a poem. Since then, it has been imported and employed in all walks of life, most particularly the world of politics that is oftentimes replete with ‘poly tricks’. With its antithesis: ‘two wrongs do NOT make a right’, it evokes a quandary; an ethical dilemma of rightfulness and wrongfulness.

In this article, I centrally argue the pros and cons of the latter which, in its very essence, involves informal fallacy of deduction whose premises hint flawed reasoning and erroneous syllogism which leads to irrational judgements and unpersuasive conclusions. Are rightness and wrongness of our conduct derived from our conformity with established laws or from the consequences of that conduct?

There is no question that we are living in an explosively-fast digital world and a global village, thanks to globalisation and Informatics which have, alas, made our world more frenzied, crazy, vulnerable and fragile. Hence, my argument will be exclusively situated within the context of wars and armed conflicts: a period of time that is fraught with all sorts of elusion, illusion, and delusion.

Is it true that a politician is an honest person who lies for his country?! Do politicians really believe what they say? Is truth in times of war “so precious that [it] should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies?”, as called on by the famous British political leader Winston Churchill. Should war engineers keep lying and lying until they are believed as long as wars are by and large based on trickery and “all is fair in love and war?!”

Should we have believed, for example, the Syrian regime’s state-run media that those locals who fled the Syrian border town, Jisr al-Shughour, to the neighbouring Turkey at the very onset of the revolution in 2011 as visitors to their friends and relatives?! Those crowds pouring into Turkey were several hundred! “It is a bit like having a problem in your street, and your mum lives in the next street, so you go and visit your mum for a bit”, the then-director of Syria’s state TV network and spokeswoman for the country’s information ministry was quoted as blatantly saying.

How many millions, to cite a more flagrant example, of civilian casualties and very many other subsequent grave consequences could the then-Bush’s administration and its proxies have saved if they had not lied to their peoples and tricked the whole international community on the eve of that annihilating war in 2003? How many trillions of dollars spent on that losing battle?

How could the world have looked if that war’s architects had not showered humans across the globe with their fraudulent claims and deceitful swindles about Iraq’s possession of “enormous” amounts of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and a host of other falsified fabrications to gather global support and pursue an unnecessary war?

What kind of fruits are the Iraqis reaping today after the lapse of ten whole years? Are they better or worse off today? Iraqis were promised to live in paradise and enjoy democracy and liberty, justice and equal opportunities, social-political and economic security, sound governance and many other forms of stability.

None has been achieved in this violence-torn country; the general scene has disastrously worsened socially, economically and politically. Unemployment and poverty pockets have penetrated the oil-rich state. Corruption and illiteracy rates have not been brought to a minimum. National property has been sold at preferential prices. Oil-revenues have been confiscated. Sectarianism, political divisions, outbidding and futile bargains have prevailed.

More, perhaps more importantly, people are unbelievably humiliated and stripped of their basic ‘human’ rights. Education and healthcare are catastrophically deteriorating. Sweeping public protests are shaking the country today; millions of men and women are taking to the streets to oust the ruling dictators. All this is happening in that “promised paradise”.

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), above all, have not been found!

I am not defending the old regime, however. I agree the country was rid of decades-old dictator, but has dictatorship been toppled? Who is responsible for all this havoc?

Lies, I believe, that conceal the truth and lead to devastating mayhems are Weapons but of Mass Deception (WMD). I also believe that the then-journalistic general public had failed to act properly towards those tissues of lies and all forms of hoax, disguise, camouflage, fake, forgery, fraud, guile and fabricated falsehood. They could have stopped it if they turned down those untruthful allegations, challenged them and enlightened the public.

President Bush himself (and his main aides and allies) openly admits his lies in the wake of the war in 2004 before the Congress. A few days ago, the then-French defence minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, lamentably voiced her dissatisfaction over today’s Iraq on the tenth anniversary of its fall let alone most Americans have shown their resentment and indignation following the war.

As you well know, it has become commonly acknowledged that wars start and end with lies between the belligerent parties on the basis that “the end justifies the means”- another BIG fat Machiavellian lie which lacks the very minimum of deontological ethics and indicates immorality, indecency, illegitimacy and illogicality.

it is more commonsensical that morality or immorality of our actions should, first and foremost, be conditional upon the extent to which those actions adhere or fail to adhere to the agreed-upon rules, prevailing norms and observed conventions. How on earth can this consequentialism be justifiable, not least within the context of wars and armed conflicts?! How would this super-egotistic and non-altruistic conduct be acceptable: to selfishly build your happiness on somebody else’s unhappiness, come what may?! Is this fair?

One might agree, in certain situations and exceptional circumstances, that two wrongs may make a right; that the rightness or wrongness of actions can be judged by virtue of the morality of the outcome thereof but, in wartime, are morally wrong actions needed to achieve morally right outcomes even if nefarious and unethical means are utilised for that end at the expense of truth, noble values and morality?

Two wrongs do not make a right, do they?!

In a nutshell, true peace, as Martin Luther King (Jr.) succinctly puts it, “is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice. We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say: ‘we must not wage war’. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior to the discords of war”.

Whatever the course, I believe war is, after all, the necessary evil; at best a failure, at worst a disaster.

*The writer is a researcher based in London. His current interests are media and the Arab “Spring”. He contributed this article to Ammon News Agency.




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