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Gore’s ‘Assault on Reason’ Tracks Bush Deceptions

By David Evans.

“Bush’s solemn promise to the American people during the 2000
campaign that CO2 would be regulated as a polluting greenhouse gas was
instantly abandoned only days after the inauguration. He replaced it
with a promise to the largest polluters that CO2 would not be regulated
at all. Similarly, his seemingly heartfelt declaration to the American
people during the campaign that he genuinely believed global warming
was a real problem was replaced immediately after the inauguration by a
dismissive expression of contempt for all of the careful, peer-reviewed
work by the Environmental Protection Agency scientists who had
presented for his review the plain facts about the dangers of the
climate crisis.”

Al Gore may have known best of all that the campaign rhetoric he
describes in The Assault On Reason (Penguin:NY;2007), was coming from
someone who had not demonstrated much commitment to the policies he was
campaigning on. It is still mystifying that Gore’s long, strong
advantage on environmental issues could be partially offset by a
friendly fellow saying “me too.” The Nobel Laureate goes on to provide
a similar example.

“In the same way, the promise by candidate Bush to conduct a
‘humble’ foreign policy and avoid any effort at ‘nation building’ was
transformed in the first days of the Bush presidency — according to
newly available evidence from eyewitnesses — into a methodical secret
search for any excuse to invade Iraq at the earliest opportunity.
Later, during the invasion itself, even as looters were carrying off
many of Iraq’s priceless antiquities from museums designed to
commemorate the ‘cradle of civilization,’ only one government building
was protected by American troops: the petroleum ministry.”

The disconnect between campaigning and governing is only a part of
the dilemma outlined in The Assault On Reason. Gore observes, “When
we make big mistakes in America, it is usually because the people have
not been given an honest accounting of the choices before us. It is
also because leaders in both parties who knew better did not have the
courage to do better.”

He notes, “The larger explanation for this crisis in American
decision making is that reason itself is playing a diminished, less
respected role in our national conversation.” Discussing democratic
theory, the carbon crisis, “national insecurity,” and civil liberties,
Gore skillfully contrasts recent administration policy with deeply-held
American values. In doing so, he itemizes instance after instance of
willful blindness, deliberate distortion, and suppression of fact.

Writing after An Inconvenient Truth, Gore devotes a chapter to
“Convenient Untruths,” beginning with examples of how open flows of
information and distributed decision making lead to stability,
efficiency and accuracy. Against this accumulated wisdom, because of
the administration’s “secrecy, censorship, and massive, systematic
deception,” America has embraced a “catastrophe.” He continues, “Five
years after President Bush made his case for an invasion of Iraq, it is
now clear that virtually all the arguments he made were based on
falsehoods.”

Not only the invasion of Iraq, but also the justification for
expanding executive power, depended on “their big, flamboyant lie.”
Gore summarizes, “A small group of willful men in the
administration… substituted their judgment for that of the nation’s
military leaders…” then carefully notes: “Information that would
have prevented this mistake was suppressed. Two months before the Iraq
war began, President Bush received detailed and comprehensive secret
reports warning him that the likely result of an American-led invasion
of Iraq would be increased support for Islamic fundamentalism, deep
divisions in Iraqi society, high levels of violent internal conflict,
and guerilla warfare aimed at US forces.”

“The alienation of Americans from the democratic process has also
eroded knowledge of the most basic facts about our constitutional
architecture of checks and balances,” Gore warns, citing evidence of
how few people can answer basic questions about executive power as it
relates to the other two branches or the power to declare war.

In specifying the administration’s disregard for individual privacy,
Gore notes that other periods of presidential excess were followed by
times when “the country recovered the equilibrium and absorbed the
lessons learned.” Currently, “the Patriot Act has turned out to be,
on balance, a terrible mistake and has become a kind of Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution conferring Congress’s blessing for this president’’s assault
on civil liberties. Congress missed a golden opportunity when it voted
to reauthorize the act, including its most objectionable features, with
only minor changes — instead of replacing it with a new, smaller, and
more effective law.”

Al Gore is optimistic that “the Internet is perhaps the greatest
source of hope for reestablishing an open communications environment in
which the conversation of democracy can flourish.” Compared to print
and broadcast, he calls it “a meritocracy of ideas,” worthy of
development and protection, especially regarding net neutrality.

The reviewer will profile historical and contemporary peacemakers in
future editions of Grassroots Press.

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