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And thus began this nasty little war against people of darker hue who happened to swim on a sea of oil. But, alas, no victory parade is now envisaged. Bush Blair Rumsfeld Ltd, has declared bankruptcy and is no longer weaving garments out of whole cloth for governments to use.
Worse by far: hundreds of thousands died. And there were very, very few who lived "happily ever after."
The Supreme Irony
One who did live through all this—and happily, it would seem—was the prime minister—oops, I mean the king. I mean the one who thought it politically wise to claim, despite the lack of real evidence, that he knew that weapons of mass destruction were in Iraq. I mean the one who thus shares moral responsibility for the carnage that ensued.
You will find this hard to believe, but the king sits on the throne still to this day. [Anders Fogh Rasmussen was Denmark's prime minister at the time of the Iraq invasion, and still is.] The great majority of his subjects are either unaware of his duplicity, or prefer to ignore or deny it. What comes off the printing presses makes little mention of it.
What about Frank Grevil, the one who called attention to the king's nakedness? His reward? Four months in prison.
We are grateful for the Grevils of this world. We call them whistleblowers—people of integrity and courage who buck the tide and refuse to be intimidated or silenced. The good they do usually goes unheralded. It is, nevertheless good—and worth doing—because it is good. The results, as history shows, are not always in the hands of the truth tellers.
The whole-cloth clothier, Bush Blair Rumsfeld Ltd, was right about one thing; i. e., there IS evil in the world. And the Briton, Lord Acton, also had it right, when he famously pointed to what lies so often at the core of major evil like wars aggression—little or large. Acton's observation: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Recognizing what they are up against, some whistleblowers have quipped that their rewards are "out of this world." Black humor aside, there is ample support for that observation in the Biblical tradition from which many of us come. Indeed, people of integrity like Frank Grevil give flesh to the Biblical assurance: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."
And for that we are all very grateful.
"Something Rotten"
As I landed in Denmark reflecting on Frank Grevil's imprisonment for speaking truth, it struck me there must be "something rotten in Denmark." I had not thought of that quote from Shakespeare in many years, but when it came back into mind, its context came with it.
And I realized I had misquoted Marcellus' remark to Hamlet's friend Horatio. Marcellus says, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark"—the allusion being to the political hierarchy at the top. He is saying the state of Denmark is like a fish rotting from the head down.
Shakespeare is highlighting the main theme of Hamlet—the connection between the crime of a ruler and the health of the country as a whole. Hamlet's uncle Claudius, King of Denmark, is a calculating, ambitious politician who will stop at nothing in his lust for power. I shall leave it to you to ponder whether there may be any parallels in today's Denmark.
Rot is hardly confined to Denmark. It is as universal and noxious wherever senior officials seek to exercise unbridled power. Legislative oversight committees have become overlook committees. Often, the only brake on the Executive's exercise of power is the whistleblower willing to take risks by pouring light into dark places. And Frank Grevil is not alone in suffering from the abuse of power. In Washington, too, whistleblowers have a price on their heads.
One of our Senators with fascist tendencies, Kit Bond of Missouri, currently vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has spoken out with special venom against whistleblowers. At last week's confirmation hearings for Dennis Blair, nominated by President Barack Obama to the most senior intelligence post (Director of National Intelligence), Bond pressed the nominee on whether he would try to prosecute leakers of classified information.
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