Stephen Burwood

Winston Churchill said that “In war, the truth must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies.” But what about in the run-up to a war? I refer to the difficulties the British government, and in particular the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had and still has in making the case for war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq .

Clare Short famously accused Blair of perpetrating an “honourable deception” in presenting the case for war. Most of the press took Short's phrase as a thin euphemism for a “lie” and were suitably outraged at the possibility that a British Prime Minister might engage in trickery and deception. What lay behind this reaction was the belief that politicians in a democracy ought not to lie, even if we also believe that they do, almost as a matter of course. Judging by the press coverage following the war, when WMD were and are conspicuous by their absence, this is a belief apparently still fervently held by the British press (at least, they present themselves as if they believe this).

But what is a lie? Some of Blair's political opponents apparently think a lie is simply a falsehood: I tell a lie whenever I say something factually incorrect. Thus Blair said Saddam had WMD, and it turns out he did not, therefore Blair lied. Although it is true that we sometimes say “That's a lie!” to indicate that what someone has said is false, this is a rhetorical flourish with the added benefit that it contains an implied slur on the speaker. Taken literally it is a manifest nonsense: we must allow people, even politicians, to make honest mistakes without being subject to moral condemnation as well as epistemic rebuttal. If I truthfully assert p (i.e. if I assert p believing p to be true) and yet p is false, then I have not lied, I have simply made a mistake.

This makes clear a distinction that is necessary for understanding lying: that it is primarily to do with the honesty or dishonesty of the speaker, and not with the truth or falsity of what he says. The falsity of a statement is clearly not sufficient to make it a lie; but, furthermore, it is not even necessary: we can lie by telling the truth. This may seem perverse, and, certainly, it does not conform to a paradigm lie. But what if I assert p, believing p to be false, yet p is true, am I being honest and truthful? No, I am not honest but lucky: lucky, because all this means is that my dishonesty is less likely to be discovered (obviously, it is much more difficult to catch a liar if what he says corresponds with the facts). What this suggests is that what is important is what is going on in the speaker's head when he asserts p, and not merely the verity of p.

So, does the essence of lying lie in the contrasting relation between what someone asserts to be the case and what he believes to be the case? Again, not necessarily; there is still one missing element. That there is a contrast between what I say and what I believe may be necessary (if I assert p, believing p to be true, then clearly I am not lying) but it is not sufficient. If I assert p, believing p to be false, I might also not be lying, I might just be irrational, muddled, or deranged. I might, for example, be suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's disease, and so on. What is required is another bit of psychology: if I assert p, believing p to be false, with the intention to deceive, then I am lying. We can now see how someone might lie by saying something that is in fact true: if I assert p, believing p to be false, intending to deceive, then, even if p turns out to be true, I am not honest or truthful, but a liar.

The importance of someone's intentions has been long recognised by philosophers. St. Augustine argued that “a person is to be judged as lying or not lying according to the intention in his own mind, not according to the truth or falsity of the statement.” On this view, the mark of the liar is that she says what she does because she intends to deceive. However, St. Augustine gives the impression that the intention to deceive alone is sufficient to make someone a liar, and we have already seen that this is not so: we also require there to be a contrast between what someone asserts and what she believes. Let us say I assert p, believing p to be true, and p is true. This seems the very paradigm of honesty; yet I may do this with the intention to deceive. In such a case, I might succeed in deliberately misleading you, but I would not be lying. It all depends on the circumstance, particularly on what other beliefs I hold, in this case about you. Normally, I might be such an inveterate liar that you never believe what I say, and I know this about you. Being especially tricksy, on this occasion I may then deliberately deceive you by being truthful. Hence, not all cases of premeditated deception are cases of lying.

To lie, then, is to assert something, contrary to what one believes, with the intention to deceive.

This discussion may bring some, but very little comfort, to the Prime Minister, who likes to think of himself as a “pretty straight sort of guy”. On the one hand, his political critics are wrong to say that the fact that WMD have not been found proves that he lied or even that he had, as John Kampfner, the New Statesman's political editor suggested, “an informal relationship with truth on the road to war”. It may raise a serious question about his judgement, but not necessarily his honesty. Nonetheless, Blair would do well to realise that, as Wittgenstein puts it, “an assurance from a reliable man that he knows cannot contribute anything.” On the other hand, it means that, even if WMD are eventually found, he is not off the hook, as it may still be the case that he lied, as he did not truly believe that there were WMD. To press home the charge of lying, we would need to know more about his intentions and what he believed when he made the case for war (about which the full story has yet to come into the public domain).

Of course, it is possible that those who point the finger may be muddled or genuinely ignorant of the distinctions we have made, or it may be that they themselves are being deliberately misleading and are simply lying when they accuse others of having lied. Such is the nature of politics. I say “such is the nature of politics” because most of us, or so it would seem from reading opinion polls, do not expect our politicians to be honest with us. Indeed, it is not clear that we even really care (but I'll return to this). So, one cannot help feeling that the outrage shown at the suspicion that one politician might have lied was somewhat “synthetic”. Nonetheless, there is the unspoken, and sometimes spoken, assumption that a democratic politician should never lie. From a philosophical and ethical point of view, is this actually true? Can lying ever be justified in a democracy?

There is a long philosophical tradition of justifying “statecraft” in politics; this broadly divides between a moral defence in terms of the “just lie”, and an amoral defence in terms of the “autonomy of politics”.

Surely in wartime, deception in order to defend a nation's strategic interests is justifiable, and not just deception directed at the enemy. Deceiving the enemy has always played a necessary part in war and many forms (though not all) are regarded as morally permissible. But what about a government that deceives its own citizens, by propaganda, misinformation, and lies? Even “dodgy dossiers” (either “sexed-up” or plagiarised) might be justified in war, but in peacetime?

It has been argued that this may not only be justified, but the morally right thing to do, if the greater good is served by so doing. This moral claim rests upon the assumption that political actions should be judged by exclusively consequentialist considerations. It is into this framework that Short's description of Blair perpetrating an “honourable deception” fits: it is another way of referring to the just lie.

What counts as the greater good is not always clear, but usually this means some national or public interest (not necessarily the same thing). National interests are usually understood as the vital interests of a nation that transcend the interests of its constituent individuals or groups. What these are, in turn, is controversial, with no agreed definition available, but may be the integrity, security, and survival of the state (if construed narrowly), or these and additional interests such as economic prosperity (if construed broadly). Similarly, there is no agreement on what constitutes the public interest, but this seems to refer to the interests of the whole political community rather than an individual, elite, minority, or the state.

So, according to the just lie view, lying would be justified if it were done to secure some national or public interest. Short was intimating that Blair had made a calculation something along these lines: that it was in Britain 's vital interest to stick as closely as possible to the USA , even if this meant going to war with Iraq (and to this end made a secret pact with George Bush to commit British troops come what may). Realising that such a staunch Atlanticist position would not play well with his own party, or with certain sections of the country, he had to present Iraq as a “current” threat to the USA and UK (which also made it more likely to secure the legal basis for the war).

This is pure speculation, of course, but it is not entirely implausible. It also shows the difficulties with the just lie defence; such calculations are always bound to be controversial. Not only must the greater good be served; but in a democracy this should be something that the public would agree was the greater good and, in the case of secret pacts, would agree was the best way of securing those ends if we had known all that the politicians knew. After all, they are supposed to be acting in our name. Just because politicians are our elected representatives does not, by that fact alone, mean that they can take for granted that we would agree with their judgement that the greater good will be served by a particular course of action, or even what the greater good is. It is mere political hubris for them to think otherwise.

So, in a democracy lying is not easily justified by referring to the greater good. Yet, in some cases, it seems it may be necessary. Are politicians engaged in an enterprise that is, by its very nature, a dirty business? Is it that sometimes they just have to make morally dubious decisions: you cannot be a politician without, in Michael Walzer's phrase, “getting your hands dirty”? Some might argue that this is unfair to politicians and that we should not judge their actions by the moral rules that govern the rest of us; that politics is autonomous of morality. The question that then arises is; are the only constraints on political action merely prudential?

Of course, the boundary between the “merely prudential” and the moral is not clear. One apparently merely prudential argument against lying might be that lying, or being seen to lie, does not ensure the health and strength of the state (depending on how broadly we construe this, of course). One reason might be that this may actually undermine the state by weakening the democratic system on which it is founded. It may do this, for example, by making its citizens apathetic and less inclined to participate in the political process at all levels. Indeed, many argue that, in fact, there is a growing disenchantment with politics in the UK precisely because of a perceived failure of our elected representatives to be straight with the electorate: many politicians are not perceived to be even “pretty straight”.

Is this just a prudential reason for democratic politicians not to lie? Not if they are committed to democracy because they believe it is the morally best system of government and not just because they think it best serves the interests of the state. I take it that, for all British politicians, the basis of their allegiance to democracy would be a moral one; that this system, though not perfect, is, with its commitment to egalitarianism and the rule of law, apart from its dynamism in wealth production, best able to promote human flourishing. If this is the case (and I would enjoy watching an elected representative deny it, or something like it), then the restraint on lying and deception is not just a prudential one, but a moral one: as a politician, one should not behave in a way that undermines the morally best system of government.

So, even if the deception by a democratic government of its own citizens may be justified in exceptional circumstances such as war, it is not clear that it can be used as a regular policy or even in justifying going to war. In most cases honourable deceptions are not honourable at all. Politicians have to learn to trust the maturity of their electorate: we are also able to form judgements about what is in the national or public interest. And we need to learn to elect honest politicians. I mentioned earlier how it is not clear that we even really care whether our politicians lie, at least those of us who still bother to vote. Despite all the sound and fury we make on this issue, election results suggest that those politicians perceived to be less than “pretty straight” (even) tend to do better than those regarded as trustworthy or absolutely straight.

As we have seen, it is not always easy to tell who is honest and trustworthy and who is not; but perhaps we should begin by adhering to the old American political dictum; “In God we trust; everyone else must provide evidence.”

 

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Stephen Burwood is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Hull .