Convenient Fictions

Abstract Noun: Do our political leaders still cleave to the Jeffersonian principle that government derives its just powers “from the consent of the governed”? Or do those who now inhabit the upper echelons of the New Zealand state consider themselves beyond the reach of democratic sanction?

THE APPALLING CONDUCT of the Waikato DHB raises broader questions about the robustness of New Zealand’s liberal democracy. Most particularly, it challenges the whole notion that the administrators of New Zealand society remain accountable to the people they administrate. The DHB’s treatment of Dave Macpherson, Jane Stevens and their family; its consistent refusal to accept its responsibility for the avoidable death of their son and brother, Nicky, poses a further question. Do our political leaders still cleave to the Jeffersonian principle that government derives its just powers “from the consent of the governed”? Or do those who now inhabit the upper echelons of the New Zealand state consider themselves beyond the reach of democratic sanction?

Because it’s not only Dave Macpherson and his family who have been on the receiving end of a state apparatus that seems completely unconstrained. Consider the treatment of investigative journalist, Nicky Hager, and the editor of The Daily Blog itself, Martyn Bradbury, at the hands of the New Zealand Police. Recall the efforts of the New Zealand Defence Force to destroy the reputation of New Zealand’s leading war correspondent, Jon Stephenson. The extreme lengths to which the NZDF was prepared to go to undermine Stephenson’s credibility; and the hundreds-of-thousands of taxpayers’ dollars expended in the process; beggars belief.

The situation would appear nowhere near so grim if there was the slightest sign that the election of a progressive coalition government had led to the rapid correction of these abuses. To date, however, there is no sign that anyone in the new regime is seized with an urgent desire to put things right. Has the new Minister of Health instituted a full inquiry into the extraordinary decision-making of the Waikato DHB? Has he been there for Dave and Jane? Is there the slightest evidence that David Clark is committed to making his health administrators accountable to the people they are being paid to serve? Not so far.

It’s the same story with the supposedly independent inquiry into the NZDF’s “Operation Burnham”. What was supposed to be an open and transparent inquiry into allegations of officially undisclosed civilian casualties, has become an exercise in keeping the public at bay. The excuse of “national security” has been accepted by former prime minister, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, and former Solicitor-General, Sir Terrance Arnold, to the point where the possibility of the NZDF being held to public account – let alone charged with breaches of military and civilian law – has diminished to near zero.

The legal and political assumptions on display at the Operation Burnham inquiry bear closer scrutiny. Palmer’s and Arnold’s acceptance of the proposition that national security concerns over-ride the right of New Zealand citizens, in whose name the NZDF supposedly acts, to judge for themselves both the objectives, execution and consequences of military operations, implies the existence of secret set of state protocols from which even the most basic democratic principles have been rigorously excluded. The disturbing inference to be drawn from the rulings of Palmer and Arnold is that National Security and Democracy have very few – if any – areas of overlap.

As above, so below. If those on the lower rungs of the state apparatus are confident that the principles of democracy and accountability are regarded by their masters as convenient fictions, then they are hardly likely to pay them much mind themselves. If the preservation of the secrets of the state’s most daunting institutions is accorded an over-riding priority, then hiding their own failures from close public scrutiny is unlikely to strike them as objectionable. And, if they see the Police and the NZDF engaged in the ruthless pursuit of troublemakers, then why shouldn’t they screw over the likes of Dave Macpherson and Jane Stevens?

The repudiation of democratic accountability at the highest levels of the New Zealand state cannot help but contribute to the dangerous derangement of the moral compasses of its civil servants. Pressures from actors outside the state apparatus: business leaders; public relations firms, lobbyists, bloggers and press gallery journalists; are less and less likely to be resisted. Indeed, it is probable that the distinctions between public and private interests will blur and fade to the point where the only factor worthy of consideration is whether or not the persons or groups seeking the services of the state apparatus are powerful, or powerless.

Dave Macpherson’s treatment by the Waikato DHB is instructive in this regard. Determined to get justice for his son, and for the children of so many other New Zealanders let down by this country’s woeful mental health system, Dave stood for – and won – a seat on the Waikato DHB. Democracy in action, you might think. Unfortunately not. Dave is explicitly excluded from all discussions relating to the death of his son, on the grounds that he has a clear conflict of interest. Not perceived to have any kind of conflict of interest are the persons who are currently pursuing every legal means of overturning the Coroner’s verdict on the death of Nicky Stevens.

So inured has the DHB Board become to its unelected staff calling the shots, that they see nothing unusual or wrong about this state of affairs. Neither does the Minister of Health. Nor the Labour-NZ First-Green Coalition. What’s more, until the governed get up on their hind legs and remind their government that every power it wields, it wields only because they will it; and that they and their servants are accountable to the people – and only to the people; then the slow but steady diminution of citizens’ democratic rights will continue until they become, in reality, the convenient fictions which politicians and administrators have, for the past thirty years, been working so assiduously to make them.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 9 April 2019.

Blowback.

 “Have a care when fighting monsters – lest ye become a monster yourself.” - Friedrich Nietzsche.

 

 

WAS “MONGOOSE” the word that flashed through Bobby Kennedy’s brain when he received the awful news of his brother’s assassination in Dallas? Like JFK, Bobby knew all about the activities of  “Mongoose” – the top-secret CIA operation dedicated to killing the revolutionary Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. Was it possible that the ruthless and criminal tactics sanctioned by “Operation Mongoose” had blown back in the Kennedy brothers’ faces?

 

The temptation to join the dots must have been very strong – especially after it became known that the man identified as President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been an active member of “Hands Off Cuba!”, a political organisation dedicated to keeping the Castro regime safe from US intervention?

 

“Blowback” is the name given to the unintended and often disastrous consequences of officially-sanctioned behaviour which crosses the line separating legitimate public policy from unethical, and, all-too-often, criminal behaviour.

 

Sometimes blowback is spectacular: as when Osama Bin Laden, the man the CIA helped to drive the Soviets from Afghanistan, turned his murderous talents against the USA. More often, however, blowback describes the insidious effects of unethical and/or criminal practices on the integrity of the people and institutions who initially gave them sanction.

 

Nietzsche’s oft-quoted aphorism: “Have a care when fighting monsters – lest ye become a monster yourself.”, sums up the dilemma very nicely.

 

When evil strikes, the temptation to “fight fire with fire” is always very strong. Indeed, to suggest anything less is all-too-easily construed as evidence of insufficient zeal, or, even worse, abject weakness. This impetuous inclination to embrace the monstrous methods of one’s enemies is nowhere more pronounced than in the institutions of national defence and security. And those leading the charge will, invariably, be drawn from the most elite and aggressive “special forces” units.

 

The great danger in these circumstances is that policy-makers begin to confuse tactical weaponry with viable strategy.

 

The whole ethos of the special forces is based upon their self-characterisation as the point of the national security spear. Not for them the ponderous deliberation of the innumerable variables that constitute a sensible and morally defensible foreign policy. A spear, and most especially, the point of a spear, is only useful if your prime purpose is to thrust something deadly into your enemy’s body. It’s usefulness as an instrument for debating and determining durable international relationships is considerably less apparent.

 

Unless, of course, the nation’s political and military leadership can be persuaded that careful deliberation and debate, far from being the solution to the problem of national security, should be counted among its principal causes. When terrorists fly airliners into tall buildings, people don’t want debate – they want action. When politicians are being pressed to exact vengeance upon “evildoers”, their first instinct is not to reach for the compendiums of international law, or to consult the history books. Their over-riding priority is to close their fingers around the hilt of a sword.

 

The only problem, of course, is that, to a sword, every problem looks like an exposed belly, or a vulnerable neck. In the eyes of special forces personnel: their intelligence gatherers and the officers who plan their special operations; the only thing that matters is the mission. If the mission is to defeat terrorism, then anything, or anyone, who gets in the way risks being lumped-in with the terrorists.

 

In the context of a working democracy, this sort of professional tunnel-vision can lead to catastrophe. Independent journalists, for example, investigating in-theatre and asking too many awkward questions, are not seen as symbols of the democratic institutions that soldiers are sworn to protect, but as persons capable of compromising the mission. To “neutralise” these actual or potential enemies, special forces will not hesitate to deploy all the weapons of psychological warfare: misinformation, rumour-mongering, false allegations, fake news.

 

And if a particular operation fails? Or something terrible happens in the course of carrying out that operation? Well then, in order to prevent outsiders from interfering or (worst case scenario) cancelling the mission, it may prove necessary to withhold potentially compromising information from unfriendly eyes. That those “unfriendly eyes” might belong to Members of Parliament, Cabinet Ministers, or even the Prime Minister, matters much less than safeguarding the mission from any and all external “threats”.

 

This is how a “sword” thinks. And, perhaps, it would be unreasonable to expect our sword, The NZ Special Air Service, to think in any other way. What we, as a democratic people, cannot allow, however, is for sword-like thinking to take over the mind of the NZ Defence Force, or to deflect our political representatives from the responsibilities and duties of democratic government.

 

Attacking journalists, suppressing evidence of civilian deaths, misleading the civilian power: such behaviour would confirm the serious moral degeneration of our armed forces. The blowback from that could be devastating.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 28 March 2017.