know him as the altruistic clubbing
founding father and I also know that
many of you know him as a British trader
in fact and a huge military failure and
that shining image of Washington that we
all see today a results of centuries of
idealized whitewashed history and while
that is arguably true there was also a
deception campaign at his time to
idealize him to lie about his failures
and so when is it okay for our leaders
to lie to us to lie to their public or
is it even okay and before we go any
deeper into this topic of truth and
lying I think it’s important to define a
few key terms lying as defined in why
leaders lie is really a sub term of the
word deception the other two key terms
being spinning and concealment spinning
is simply shining a certain light on a
particular issue manipulating diction
twisting facts concealment is fairly
self-explanatory concealing certain key
facts that would otherwise reveal a
whole or truth and the two of these
forms a deception I’ve really become
accepted into society I’ve become
integral in our court systems our
resumes our job interviews or simply
telling a good story but lying is a
little different because unlike the
other two there is absolutely no truth
in a lie and the book had broken it down
even further into selfish lies lies that
benefit in individual and strategic lies
lies that benefit an entire nation or in
some cases world and when I talk about
strategic lies I’m it’s strictly
international politics
and so within strategic lies or
interstate lies where a leader will lie
to another leader or foreign audience
and domestic lies where the leader will
I to his own people or international
issues and to put international lying
and to scale into perspective of a
leader imagine if you were the leader of
the United States and say your national
security was threatened by no other than
Kim Jong hoon it’s plausible right would
you lie to him for your citizens the
protection of their citizens or better
question would you lie to your own
citizens for their safety for your
democracy and the answer is obviously
subjective and usually far less extreme
but the point is is that so many times
we the public only see the lie that the
leaders present that we don’t see the
all the darkness all the truth behind
the lie the reasoning one of the most
famous interstate lies or a leader
bolide to another reader occurred during
the peak of the Cold War for a while now
the u.s. we’ve had our Jupiter missiles
in Turkey pointed at the Soviets and
just recently the Soviets put their own
missiles in Turkey but I mean Cuba
that’s starting the cuban missile crisis
and the deal went that the US and the
Soviets would remove our respective
missiles from our respective countries
fair right but it really gave the US the
edge what made us come out ahead rested
on two key lies one Kennedy he had
always wanted to remove the missiles
from Turkey even before the crisis but
wisely lied about that fact giving us
the leverage needed to conduct the deal
and to Kennedy and the US we denied
removing our missiles from Turkey
altogether you lied to you
up and the entire international
community including our own citizens and
this was obviously not out of
selfishness or corruption it was
preserving our nationalism weakening the
nationalism of the Soviets providing
some mass panic I’m maintaining our
alliance with Western Europe and so we
can all see the huge benefits of
Interstate line and how crucial it
really is to a nation survival now on
the other side of the spectrum we have
domestic line where a leader will lie to
his own people and this certainly has
its benefits as well but there are often
far more drawbacks in the Iraq war the
two key reasons for going was one Saddam
Hussein was the ruthless dictator of
Iraq that and controlled a huge
percentage of the world’s oil and the
thinking was was that if we couldn’t do
business with him he in a way is
obstructing our capitalism and two if we
could remove him from power we could
start our own democracy there we could
have a powerful ally in this region of
constant turmoil and hopefully bring
peace in the world but in any case the
American public didn’t want to go to war
I was extremely expensive it was very
far away and people didn’t feel the
dangers he posed in our everyday lives
and so the Bush administration they lied
to us he said Saddam Hussein possessed
weapons of mass destruction which we
know now to be false and also was linked
to the 911 attacks that he was harboring
Osama bin Laden which we know to be
false up today as well he did get the
war he wanted unfortunately didn’t end
the way he wanted and since
and bush and the rack war has often been
linked to corruption and selfishness and
while many argue that if he had been
more transparent with his actions we
would have avoided this entire mess we
would have saved hundreds of lives and
years of spending but at the same time
he was the leader that we chose that
knew these issues the best and who knows
what the consequences would have been if
we hadn’t gone to war if he hadn’t lied
to us because many historians argue that
we wouldn’t even be a nation if our
leaders hadn’t lied to us that if George
Washington hadn’t created this image of
him people would never have trusted his
leadership during the revolution people
needed to have faith in his judgment and
so we can kind of see here that the
result of the lie really defines how we
see the lie because no one really talks
about how Washington created that image
of himself and so this reintroduces the
question of when is it okay for leaders
to lie because I do think that a leaders
should be held accountable for their
actions that they know are the issues
the best and they should inform us but
most of the time that’s simply not
possible and so if we as citizens don’t
seek that truth then we must accept a
leader that is willing to lie that
understands the darkness and can make it
clearer than truth for the rest of us
thank you [Applause]