Deception is a funny business.
It always seems to bite you when you least expect it, then again maybe you should have seen it coming.
The WikiLeaks saga continues to drone on and people are left with tid-bits of the U.S. government behind the scenes. Cables from around the world reveal a global situation that is anything but neat and orderly.
This scenario reminds me of the book I recently finished, The War Within, by Bob Woodward. The book reveals what it was like in the executive branch during the final years of President Bush’s tenure in office.
More specifically the text hones in on the trials and tribulations of the Iraq war and the decisions that went into producing this very unpopular war.
It reveals a team of characters who were clearly not on the same page and who did not seem to trust one another with the information they exchanged. They were distant figures who worked in the same offices.
Personalities clashed and pettiness was allowed to disrupt the flow of information.
In front of the media, the people could see that the war was a mess, but behind the scenes things seemed to be just as messy.
So with the recent uproar over the WikiLeaks scandal the question remains whether we really learned anything.
These cables reveal that our diplomats are engaged in very frank talk, talk that does not always portray them as saints.
They are shown to be imperfect characters who have true feelings about how things are run by governments despite what the public may have been told.
We have seen what deception looks like, especially if you have read any of Woodward’s books, but yet again we revere it as so unfamiliar. We are blown away by our government’s ability to keep secrets.
And our government is yet again surprised by its own inability to keep its secrets.
That’s that funny thing about deception, we are amazed when we realize what is going on, but then again we never learn from the mistakes of those who came before us.
History repeats itself, and our government is no exception to that rule apparently.