trying to grok

PANDORA

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -- if all records told the same tale -- then the lie pased into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple.

I put a pencil mark next to this 1984 passage the other day because of it's frightening impact on me. And today Amritas points me in the direction of a post entitled Pandora's Box. A.E. Brain found out that the Library of Congress keeps certain blog entries about the Iraq war for posterity. His curiosity piqued, Brain checked out the Australian equivalent.

So I did a search on "Iraq & Saddam". The results, frankly, astonished me. A result worthy of the Ministry of Truth.

Of the 4638 hits, I reviewed the first 1000. Of these, approximately 300+ were political anyalysis and commentary. Of that 300+, I found 2 that were neutral, neither pro- nor anti- war, but dispassionate analysis of alternatives. The rest were all anti-Bush, anti-War, anti-American.

I'm willing to admit that there are plausible arguments against the Iraq War. But if future Historians primary sources are so selectively filtered, leaving the inescapable impression that there was absolutely no pro-War support whatsoever... then that's re-writing history by omission. Whether the war was right or wrong is arguable. Or arguably arguable. That editorial articles exist in support of it is not a matter of opinion, but of fact.

We're twenty years late but we're well on our way, Orwell.

Posted by Sarah at March 24, 2004 08:02 PM