On The Nature of Honor

The basic problem with behaving with secrecy, and dishonor, is that anything might be believed, not matter how crazy.

It all reaches to the real nature of honor. Not the honor of the guy who gets the medals and ticker tape parades, the ones most deserving are usually the ones most embarassed by such things, and the ones who most chase it least deserve it. Honor can only be achieved by each individual in service to themselves, even if no one else knows about it.

Such honor is almost never the easy path. The person who speaks out against blockheadedness while everyone else rushes for the Kool-ade has not taken the easy path, and is hardly the traitor to that group. People who have taken what is obviously the hardest path are the most likely to be following their honor, even if you disagree with them.

Honor requires strength of will, but streangth of will, or body, is hardly a measure of honor. If you posses great strength, your honor is most at risk. People will always root for the underdog even if the underdog is the bad guy, there is a reason for this.

There are obviously times that temporary operational secrecy is necessary, but real honor would justify a movie about it. If such a movie about the real story would be an embarassment, then that embarassment is a measure of negative honor, if the movie would be boring honor would not have been much tested.

There is sometimes less honor in secrecy than the truth of dishonor. When the Nixon tapes were released any expletive he used (even "damn") was replaced with "expletive deleated". Everyone who read the transcript automatically assumed the worst expletive they could think of . So it is with any secret if a person suspects that the secret exists (even if it dosen't). Only transparent honor can make such thoughts

Did Neocons order 9/11, The idea seems preposterous on its face, as even the mechanism of doing so would be as likely as Saddam ordering those attacks. But Neocons made much of the need for such an attack to advance their agenda, and they certainly have flogged it at every turn to squeeze the last bit of horror out of it to their advantage.

Would AlQueda benefit from the destruction? Certainly, but like the old days when "Commies" were the enemy Each side feeds upon the other to raise power money and recruits.

It was AlQueda's fondest dream that we would invade Iraq and have benefited greatly by our doing so. But his Mechanism for ordering Bush to invade, or even to persuade Saddam to be sufficiently secretive and dishonorable enough to allow others to say he was planning what he clearly could not do, is a similar stretch.

It is enough that Dishonor and Secrecy are the hallmarks of Right wing thinking, be they fascist or theocrat of any stripe or brand. The secrecy (as opposed to discretion) alone is prima facia case for dishonor, and dishonor when writ so large is reason for enmity from any and all humans who care a whit for even the concept of honor.