The Wolf that Cried Boy

- By Jim Hicks

I have something of a rule of thumb when it comes to writing about political issues. If it’s a matter where we only need to listen to historians, political theorists and strategists, or even philosophers, I’d best stay out of it. Not that the magazine itself should: At the Massachusetts Review, “A Quarterly of Literature, the Arts, and Public Affairs,” we take the last term in our self-definition seriously. Here I’m just speaking for myself. I’ve spent a good deal of time in recent years crafting arguments about how the tools of reading—the usual stuff, very familiar to folks who’ve spent serious time in literary study—may actually have, not only practical value, but at times policy implications. Knowing something about narrative, in some instances, simply helps us know what to do.

Today I’ve been wondering if Obama needs to reread Aesop. Actually, let me serve that up with an extra twist. I actually think Obama needs to reread Aesop while standing on his head. If he did, perhaps then he’d understand more fully the opposition to his plans for military intervention in Syria.

Here’s the fable, in George Fyler Townsend’s translation, first published in 1867:

“A Shepherd-boy, who watched a flock of sheep near a village, brought out the villagers three or four times by crying out, 'Wolf! Wolf!' and when his neighbors came to help him, laughed at them for their pains. The Wolf, however, did truly come at last. The Shepherd-boy, now really alarmed, shouted in an agony of terror: 'Pray, do come and help me; the Wolf is killing the sheep'; but no one paid any heed to his cries, nor rendered any assistance. The Wolf, having no cause of fear, at his leisure lacerated or destroyed the whole flock.

There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth.”

So what part of Aesop doesn’t our Commander-in-Chief understand? If you’ve been following the news, you know that he’s gotten the fabulist’s main message. Obama’s self-vaunted multilateralism, his repeated references to the fiasco of Iraq, his careful and very visible campaign of public and diplomatic suasion: all of this shows he knows something of what he’s up against.

The problem is that, for much of the world, history—and not only recent history, I’m talking gunboat diplomacy, Cold War proxy wars, Monroe Doctrine here—has cast the characters of this tale differently. In short, if Obama can’t read this tale upside down, then he just doesn’t get it.

It’s rather simple, actually. If one day the Wolf began to cry, “Save the Children! Save the Children!,” who would ever pay heed to his cries? One need not, of course, assume that the US President, or even the US itself, is truly or inevitably a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But who would deny that much of the world sees things that way? In a discussion of this point, another of our editors commented, “Obama—the alleged master of narrative, if you think back to his campaigns—doesn't fully understand the power of the narrative that's narrating him (and by extension us).”

So what then? After such history, what resolution? Here I skirt the limits of whatever expertise I’ve gained over the years. After all, Syria is no fable. The slaughter is real, the horror of chemical weapons is unparalleled, and children must be saved. We have to hope, at the very least, that the debate now opened in our global commons will advance the cause of humanity in its desperate quest to master its own capacity for producing technological horror. Obama has helped in this cause. His decision to return to Congress its constitutional power in such decisions is essential; should he indeed opt to follow their decision, even if it opposes his own stated position, he will go down in my book as a true leader. A hero. 

At this crossroads moment in history, narratives a-plenty are in the air. My brilliant early reader noted an eerie similarity between the present debate about military intervention and “stand your ground” legislation—so prevalent, and so abhorrent, in US jurisprudence today. He noted that “Obama hates ‘stand your ground’—except when he doesn't, except when it returns in a redoubled and distorted manner as geopolitics.” We’ve also heard from many quarters, and most loudly from Russia, that the Syrian opposition may well have used chemical weapons to slaughter its own, in order to force a US-led intervention on its behalf. (Here’s how this tale can be spun: Haven’t we heard that Islamists—you know, jihadis—are a major force in that opposition? And when if ever have terrorists hesitated to attack civilians? And why would Assad use such tactics when he was winning without them, with UN inspectors practically within earshot?) Is this not a plausible narrative? But on the other hand, who among us with any sense of history would suggest that there are limits to the arrogance and ruthlessness of a dictator? We must remember that the last to use chemical weapons first did so when he was our ally; he then went on to use them again, in order to crush a rebellion of his own. And what level of credibility should one give to Russian stories, anyway?

At this crossroads, in short, there is no scarcity of wolves. No doubt our history is told with stories, and it certainly does have, as T.S. Eliot once wrote, “many cunning passages, contrived corridors / And issues.” So where is the way out? I see only one possible thread: a rather unpopular position within the world of theory that I tend to frequent too often.  Simply put, I think we all need to see all the evidence there is—and make all of it available, across the whole of the global commons. We need to leave the fictions behind, and simply publish the truth. The whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Obama needs to take a lesson from Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Joe Darby.

I fully realize that, to both friends and opponents, such a conclusion may well seem naïve, even foolish: at best a hail-mary pass, and hardly the moral to this story. So be it. After all, as I hope to have made clear, I live in the republic of letters, and, in my world, ipse dixit still carries some serious clout. My advice, of course, is not mine alone:

“And though all the windes of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licencing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worst, in a free and open encounter.”

     John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)