Often we at MIM hear an argument that amounts to saying political struggle is useless, because Big Brother spends 11 digit money each year to spy on everyone with everything from satellites to submarines. Arab media said that Uncle $am knew the color of Saddam Hussein's underwear. The "marxists.org"(1) recently said it is possible to track every computer by placing devices "upstream." The point of such arguments is that it is futile to struggle against Big Brother, a.k.a. Uncle $am, so we must join Uncle $am in a political fight by Uncle $am's rules; yet the flap over the weapons of mass destruction shows just how wrong it is to be Liberal about struggle and security.
Ten months before George Bush's mistaken "State of the Union" address citing forged evidence that Iraq supposedly obtained uranium from Niger, the CIA told the Bush administration that the information was false. Separately an ambassador also told the Bush administration the information was bogus. What this means is that even having the right information is no guarantee it will be used. (2)
There were countless other false statements from the Bush administration about the nature and justification of war with Iraq. (3) There was Tony Blair's statement (based on U.$. sources) that Saddam Hussein was ready to launch WMD with 45 minutes notice--something that obviously did not happen.(4)
Little did pro-war and neutral students know that the English government's intelligence dossier justifying the Iraq war came largely from an American student's publicly available paper that was not cited.(5) In MIM Notes 274, we criticized a student taking a typical monarchist line justifying apathy and lack of struggle against the war. The student said: "We base opinions of foreign and domestic policy on the knowledge we receive from a biased media, from our friends’ opinions, and from our professors’ leading questions. Bush bases his opinions on Top Secret intelligence data gathered from multiple sources, national estimates from senior intelligence officials, and advice from experts. If even he does not have a complete picture, ours must be a minuscule piece of the puzzle." It turns out that someone wanted to make a fool of the Bush administration by forging documents about Iraq's nuclear weapons program which Bush used to further his pre-2000 goal of war on Iraq; thus having "Top Secret intelligence" turned out to be a drawback, not an advantage. Merely having the "complete" information does not guarantee its correct use.
Those struggling as the underdog for justice should take note: even if the ruler has all the means of information in his or her hands, there is no guarantee that s/he can use it. In fact, capitalism corrupts all knowledge production ranging from medicines sold for profit to analyses of the effectiveness of weapons systems that the Pentagon buys. As we pointed out in our website FAQ on security: "U.$. imperialism has no chance of being able to afford all the work of sorting out true information from false." For that matter, MIM has also pointed out that collecting information from a source is no guarantee that that source is not emitting information that amounts to a decoy.
The imperialists pursue knowledge that helps them profit individually. As a consequence, the imperialists will never match the proletariat in its abilities in finding the truth. Although the imperialists spend much more money on intelligence than the proletariat does, the imperialists are not able to use what they collect and when they do use what they collect they come into conflict with other imperialists with other property interests and government agendas. For this reason, it is always justified to struggle to make it a little harder for the imperialists to spy on the oppressed and exploited. As we said in our review of the marxists.org website: "The reasons not to surrender are numerous: 1) Raising the cost to the enemy, because even when s/he does espionage correctly it costs him/her. 2) The enemy must sort out true from false once information is obtained. 3) The enemy may not bother."
Notes:
1. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/links/marxistsorg.html
2.http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/iraq030616_uranium.html ; see
also, http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,972651,00.html
3. See for example, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43615-2003Jun11.html
4. See a former CIA director admit this here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,89923,00.html ; see also,
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,89649,00.html
5. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,970035,00.html