You can shake a hand in public, yet plan subterfuge and assassination in private.
Shakespeare had Hamlet write this revelation down immediately upon his tablets: “That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
At least we’re sure it may be so in the Middle East.
It has to be the ultimate in open government, transparency and freedom of information.
All democracies preach it, yet still they seek to control precisely what should be made available to the people.
This is understandable.
Official secrets in the wrong hands imperil lives and compromise national security.
But there is no harm at all in discovering that President Barack Obama ‘prefers to look East rather than West’, and ‘has no feelings for Europe’; that he critical of David Cameron; that the US spies on the UN; that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il suffers from epilepsy; that Russia has become a ‘virtual mafia state’; that Libyan leader Colonel Gaddhafi's full-time nurse is a ‘hot blond’; that Germany’s Chancellor is referred to as Angela ‘Teflon’ Merkel; or that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is ‘driven by paranoia’.
Such things constitute political trivial pursuits: they were always widely suspected; now that they are common knowledge, nothing will change.
It is, however, surprising that Alan Duncan is the subject of an intelligence dossier and that he even features on US radar.
The release of several hundred thousand classified cables from the US State Department is embarrassing for politicians and diplomats, but it is all very entertaining for everyone else.Except, perhaps, for Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, who is probably himself now a target for assassination.
But it’s very difficult to see what all the fuss is about.
Anyone with an ounce of psychological discernment or insight knows that nasty things are said behind one’s back, and that politicians are particularly predisposed to dissing their colleagues and counterparts.
But what is rather more interesting is that Arab nations – including the Wahhabi King Abdulla of Saudi Arabia – have been urging the US to attack Iran and end its nuclear weapons programme:
Al-Jubeir recalled the King's frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. "He told you to cut off the head of the snake," he recalled to the Charge', adding that working with the US to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq is a strategic priority for the King and his government.Perhaps, again, it ought to come as no surprise to us that Sunni Muslims are seeking to wipe their Shi’a cousins off the map.
King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain has also argued forcefully for taking action to terminate Iran's nuclear programme: '...by whatever means necessary. That programme must be stopped. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.’
Zeid Rifai, then president of the Jordanian senate, told a senior US official: ‘Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb. Sanctions, carrots, incentives won't matter.’
But it gets even more interesting to learn that Yemeni government has been involved in the systematic cover-up of US strikes on al-Qaeda strongholds. Yemen is split virtually 50/50 Sunni/Shi’a, and they clearly do not see al-Qaeda as the route to the worldwide caliphate. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told Gen David Petraeus, then commander of US forces in the Middle East: "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours."
So it’s not all some evil US-Jewish-Zionist plot to humiliate Islam and eradicate Allah.
Indeed, there is Arab-Israeli consensus that neither wishes to be blown to kingdom come in a puff of Iranian nuclear smoke: Israel’s Ehud Barak ("Fate of world rests on stopping Iran") clearly sings the same acrostic psalm as King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia ("cut off the head of the snake").
Bombing Iranian nuclear facilities has hitherto been viewed by Muslims of all shades as a desperate last resort of the ‘crusading Christians’ to prevent Islam rising to challenge Western hegemony.
But these communications don’t leave much wriggle room.
They reveal the manifest contradictions between a state’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors: foreign policy is not what it seems, and no amount of openness, transparency or FOI requests will bring to light what is taking place in the darkness.
We have long known that politicians may be ‘economical with the truth’, but on the matter of the Middle East we discover a plethora of bare-faced lies that make Tony Blair’s ‘sexed-up’ dossier on Iraq look like a picnic in the park.
His Grace is not disposed to conspiracies or to believe in secret plots.
But Wikileaks is a whistleblower’s website, and they appear to have an awful lot of whistles to blow. As these revelations reverberate around the world, it is evident that they serve a purpose.
It is worth considering what and whose.
