War Stories
By Carne Ross
Published in the Financial Times, 28 January 2005
Nearly two years after the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, the world remains polarised over the war. Supporters thought the war necessary, while many opponents believe a false case was deliberately manufactured for it.
This allegation has been reinforced by the discovery of a putative intellectual justification for such deceit, the idea of the “noble lie”propagated by the late University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss, one of the strongest intellectual influences on the neo-conservatives. According to Strauss, elites in liberal societies must sometimes create “myths”to hold those societies together, for fear that they would otherwise collapse through selfishness and individualism.
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