Oliver North is not a hero. In fact, Oliver North is a coward. He broke the law, then tried to cover up his misdeeds, and finally blamed his transgressions on his superiors. After making so much of his military code of "just following orders," North quickly turned on his commanders and played the innocent scapegoat as his trial defense strategy.
When one breaks the law for reasons of conscience, a crucial component of such principled civil disobedience is a willingness to accept the consequences of one's actions. Oliver North violated the law for reasons of ideology and then did everything possible to hide his actions and shift the blame elsewhere.
A jury convicted North for lying to Congress, destroying evidence, and financially benefiting from his illegal schemes. These are not the marks of a hero or the characteristics of conscientious civil disobedience.
What Oliver North is ultimately guilty of is an utter contempt for democracy. He simply doesn't believe in it. In fact, he is afraid of democracy. North is an anti-communist, not a democrat. And in his anti-communism he acted in complete accord with one of communism's central tenets -- the ends justify the means. He believed, as communist ideologues do, that a small cadre of elite leaders know better than the people and should have the right to act as they see fit, above or apart from the law.
The fact is that Congress voted in 1984 to cut off aid to the contras because public opinion was turning against the Reagan policy in Nicaragua. Yet the covert operators who were running the government refused to accept the public verdict on the contra war. With the encouragement of the president, they became a secret government pledged to sustain the contras at any cost, in complete defiance of the law and the will of the Congress.
The people had spoken through their elected representatives, but the team of zealots didn't care. They were sure of their course, and neither the law nor the will of the people would dissuade them. North was the team captain. He and his superiors treated the Congress with an almost total disrespect. The nation's elected representatives would have to be misled, gotten around, or obstructed if necessary. The zealots would best represent the people, they would now become the government, and they would do it all in secret.
OLIVER NORTH MADE much of his religious faith and faithful church attendance. His anti-communism was not only righteous, it was ordained of God. His was not only a patriotic cause, it was a divine mission.
The problem was that at the heart of the opposition to North's contra war were other Christians. They too were motivated by their faith and believe that ending war is part of the ministry of Christ. They don't believe in Oliver North's anti-communist crusade, nor does North's American deity resemble the God they find in the Bible, in the world, and in their lives.
But in a democracy, theological argument doesn't decide public policy; persuading other citizens does. Many Christians across the country worked very hard to turn public opinion against the contra war. They ultimately succeeded. But North wouldn't accept the result. He and his allies weren't content to carry on the political battle out in the open. They resorted to secrecy and the covert abuse of political power to serve their ideological goals.
That's wrong, it's undemocratic, and it's illegal. Principled and public civil disobedience is a moral alternative to the acceptance of majority opinion. The illegal manipulation of state power is not.
FOR OLIVER NORTH and his co-conspirators, democracy is only a word to be used when and where convenient to advance their political plans. In one sense, North is now a scapegoat. His trial and the ones to follow are not designed to get to the heart of the matter. Not the Tower Commission, nor the Iran-contra hearings in Congress, nor the subsequent legal proceedings, and, least of all, the media's reporting of these many events have served to cut through the layers of lies and subterfuge.
A secret substructure of government has grown like a cancer in the American political system. It is protected by the ideology of "national security" and it runs by covert action, almost completely immune to public accountability. At times, it has all but taken over American foreign policy, as it did in this recent instance.
Most of the story of the Iran-contra scandal has yet to be told, and may never be. The most crucial parts have been covered up. The fundamental flaws in the system it revealed have not been corrected. Nothing has really changed. For the most part, the media is no longer interested and has moved on to other stories.
Ultimately, the real cover-up has succeeded. And men such as Oliver North will still flourish in the clandestine world of covert government. They are not the heroes they claim to be. They are the most dangerous threats to democracy among us. The only threat more dangerous is our passive acceptance of the secret manipulations of political power, which makes their schemes possible.
We will either decide to trust democracy or not. If we choose to rely on undemocratic means to achieve secret objectives, we will deserve what we get. But if we carefully respect and patiently nurture the tender plant of democracy, our social life will blossom in the light of day instead of withering in political darkness.
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