Post War America

WMDs And The Psychology Of Fanaticism
Filed June 18, 2003
By all accounts, the behind-the-scenes battle within the Bush administration over just what information should be used, or spun, or hidden, to make the case that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to America and the rest of the world was a knockdown, drag-out fight between the facts and a zealous, highly politicized, "who needs proof?" mindset. And, at the end of the day, the truth was left writhing on the floor.

Hey, why let the facts get in the way of a perfectly good war?

This pathological pattern of disregarding inconvenient reality is not just troubling -- it's deadly. And it's threatening to drag us into a Sisyphean struggle against evildoers in Syria, Iran, North Korea, or whatever locale Karl Rove thinks would best advance "Operation Avoid 41's Fate."

Since I'm not a psychiatrist, I consulted the work of various experts in the field in order to get a better understanding of the fanatical mindset that is driving the Bush administration's agenda -- and scaring the living daylights out of a growing number of observers.

Dr. Norman Doidge, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, has identified among the telltale symptoms of fanatics: an intolerance of dissent, a doctrine that is riddled with contradictions, the belief that one's cause has been blessed or even commanded by God, and the use of reinforcement techniques such as repetition to spread one's message.

Sound like anyone you know? George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle... come on down!

According to Doidge, one of the essential features of fanatics is their certainty that not only is their cause good "but that it is the only good, an absolute good." Or as President Bush famously declared: "There is no in-between, as far as I'm concerned. Either you're with us, or you're against us."

This absolute intolerance of dissent, says Doidge, often extends beyond the fanatics’ enemies -- frequently leading to a "campaign of terror" against those within their own ranks. If you're wondering what this has to do with the Bush administration, you might want to give a call to Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and George Voinovich.

After having the temerity to question the wisdom of the president's massive tax cut plan, the senatorial pair became the targets of withering TV attack ads, sponsored by allies of the White House, that portrayed them as "so-called Republicans" and compared their opposition to the latest round of tax cuts to France's opposition to the war in Iraq. It was a Night of the Long Knives, GOP-style.

Another crucial element of a fanatic's faith, according to Professor Dixon Sutherland, who teaches religion at Stetson University, is that he "sees himself as acting for God... You have a circular logic that is very powerful that combines God’s authority -- through the Bible -- with a messenger who carries out that authority."

Tom DeLay, for example, saw the 2000 election as a choice between a "biblical worldview" and the worldview of "humanism, materialism, sexism, naturalism, post-modernism or any of the other -isms." And the Republican Party, of course, represented the biblical worldview, God and all things good.

Gustav le Bon, a social scientist known for his crowd psychology theories, has stressed the importance of repetition as a weapon in the fanatic's arsenal. Repetition breeds blind acceptance and contagion.

"Ideas, sentiments, emotions and beliefs," writes le Bon, "possess in crowds a contagious power as intense as that of microbes." As James Moore, co-author of "Bush’s Brain," says, "If the president says it over and over enough, people will believe it, just as Karl Rove got him to say over and over that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11."

The technique was so successful that a poll taken by the Pew Center in 2002 showed that 66 percent of Americans believed that Hussein and bin Laden were both behind the attacks. In the words of that giant banner that Rove had placed behind the president following his Top Gun landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln: "Mission Accomplished."

Wonder why the WMD are MIA? The answer may lie in the DSM -- the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I know it can sound a bit cheap to call people you disagree with nuts, which is why I refer you to the psychiatric literature. And keep an open mind, something the Bushies stopped doing a long time ago.


http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/files/061803.html

 

I just can't see how the american people will re elect this guy in 2004. The economy could still be in a mess, unemployment could be much higher than it is now, the housing bubble could burst, the post war Iraq work could still be ongoing, etc.

Has anyone ever been re elected in which during the 4 years they served in office, the economy got dramatically worst as the years went by? It seems like a fantasy world.

We've got 150,000 troops in Iraq, and yet there's been no persuasive evidence showing that we needed to go in there in the first place! Now we're going to Liberia? Most americans had never even heard of liberia before this latest conflict. I bet not 5 in a 100 could find it on a world map. Yet, we're sending our troops there?

Peoples attention spans are getting shorter and shorter in this country. Everything from abbrevreated names like Jennifer Lopez to J LO, to PDA's, PC's and DVD's. The words people use are getting shorter. Change is happening much more rapidly than it use to. And we're suppose to wait for years and years and years in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to get the job done?

Let's crush al qeada, stabilize Iraq and get our troops out of as many foreign countries as possible. Why do we still have troops in germany of all places? Can't they defend themselves?

 

The sentences don't look exactly right, but I suppose that, over the number of times that Bush repeated that formulation, he may have used exactly those words. They were intended, of course, for terrorist-supporting regimes, were first uttered in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and were strongly supported by the vast majority of the American people. In my opinion the misuse of that quotation (in boldface) as a supposed illustration of Bush's overall approach to politics - indeed, as an illustration of his supposed psychopathology - exposes that entire article for what it really is.

No doubt the writer of the article, and the individual who c&p-d it here, would have been shocked and dismayed after 9/11 by any suggestions that they were in favor of appeasing, compromising with, or surrendering to terrorists and terrorist-supporters.

 

I defy you to find a single instance (much less repeated instances) of Bush claiming that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11.

 

Rather than "spin" the article, I think it speaks for itself.

When it comes to psychology, it is hard to discern truth from fiction.

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh yesterday, and he was commenting on the psychological status of "liberals" as being those who seek the shelter of groups as they are essentially losers in life, and have the need of the group to give them identity.

Psychological theories are broad enough that they can be cut to fit almost any group of people. You could easily take the same theory and apply it to ditto heads.

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I have no problem with Bush directing his "us or the terrorist" comments. Clearly they are the enemy.

However, when the spinmeisters and hatchetmen/women like Coulter and Limbaugh suggest that anyone who doesn't agree with Bush's methodologies or ideologies on how to solve the problems are unpatriotic or guilty of treason....that is where I take issue.

These tactics, while effective, are purely unAmerican.

 

Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments:
Gen. says White House pushed Saddam link without evidence

Sunday morning talk shows like ABC's This Week or Fox News Sunday often make news for days afterward. Since prominent government officials dominate the guest lists of the programs, it is not unusual for the Monday editions of major newspapers to report on interviews done by the Sunday chat shows.

But the June 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press was unusual for the buzz that it didn't generate. Former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a campaign to implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks-- starting that very day. Clark said that he'd been called on September 11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because of a lack of evidence.

Here is a transcript of the exchange:

CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."

RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"

CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence."

Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin reported: "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." According to CBS, a Pentagon aide's notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL." (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration's response "go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not."