If there was ever any doubt that President George W. Bush is apsychopath, his speech to the nation last night announcing anincrease of over 20,000 American troops in Iraq should have quelledthem.
According to the current psychiactric and psychoanalytic theory (andto my late mother, a psychotherapist of forty years who treated hershare of disturbed people and pegged Bush as a psychopath during the2000 election campaign), a psychopath or sociopath--the terms arepractically interchangeable--exhibits behavior that reflects a lackof empathy or conscience, poor control of his impulses, and ismanipulative of others around them. He or she has no concerns for thefeelings of others and a complete disregard for any sense of socialobligation. Not surprisingly, then, someone with this illness isegocentric, lack insight and any sense of responsibility orconsequence. Finally, their emotions are thought to be superficialand shallow.
Is there a more accurate description of our President?
He invaded Iraq impulsively, and lied and manipulated the Americanpeople and our political institutions to make it happen. He hasdemonstrated no empathy with the thousands of dead and tens ofthousands of injured American soldiers, and more so for the hundredsof thousands of Iraqis who have died because of the invasion and USoccupation. He has no regard for the desires of others-in this casethe American people, who have clearly let it be known that they wantthe troops brought home, not sent to Iraq in even greater numbers,and more specifically to the Iraq Study Group, which clearly advisedagainst such a path, particularly one involving only a relativelysmall increase in troop strength. His egocentrism, as Paul Krugman ofthe NY Times points out, is so great he cannot bring himself to admitthe mistakes behind the war, and he has refused to takeresponsibility for the consequences of the disastrous occupation.
President Bush also lied, as the NY Times reveals, when he said thatthe Iraqi Government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Malaki, is behind theplan. In fact, the Iraqis are quite wary of it.
In proposing such a relatively small increase, the President isacting with callous irresponsible disregard for the soldiers underhis command and their families as well. In short, the President isdemonstrating a total disregard for his social and politicalobligations as President.
The distortions continue. Mr. Bush also says that his new effort willsucceed where past ones failed because in the past the US didn't haveenough troops to hold areas once they were cleared of insurgents. Buthe doesn't mention what we all know; that he was advised from themoment our troops arrived in Iraq that this is precisely what wouldhappen if he didn't put a lot more troops on the ground. He didn'tput them there because he didn't care enough about Iraq, or Americansoldiers to do anything that would jeopardize his delusional plan todestroy and then recreate the Middle East in the neocon's image.
What's more, he blatantly misrepresents the facts in claiming that"radical Islamic extremists" are the main group involved in"creat[ing] chaos in the region." Sadly, the United States is themain force behind the chaos in Iraq, which has been specificallygenerated as a way to advance US policy objectives of more or lesspermanent--in Bush speak, "generational"--war, in which the best andindeed only answer to losing one war is to expand the war-front evenfurther, until the stakes are so high and the violence spread so widethat World War Three becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and theAmerican people have no choice but to fight till the bitter end,which as Bush warns us, will not come for decades and in a form westill cannot imagine.
The President's speech also mentions new efforts aimed towardsincreasing economic development and reconstruction. But he doesn'tmention that the entire system of US-sponsored economic developmentand reconstruction in Iraq is rotten to the core and has been sincethe day we arrived. It cannot be fixed because it was never meant tohelp Iraqis, but rather enrich Bush Administration corporate sponsorsand supporters. More money will only mean more money to the thieveswho destroyed Iraq in the first place, which is exactly the BushAdministration's intentions, yesterday, today and tomorrow in Iraq.
But by far the most dangerous predilection laid bare by the speechlast night was the President's ongoing propensity for large scaleviolence. In the last week this has been most clearly demonstrated byUS attacks on Somalia, which our military refuses to provide detailsabout other than to claim it's all about stopping al-Qa'eda frommaking Somalia a base of operations (as if that strategy has workedin Iraq). Even more frightening, as William Arkin points out in theWashington Post, n his speech Bush specifically threatened to attack Syria and Iran,again in complete contradiction of the Iraq Study Group and thewishes of the American people. And again, his threats are based onlies-that Iran and Syria are involved significantly in smugglingweapons into Iraq (the Brits have been searching for smugglers alongthe Iran-Iraq border for months if not years and have found verylittle evidence of any organized, government sponsored activities),and it is well know that Syria has been cooperating with the US interms of intelligence about al-Qa'eda in and outside Iraq.
Given this reality, the President's ability to look squarely at theAmerican people--indeed, the world--and claim that America is thebest hope for the " millions of ordinary people... from Afghanistanto Lebanon to the Palestinian Territories... [who] are sick of theviolence," demonstrates one of the most important traits of a psychoor sociopath, the ability to lie pathologically, without a hint ofconscience, or of guilt or remorse at the consequences of these lies.
But what of the American people? Why are the vast majority ofcitizens, including those who voted the Republicans out of bothhouses of Congress, and including the Democratic legislators whom wechose to replace them with, sitting by and allowing this to happen?Sure, there will be a "symbolic" vote against further deployments,but nothing will be done actually to stop the President. Instead, asthe editor in chief of one of the major inside the beltwaypublications explained to me yesterday, the Democrats are perfectlyhappy to sit back and let Bush bleed America dry in order to avoidbeing blamed for losing Iraq in 2008. They, and the American peoplewho are doing nothing to stop them, will let thousands of more troopsdie, wars spread to ever more countries, all to achieve the greatestpolitical capital for use in the next presidential election.
Behind this calculus is the the belief that the more Americansoldiers that die in the next two years and the more of our taxdollars that disappear, the greater the chance that Americans willvote for the Democratic ticket come November 2008 because they willblame the President. This may be true, but it is a spineless andimmoral truth that thoroughly blemishes a Democratic Party alreadyblackened with guilt for its enabling of the invasion to begin with,not to mention the wholesale war on America's most basic libertiesand Freedoms in the last six years.
The American people are ultimately, and now primarily, responsible forthis reality, and we seem not to care nearly enough to do somethingto fight it.
The President did say one thing right last night: "The challengeplaying out across the broader Middle East is more than a militaryconflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On oneside are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the otherside are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared theirintention to destroy our way of life."
Does President Bush realize which side he is on? Do we realize whichside America has joined?