Why Iraq? Why
Now?
a Psychiatrist's Point of View
Dr Joel Brence M.D., Board Certified Psychiatrist
The question many people are asking themselves is: why Iraq and why now?
Bush has not been clear as to why we are preparing to fight. Sometimes
his
aim appears to be disarming the Iraqis or punishing Baghdad for defying
the
UN; sometimes the goal is nothing short of deposing Saddam Hussein.
In psychiatry, when someone tries to justify an action by giving now this
reason, now that one, we say that such an action is.; "overdetermined."
And what that usually means is that none of the ostensible reasons that
are
given is the real reason. So if people are having a hard time explaining
why
Iraq and why now, it is probably because the real reasons for our going
to
war are irrational.
As to the "why now", it seems to me that Bush like a lot of people was
very
angry about what happened 9/11..; That's understandable.
But what's
irrational about it is that we should be taking our anger out on
Iraq where
no clear connection to the events of 9/11 can be established.
The circumstantial evidence thus far presented would never convict in a
court
of law. The anger should be directed at those who masterminded 9/11;
but since we don't even know where they are, it is wrong, morally wrong,
to simply displace this 9/11 anger toward Saddam Hussein, despicable
tyrant though he is. It's like kicking the dog for being busted
at work.
It almost seems as though, since we cannot find the real target of
our anger,
then why not take it out on Saddam Hussein?. After all, we do know
where he
is, or at least his general vicinity--even though we may have to wade through
a pool of innocent civilian blood to get at him.
As to Saddam Hussein, the irrational reason for Bush's irritation with
him
may have something to do with his oft publicized statement: "That man tried
to kill my Dad." Although this has been bandied about a lot, no one has
pointed out the secret subtext for this statement, which is: " No one can
kill my father except me," that is no one can surpass Bush Senior by going
beyond what he was able to accomplish except Bush Junior, who can thereby
prove that he is more powerful than his father. Power is the name of the
game
that is being acted out here. But this same need to surpass the father
also
applies to Bush's pre-emptive doctrine of war, according to which anyone
trying to rival our super-power status will be treated as a de facto enemy
to
be eliminated.
This is Freud's notorious Oedipus complex recast in the guise of Realpolitik.
If you want the Great Mother and her cookie of world domination, you've
got
to be ready to kill for it. The real tragedy of this particular Oedipal
drama is
that it is being enacted not in the discreet context of Bush's own family
but on
the international stage, in the theater of real war and real bloodshed,
and it's
making the one superpower behave, for all the world to see, like a disturbed
adolescent who is angry because he can't get his way--precisely at a time
when
what the world needs from us is real leadership, not the posturing behavior
of
some neighborhood bully who needs to prove to all the other kids that he's
the toughest kid on the block.
Bush has admitted to abusing alcohol for a good portion of his young adult
life until his "born-again" experience. As members of the AA community
can
testify, very often a person's emotional development is arrested at that
age
when the alcohol abuse began. And even though religious conversions
may
foster the adoption of more mature behaviors, it doesn't take much for
the
older more primitive forms of emotional behavior to re-surface under stress.
This seems to be the case with Mr. Bush. Like many of us, our President
has
become more paranoid as a result of the stressful event of 9/11.
What we observe in dealing with paranoia in psychiatry is that paranoid
people
tend to make other people angry at them and actually do develop more
enemies
than the general population as a result of their 'attitude" in kind of
negative feedback
loop or self-fulfilling prophecy. So perhaps it is not surprising
that we are making
more enemies than friends as a result of 9/11--and not just among those
who have
long harbored ill will towards us, but among our allies as well.
In order for us to
get out of this quandary, it is important for us not to wallow in victimhood
and blame,
but to become aware of the kind of energy we are radiating to the rest
of the world
--a disturbed adolescent energy which could elicit just the kind of negative
response
we have been getting from all quarters of the globe. Diatribes about
an impending war
between good and evil are not helpful here; only an emotionally mature
president who
has come to terms with his own shadow side would be able to help us get
back on track.
Bush is not aware of how his own power-driven shadow has gotten into the
mix and
actually made more of a mess of things than they already were. He
has split himself off
from this shadow side, projecting it "hook-line-and-sinker" onto the enemy.
Granted
that enemies like Saddam do provide a real target for much of this projection,
Bush must
own up to a portion of it himself.
An example of such a shadow projection at work was his quip during the
last State of the
Union address, when he said that three thousand suspected terrorists had
been arrested,
"And many others have met a different fate." He went on, "Let's put it
this way: they are
no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."
Compare this bravado with what John F. Burns of the New York Times and
Hendrik
Hertzberg of the New Yorker have pointed out is one of Saddam Hussein's
favorite maxims:
"If there is a person, then there is a problem. If there is no person,
then there is no problem.".
If Bush would take a good look in the mirror, he would see a quaint resemblance
to Saddam's
own way of wheeling and dealing--dead or alive, the UN be damned, full
steam ahead.
This is precisely where the lust for power, or super-power status ends
up: like Saddam Hussein,
alone and isolated in an internationally besieged pariah state. Bush
can spot this lust for power
so well in Saddam because he has it within himself, and he is well on his
way to making
of the U.S. just such a state as Saddam might have wished for himself.
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was asked after the end of the Second
World War what our
chances of survival were. He said it all depended on whether
there were enough people who
were willing to come to terms with the opposites within. If there
were enough, we would
survive the worst. If there were not, then our civilization would
perish like many another has
perished since the dawn of time.
We cannot count on George W. Bush to do this work. He has so far
proven that he does not
have the emotional courage to face the enemy within--it's much easier to
split it off, projecting it
onto the enemy outside, even though this may be creating an Armageddon
scenario for the world
at large. Perhaps this fits in with his fundamentalist beliefs about the
world outside the realm of
the "saved." But it simply does not work for the President
of the United States to accept Jesus
as his Personal Savior and let the rest of the world, which is not exactly
jumping on our
bandwagon, go to hell in a handbasket.
If this work towards greater integration and less paranoia is to be done,
it seems we have no
other choice than to do it ourselves, and thereby help ourselves and our
world back to a sanity
we at present are sorely lacking. Of course we cannot take the blame for
the terrorists' actions,
but we can and must take responsibility for our own reactions to these
actions by refusing to
engage in the tactics of "overkill" and displaced anger--symptoms of impotent
rage which,
if we let it, will put us on the very same level as the terrorists
themselves.
Self-righteous anger, however justified it may seem, is never the solution.
It is the problem itself.