To my surprise, the recent commentary raising the
issue of George Bush's sanity received a reasonable amount of response.
The commentary questioned his sanity on the grounds that he is in
denial about Iraq -- that he is living in an Iraqian dreamworld
that exists only in his head, not in the real world. Much of the
response went much further. Responses simply said Bush is nuts,
had been for a long time, and had long been thought to be by the
responders.
One response called attention to two, three and four
year old articles and books by people with training in psychiatric
or psychological matters. Those writers pointed to several reasons
for doubting Bush's sanity. Most interesting perhaps was the idea
that he suffers from a condition called '"dry drunk.'"
Essentially, this means that even if one eventually stops drinking,
as Bush did, years of alcoholism cause irreversible damage to brain
chemistry. Results of this damage include such Bushian traits as
rigid judgmentalism, irritability, impatience, grandiosity, obsessive
thought patterns, incoherent speech and other unlovely characteristics.
Bush also seems to have characteristics that, whether or not they
are characteristic of "dry drunks," are symptomatic of
people who don't fully have a grip. These include immense anger,
exploitativeness, arrogance, lack of empathy, and difficulties arising
from relationships with one's father.
Aside from writings in former years questioning Bush's
sanity, it was fortuitous that, a few days after my commentary,
Frank Rich wrote a long piece in the Sunday New York Times in which
he said that Bush is not merely in denial about Iraq, but is "untethered
from reality" regarding it.
Now, this writer doesn't know much about psychiatry,
so I can't opine on the correctness of those who wrote two, three
and four years ago that Bush has symptoms associated with lack of
sanity. Their points do seem to make common sense, at least to one
who is uninitiated, and one does know that living in a dream world
disconnected from the actual world is not usually regarded as the
quintessence of sanity. Frankly, if legislators, the press, or doctors
had any guts -- which they usually don't -- they would be discussing
the question of Bush's sanity. Naturally, such discussion would
be blasted by Bushian supporters as being opinions arrived at without
personal examinations of or conversations with the subject, and
sometimes by mere laymen.
But these days, with the vast amount of information
available or attainable about persons, doctors, at least, do opine
in lots of medical areas even without personal examinations. And
it's not as if the subject is unimportant, you know. On the contrary,
it is entirely possible, maybe even very likely, (1) that what has
gone on with regard to Iraq has been driven by psychological factors
far more than by anything rational; and (2) that citizens and legislators
would more readily curb our government's wacked out actions if they
began to understand them to be the product of (misshapen) psychological
characteristics, not of fact and logic. Indeed, one suspects that,
50 or 75 or 100 years from now, historians will see the last four
years in terms of psychological phenomena regarding Bush, other
leaders and the general body politic, not in terms of alleged imperatives
of fact and reason. Today, after all, we think there was a certain
amount of insanity -- a certain amount of psychological malfunction
and malformation -- that drove characters like Hitler, Stalin, Mao
and other evildoers. Why can't the same be true of Bush and his
crowd -- and of some of their followers too?
To one trained in arts of thought, the amazing thing
was that a man like this could become President. One wonders how
he could have been picked as the nominee and then elected. After
all, it was clear early-on that he not only had been a long-time
drunk, but had failed at every business venture, so that time and
again he had to be rescued by Daddy's friends and wanna be friends.
Recently, I read a claim that conservative Republicans, desperate
to win in 2000, picked him to be the nominee early-on because they
thought him a good salesman. This could make some sense, especially
given his family background and his good ol' boy personality, a
type of personality Americans love even when divorced from brains,
about which Americans usually care very little. (Bush's good ol'
boy, salesman persona stood him in particularly good stead four
years later against the unlovely Kerry.) But better knowledge of
why and how Bush got to be the nominee in 2000 will have to await
future research by historians. It is an interesting question, though.
Less amazing than Bush's selection, but remarkable
nevertheless, was that in mid 2004 an academic, an apparently very
well known sociologist at the prestigious Northwestern University,
wrote a piece expressing puzzlement that persons he called "progressives"
despise Bush, puzzlement at why "a fair population of these
bright and articulate Americans hate" him and why "so
many thoughtful people hold a belief that is surprising - - and
troubling - - to the vast majority of Americans." The professor
then answered his own puzzlement thusly:
George Bush is Forrest Gump. He has led a charmed
life, in which mediocrity, error and failure have had no consequences
other than to produce success. An indifferent student, Bush attended
both Yale and Harvard, escaped service in Vietnam, escaped disgrace
despite drunken driving, failed as an oil magnate only to be promoted
to head the Texas Rangers baseball team, and lacking political
experience, became governor of Texas. His family and mentors paved
the way for this untalented scion of privilege. Bush was the frat
boy who never grew up.
To the professor all this was not reason enough for
progressives to dislike Bush. Rather, they should make judgments
based on Bush's policies. But the professor seems to have ignored
the policies. As said in a commentary, dated August 23, 2004, on
the professor's view:
Saying that "political animus" should
not be "tied to issues that are removed from policy"
and that "bitterness toward the follies of youth" should
not "determine our politics," [the professor] says there
is enough to argue about by considering a president's successes,
failures, misdeeds. But Bush's failures and misdeeds are matters
that have contributed - - mightily - - to "progressives"
disliking him intensely. In particular, his defense and foreign
policies have outraged them. From telling the rest of the world
to lump it, to spurning international courts, to incredible misjudgments
about Iraq from start to finish, to untruths and total unwillingness
to admit mistakes about such matters, Bush has outraged those
who now deeply, viscerally dislike him.
To my mind, it is remarkable that an apparently renowned
professor of sociology (no less) at an eminent school should have
had so little appreciation of the distaste intelligent people have
for the fact that Bush's life refutes fundamental values we grew
up with: hard work, competence, intelligence, modesty. His life,
with its drunkenness, serial failures, lack of competence repeated
salvation via Daddy and Daddy's friends, all followed by the presidency
no less, and by disastrous ill-considered policies, makes a joke
of the values we absorbed as youths and still try to live by. That
"the vast majority of Americans" may have been "trouble[ed]"
by our distaste for Bush two and a half years ago is, if true, simply
symptomatic of a point made earlier; they don't care about brains.
Nor are they put off by the spectre of the brainless advancing via
family rather than talent, work, and honesty.
Of
course, today, with the situation in Iraq having descended to where
it now is, even "the vast majority of Americans" may now
by troubled by the idea that the brainless can advance by privilege
alone, or at least that this one example of the mentally inept could
do so. Academics are perhaps no longer alone in their contempt for
the man these days. And one wonders what the Northwestern professor
himself thinks now. It would be a cheap shot, I suppose, to say
that one has seen or heard of no more op eds by him.
Now, the fact that we've seen the harm that can be
wrought by the unintelligent and the incompetent ought to have a
bearing on our politics in the future. (Although whether it will
or not is unknowable.) We should, in future, make it a sine qua
non for high office that a candidate have shown intelligence and
judgment at something, somewhere. Maybe high intelligence could
be suitably shown by great academic success, at least if unencumbered
by failure in the practical world. Or perhaps high success in the
practical world in a position that truly requires brains for success,
not just a pleasant personality, could be a sufficient talisman.
However a judgment may suitably be made, intelligence, coupled with
judgment, should affirmatively be an object of inquiry and assessment.
And so should honesty, because dishonesty has produced as much disaster
as sheer stupidity and incompetence (with a combination of them
being deadly, viz. Bush). Naturally, one might object that a requirement
of intelligence, judgment and honesty would eliminate most politicians
from running for high office. That could easily be true today given
the way the political game is now played. If so, the answer is to
demand that the game be played differently, not to elect the dumb
or dishonest out of despair over the possibility of doing better.
Questions of honesty and intelligence, and of the
need to do better, are, one notes, implicated by the report of the
Iraq Study Group, the report which has been the focus of so much
hype and discussion, so much sturm und drang, in the last few days.
Much as one may despise George Bush, one has to say that the ISG's
report seems absurd in some ways. At this point it has become pretty
clear that the report is nothing but a political document
cobbled together politically in the image of James Baker, the first
George Bush's Mr. Fixit. The report is merely the latest Washington
crock about Iraq.
Admitting that it could come to nothing and that Iran's
statements are contrary to their recommendations, ISG members say
we should talk to Iran and Syria in order to try to solve the Iraq
problem. Well, unlike George Bush, I'm not against talking to anyone,
and I agree with Baker that you can't accomplish anything without
talking to people. And we and the British do owe Iran a major apology
for what we did to Mossadegh, which is the foundation act of Iran's
hatred for us. But to think that Iran and Syria - - these former
members of the axis of evil - - will help us out of the Iraq mess?
And will help create an overall Middle East settlement? What world
is Baker living in? Iran and Syria are making out very nicely from
the Iraq mess, thank you. Why would they want it to stop, especially
since it is causing immense difficulty for what they or their buddies
call The Great Satan and, with regard to Iran, is preventing us
from giving more focus to its drive for nukes.
Indeed, if I were George Bush I would point out -
- it might be nasty but it's the fact - - that the ISG wants us
to talk to the country, Iran, which will shortly be holding an international
conference, of so-called experts, dedicated to showing that the
holocaust never happened. And Baker wants us to talk to that country
in order to make peace?
With regard to Syria, Baker & Co. suggest that
we could get Syria on our side (so to speak) by persuading Israel
to give up the Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria. Well,
some have suggested that Syria may now be far more interested in
controlling Lebanon, where it apparently arranges for the assassination
of leaders, than in the Golan. But how about Israel: would it be
willing, in exchange for a piece of paper called a peace treaty,
to return the Golan, which cost it a bloody battle, to a once and
perhaps still murderous regime that long sought its destruction,
may still seek it, and could seek it again in the future so that
Israel might then have to fight another horrible battle for the
Golan, which would be a highway into Israel for the Syrians? Boy,
I don't know about that. Nor do I think that an American guaranty
of Israel's security could do the trick. Israel believes it must
depend only on itself; as Jews the Israelis have a 2000 year history
cautioning this. It also knows that the US didn't stick it out in
Viet Nam and isn't going to in Iraq. (We shouldn't have stuck them
out. But this doesn't alter the fact that we didn't and won't, which
is all that is of concern to the Israelis. Charles de Gaulle wanted
his own force de frappe (his own nuclear deterrent) because he knew
it was foolish to trust us to ride to the rescue of France in a
potentially nuclear war. He was right, and the Israelis will doubtless
heed the example, which applies whether or not Iran, like the Soviets,
becomes a nuclear power.)
Then there is the question of whether we can politically
and militarily accomplish by early 2008 - - or for that matter by
2012 - - what the ISG hopes we can accomplish. Can a united Iraq
arise by 2008? Can its military become capable by then of putting
down an insurgency or a civil war? One gathers that even many of
the commission's own military experts were dubious. Why shouldn't
one be dubious? How can we do by 2008 - - do in a year - - what
we couldn't do in three or four? How can we do it in a completely
split, riven, violent tribal society? Baker's idea is silly.
Then there is the fact that the ISG asserted that
Bush must follow all 79 of its recommendations. This is as out of
touch with reality as Bush is. What in the world got into people
who are supposed to be the wise men and women? Baker apparently
wants to be defacto Secretary of State, and he got a bunch of other
old men and women to go along with him and absurdly say that all
79 of their recommendations must be followed.
The ISG also made a huge deal out of the fact that
its recommendations are bipartisan. Of course, this bipartisan consensus
is in reality nothing other than a piece of Bakersque political
engineering - he got Democrats to go along with an absence of a
timetable (and one Democrat, the disreputable Chuck Robb, wanted,
like John McCain, to put more troops in Iraq). But aside from this,
if the claimed consensus is wrong, why should we care that it is
bipartisan? Why should we care even if all the Republicans and Democrats
in Washington were to get behind it and make nice - - which already,
of course, is failing to happen? For a long time Viet Nam was bipartisan.
For quite a while Iraq was bipartisan. And they are probably the
two greatest foreign relations disasters in the history of the United
States.
There are those who say that, when nobody is disagreeing,
when everybody is making nice to each other - - that is the time
to worry, to watch out. That is a time when a big mistake is very
likely. If some of the criticisms of the ISG report are right, as
one thinks, especially because so much of the report seems precatory,
seems based on hope rather than reality, then a bipartisan push
behind the Baker report would likely be only another step on the
road to an even bigger disaster. One or two years from now we would
find ourselves with more dead Americans, more dead Iraqis, and an
even bigger civil war, because it will be impossible to secure needed
and effective help from Iran, Syria and others, the religious, tribal
and other hatreds in Iraq will make a government of national unity
impossible, and these hatreds and rivalries will make it impossible
to have a unified, well trained military devoted to a central government
and capable of putting down the militias.
So what to do? In regard to Iraq itself, I'll not
tarry long over the best answer to this question because it has
been presented here before on several occasions. Divide the country
- which never really was a country anyway, but in reality was only
what I think Churchill called a geographical expression - - into
three parts, Sunni, Shiite and Kurd. Give people a few months to
move to "their" area if they want. (Two million have already
left the country entirely and who knows how many others have already
moved to "their" area.) Then get the hell out, post haste.
If we can arrange some sort of sharing of oil revenues among regions
in advance, that would be nice. If we can't, to hell with it.
If the Turks don't like it because they fear the
example of an independent Kurdish nation, then bribe them. The Turks
are susceptible to bribes - - military equipment, etc. If they can't
be bribed, to hell with them. Give the Kurds weapons if the Turks
are nuts enough to invade them - the Turks will come to regret an
invasion just as the British, the Russians and ourselves have come
to regret invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Once each of the three
religious groups has its own area, you can bet that there will be
peace rather than insurgency or civil war within each area, since
the people of each area will be ruled by their own.
This obvious political solution has been advanced
here many times. Joe Biden has advanced it. Peter Galbraith has
advanced it. But the fools in our government and media refuse to
consider or talk about it.
So what, then, is the next best thing? That's pretty
simple too. Congress should cut off all funds from any source for
fighting in Iraq, except for funds needed to protect our forces
as we withdraw them rapidly. This will leave the Iraqis to simply
kill each other for awhile. But if it is not done they will still
kill each other, and Americans too. American combat in the Viet
Nam war finally ended with a whimper when Congress, over a Nixonian
veto, cut off funds for the remaining bombing we were doing, and
a cut off of funds should be used here too, with the cut off attached
to one or the other of the many veto proof bills that go through
Congress (e.g., defense appropriations).
This suggestion brings up a point about the Democrats
and, even more specifically, about Barack Obama. Seeking to dodge
political responsibility, seeking to dodge having to do the right
thing, the Democrats have been saying they can't cut off funds for
the war because this would endanger the troops. A few days ago I
heard even Obama say it. This may be a good dodge vis a vis most
of the body politic. For most people, not being lawyers let alone
constitutional lawyers, may not yet know that a cut off need not
be written in an all encompassing manner, i.e., need not say "No
funds can be used for any military operations in Iraq." Rather
it can be written in a way that allows funds to be used to protect
American troops while they are being withdrawn, e.g., "No funds
may be used for military operations in Iraq except when necessary
to protect American troops during the period of withdrawal."
Not only may large numbers of citizens not know this, but it wouldn't
entirely shock me if some, even lots, of the Democrats are too dumb
to know it although they are legislators. But can we think that
Obama and other intelligent, law trained Democrats don't know it?
Impossible. Gimme a break. They know it.
Take Obama, for instance. Here is a guy who is super
bright; he was the President of the Harvard Law Review, after all.
The former President of the Harvard Law Review thinks that a cut
off must endanger our troops? He doesn't know that it can be written
in a way that protects them? Gimme a break. Of course he knows this.
So what are he and other smart Democrats doing? That's
easy. They are lying in order to play political games by which they
hope to avoid the responsibility to do what is right. Obama, a super
bright fellow, is also African American, well spoken, and reasonably
liberal. This combination of traits is causing him to come on strong
as a potential candidate for President as early as 2008. But what
is he doing with regard to cut offs of funds? He is in effect lying.
This is not good. We've had enough Lyndon Johnsons, Dick Nixons,
Bill Clintons, and George W. Bushes. An African American President
would likely be a good thing. But we don't need one whose respect
for truth is no higher than that of the white jerks I've just named.
Someone should wise up Obama about this.
Beyond the immediate question of what we should do
in Iraq is the broader question of how should America conduct itself
in the world as a general matter. This has been touched on in prior
commentaries, which pointed out that at least since 1898 the US
has been an imperialist, warlike, highly aggressive nation. As such
it has seen itself as having a responsibility to affect, even control,
what is happening elsewhere, as in Viet Nam in the 1960's and Iraq
today. Usually (although not in Viet Nam, Korea or World War II),
the U.S. is, as they say, just following the money (in Iraq, the
oil); usually it is acting imperialistically in service of private
commercial interests.
Unless it wishes to destroy itself as did the Roman
and British imperialists, the US must quit the idea of constant
military action and of affecting or controlling things all across
the globe. Forget it; it just leads to one disaster after another.
We have no God-given right to control the world, and the world does
not wish to be controlled by us.
Yes, there are countries in whose defense we would
fight and should make it known we would fight. They are countries
tied to us by history, commonality of interest and values, morals,
and economics. Britain, France, the new Germany, other nations of
western Europe, Israel, Japan, Australia, Canada and some others
exemplify. We are not pacifists. We would fight to protect those
nations and ourselves. But to fight in every small, backwards second
or third world country in order to affect or control nearly everything
everywhere? Forget it. That way lies more of the disasters that
have already befallen us. We can be a beacon unto the better elements
in those nations, as was the thought closer to this country's founding.
But we should stay out of their affairs. A beacon, yes. A controller,
no.
You know, we have plenty to do right here in the
U.S. in order to finally establish a decent society. We must establish
better, more widespread health care, lessen the costs of medicare,
provide a better economic break for the vast middle class and the
poor, especially vis a vis the superrich, must provide better economic
treatment for our military people, must provide education, and better
education, more widely, must deal with our energy problems, must
rebuild our aging infrastructure, must insure that old people have
decent incomes and lives, must insure the safety of food, must change
our now largely crooked electoral system which causes the worst
to rise to the top, insures against the cream rising to it and causes
us to follow stupid policies, and must rebuild the values of honesty
and competence - - must rebuild those and other cultural values
on which all else ultimately depends. We have plenty to do without
running around the world fighting war after war - wars which simply
distract from and make it impossible to do the things which need
to be done, the things which are essential for a decent society.
We have plenty to do right here at home without the horrendous impediment
of Johnsonian, Nixonian and Bushian wars.
Lawrence R. Velvel, JD, is the Dean of Massachusetts
School of Law. Click
here to contact Dean Velvel. |