June 2005, Volume 12 Nr. 16, Issue 151

Sickness, Projection and Psychosis.
Our Leader and His Apologists

Jozef Hand-Boniakowski
  

In response to the newly released evidence that mistreatment of detainees and their holy book, the Qur'an, did indeed happen, McInerney made references to Saudi Arabia, that this country mistreats more Qur'ans by far than the United States does.  In other words, when the United States abuses the Qur'an the abuse can be expunged because some other country might be abusing it more.  McInerney offered no evidence while a caller pointed out that Qur'ans are in fact recycled.  Who knows?  Just how does some other country's alleged abuse of the book negate the fact that detainees and the Qur'an were pissed on by US personnel?  McInerney made reference to prisoner abuse by saying that given the large number  of US personnel, detainee abuse was low as if that excuses it or exonerates the 27 known homicides.  The thinking goes: we kill less than others so the killing is excusable.  No, General.  It is not. 

The General claims that too much of a big deal is being made out of the small number of abuse cases and that when abuse is found, the people responsible are dealt with.  True, some token lower level personnel have been taken to task for their part in abusing detainees, but the people at the top responsible for signing off approving and/or ordering the torture have not been brought to justice.  Why is it ok in the General's world that the people on the bottom who are told what to do get pissed on when they do it and get caught while those doing the pissing on get off free and clear?  McInerney diverts attention away from the fact that both George Bush as Commander-in Chief, and, Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, are responsible for the abuse.  The buck stops there General.  Stop passing it on.  The orders as what is acceptable torture and abuse came from the top.  Think of it, acceptable torture.  No torture is acceptable General.  It was the top of this administration who shattered much of what is left of the United States' reputation as the world's self-professed pre-eminent protector of human rights.  As an apologist for the Bush regime, McInerney is equally culpable.  

Just how is the Muslim world whose families experience first hand the behavior of the US government and military going to respond?  Tell me, General, what kind of friend is the father who carried his dead daughter with her legs in shreds and bones sticking out going to make?  Do you envision their family, friends and neighbors as future friend or foe?  For how many decades, if not centuries, will the tens of millions of people throughout the world react with revulsion and hatred at the death and destruction wrought by the superpower that cannot keep its phallic weaponry zipped up. 

Stored and pent up military power, weapons sitting static in inventory offer little additional profit for the "defense" industry.  How, otherwise, would the Haliburton's of the world make profits on destroying, rebuilding, destroying, rebuilding... ad infinitum?  A corporation in the military-industrial complex does not maximize profits if its weapons are not put to use.  More war means more profit.  War is good for the Capitalists.  To kill is to make money.  To kill more is to make more money.  More jails means more money.  Taking the oil fields means making more money.  What good is it for investors who heavily own stock in corporations that produce depleted uranium (DU) weapons, cluster bombs and cruise missiles if the weapons inventories are not used and replaced with new weapons?  What profit is there for corporations who build and maintain prisons if their cells are not full of human cattle and the complex not in need of expansion?  Herein lies the sickness,  General.  

The so-called "war on terror" fought as the war on Iraq is taking place in a country that had nothing to do with 9-11.  Iraq posed no threat to the United States except in the minds of those requiring and/or fabricating the reasons for war.  Yes, General, let us talk of the sickness then.  A first strike, preventive war of choice is sick.  Bombing a country through "Shock and Awe" because it was expedient to have access to our desperately needing its oil is sick.  Adopting and using a policy of extreme rendition where the U.S. government sanctions and fosters the disappearance of people to nations where gross torture is allowed so that surrogates can do the dirty work for it is sick. Lying to Congress, the US people and the world in order to justify going to war is sick.  Murdering complete Iraqi families by dropping 1,000 pound bombs on them is sick.  Breaking the standard by which human decency is maintained, at least in part, during war, i.e., the Hague Conventions of 1889 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the Nuremberg Conventions adopted by the United Nations December 11, 1945, is sick.  Unloading hundreds of tons of depleted uranium is sick.  Dropping cluster bombs is sick.  Unexploded cluster bomb bomblets becoming land mines taking off children's limbs is sick.  Killing  as you would call them precious unborn fetuses by poisoning them with radioactive dust is sick.  Our youth dying for the ruling elite and rich man's war for profit is sick.  Let us reiterate once again, that going to war with Iraq had nothing to do with any threat from Iraq and it had nothing to do with 9-11.  It had everything to do with lying about weapons of mass destruction, lying about aluminum tubes, lying about yellow-cake uranium, lying about mobile biological and chemical weapons labs, lying to the United Nations, lying to the world.  That, General, is sick.  And, General, it is this sickness that you would project onto those who criticize you and the sickness of this regime.  The fact that anyone else, or faction, or nation, may be sicker is not justification for excusing this regime's sickness.

The excessive inability of the Bush regime to face the reality of their behavior and solve the problems they created in their sick war of choice contributes to their psychosis.  While Rumsfeld suppresses and rationalizes, intellectualizing the slaughtering of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over thousands (a more likely death toll) of US troops, you general, find scapegoats within those who want to stop the insanity.  You, General, are the pot calling the kettle black.  Just who is the sick one, General?  For, if you and this administration are not, you are far worse.  You are evil.  

To be anti-war is not to be anti-US.  Quite the contrary, to be the military super-power bully always willing to unleash its fury while ignoring the international conventions to which it is party to is being anti-US.  Just who are the millions of aggrieved Middle Eastern and Muslim people going to hate because of this regime's sickness?  

I do not believe that the United States will in my lifetime regain the respect that it has lost.  I do not believe that it will ever again be seen nor respected as the fair arbiter of disputes between nations.  I do not believe that it will be seen as the world's protector of human rights.  It is a sad time for this country and the world.  Yet, the sickness of the George W. Bush regime is our sickness, a sickness of its people as well.  It is as Paul Levy writes in his analysis, "The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis.  Bush's Sickness is Our Own".  Levy states, 

Bush and his supporters perversely interpret any feedback from the real world which reflects back their unconsciousness as itself evidence that proves the rightness of their viewpoint.

Our sickness then is that we are much like the good German was in Nazi Germany.  We are the good "American".  Almost half the U.S. population believes Our Leader is solving the terrorism problem. The good German also believed that their leader was solving a problem.  What does one make of the half of the US population that refuses to see that Our Leader is fueling and creating more terrorism?  Using terrorism to stop terrorism is insanity, ab initio absurdis.  Perhaps, perpetual war for perpetual profit is the goal.  If that be the case, is the sickness not obvious?  It should be.

Iraq is redux Vietnam.  The major players in the Bush regime are many of the same people who were around during the Nixon administration.  Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, for example were aides to Gerald Ford who followed and pardoned Nixon.  They tried to persuade president Ford to veto the enhanced Freedom of Information Act.  Back then they seem to have recognized that the truth would haunt them.  It still does.  They preferred to operate with impunity then as they do now.  What can one expect from the same cast of characters?  They were sick then, when Nixon was in office, and, they are sick now.  

History has a way of repeating itself as the observation goes.  Sooner, or, later, as the tide continues to turn, the people will respond to the pervasive sickness that permeates this regime and the land, and do something about it.  The populace will once again become sick and tired of the sickness.  When that happens, and I do believe that day is coming, a second president in my lifetime will be leaving the White House in disgrace.  The people will line the streets and salute farewell to the commander-in-thief in similar fashion to how they "welcomed" him on "inauguration" day, June 20, 2001.  The difference this time will be, however, that George W. Bush will be  leaving the White without legitimately having been elected in the first place.  Perhaps then, General, you can begin to recover from this sickness of which you speak.  

I end with paraphrasing your own words spoken during your  appearance on the Alan Colmes radio program. General, unfortunately, this might-makes-right sickness that so many on the Right have has become pervasive for far too  long.  The people in this administration and their apologists like you that lie and shred the Constitution while finding any excuse to murder for profit are the terrorists. The fact is, we the people give you license and we take it away. We have treated you in a way you do not deserve and that will come to and end soon as the truth comes out.  

...he resorted to an old Soviet trick: accusing dissenters of INSANITY, of spreading a SICKNESS to his listeners. Comment on the McInerney guest appearance as posted on the News Hounds blog by: SteevK at June 4, 2005 23:19

See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. -- G. W. Bush, May 24, 2005, Greece.