Stupid Is as Stupid Does

It used to baffle me that people who can command literally billions and trillions of dollars can be so stupid. Surely they should know that Saddam, dead, executed by them, is a far more potent mythical symbol for focusing resistance than he ever was alive.

I mean, how stupid can people get?

Well, obviously a lot stupider. Consider the following:

U.S. death toll in Iraq reaches 3,000
WASHINGTON: American deaths in the Iraq war reached the sobering milestone of 3,000 on Sunday even as the Bush administration sought to overhaul its strategy for an unpopular conflict that shows little sign of abating.

The latest death came during one of the most violent periods during which the Pentagon says hate and revenge killings between Iraq’s sects are now a bigger security problem than ever.

The death of a Texas soldier, announced Sunday by the Pentagon, raised the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq to at least 3,000, according to an Associated Press count, since the war began in March 2003.

President George W. Bush is struggling to salvage a military campaign that, more than three-and-a-half years after U.S. forces overran the country, has scant support from the American public. In large part because of that discontent, voters gave Democrats control of the new Congress that convenes this week. Democrats have pledged to focus on the war and Bush’s conduct of it.

Three thousand deaths are tiny compared with casualties in other protracted wars America has fought in the last century. There were 58,000 Americans killed in the Vietnam War, 36,000 in the Korean conflict, 405,000 in World War II and 116,000 in World War I, according to Defense Department figures.

Even so, the steadily mounting toll underscores the relentless violence that the massive U.S. investment in lives and money – surpassing $350 billion (€266 billion) – has yet to tame, and may in fact still be getting worse.

A Pentagon report on Iraq said in December that the conflict now is more a struggle between Sunni and Shiite armed groups “fighting for religious, political and economic influence,” with the insurgency and foreign terrorist campaigns “a backdrop.”

From mid-August to mid-November, the weekly average number of attacks in the country increased 22 percent from the previous three months. The worst violence was in Baghdad and in the western province of Anbar, long the focus of activity by Sunni insurgents, said a December report.

Though U.S.-led coalition forces remained the target of the majority of attacks, the overwhelming majority of casualties were suffered by Iraqis, the report said.

The American death toll was at 1,000 in September of 2004 and 2,000 by October 2005.

In an interview on Dec. 21 with The Associated Press, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the war was “worth the investment” in American lives and dollars.

In his strategy reassessment, Bush has consulted Iraqis, his uniformed and civilian advisers, an outside bipartisan panel that studied the failing war, and other defense and foreign policy experts. New Defense Secretary Robert Gates journeyed to Iraq in his first week on the job in December to confer with American commanders and Iraqi leaders.

Among the president’s options was a proposal to quickly add thousands of U.S. troops to the 140,000 already in Iraq to try to control escalating violence in Baghdad and elsewhere.

Others believe too much blood and money already have been sacrificed. Democrats have wanted Bush to move toward a phased drawdown of forces, while the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended removing most U.S. combat forces by early 2008 while shifting the U.S. role to advising and supporting Iraqi units.

Having launched the war against the advice of a number of nations, the Bush administration never got a huge international contribution of troops, meaning foreign forces helping the Iraqis are overwhelmingly American.

The death toll shows it. As of late December, the British military has reported 126 deaths in the war so far; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 18; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; and Denmark, six. Several other countries have had five or less.

Notice the statement above: “Among the president’s options was a proposal to quickly add thousands of U.S. troops to the 140,000 already in Iraq to try to control escalating violence in Baghdad and elsewhere.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe that this option was included in the advice of the Iraq Study Group’s report. In fact, this option sounds like it came straight from the mouths of Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice (undoubtedly puppets of the Ziocons in Washington). In other words, Bush is rejecting the advice of the ISG and is instead going to follow the course set by those who got him (and the rest of us) into this mess in the first place. There are some old sayings about people who act that way: “Throwing good money after bad” and “a dog returns to his own vomit.”

Yup, that’s Bush, our “fearless leader.”

Anyway, it looks like Bush is really gonna do it. With billions at his disposal that could pay the greatest minds on the planet to provide an assessment and advice for him, (that’s almost what he had with the ISG report), he’s ignoring all that and is coming out of a week long huddle with Cheney and Condi and a few other psychophants, and now we have this:

US President George W Bush intends to reveal a new Iraq strategy within days, the BBC has learnt.

2 Jan 07
By Justin Webb
BBC News, Washington

The speech will reveal a plan to send more US troops to Iraq to focus on ways of bringing greater security, rather than training Iraqi forces.

The move comes with figures from Iraqi ministries suggesting that deaths among civilians are at record highs.

The US president arrived back in Washington on Monday after a week-long holiday at his ranch in Texas.

The BBC was told by a senior administration source that the speech setting out changes in Mr Bush’s Iraq policy is likely to come in the middle of next week.

Its central theme will be sacrifice.

The speech, the BBC has been told, involves increasing troop numbers.

The exact mission of the extra troops in Iraq is still under discussion, according to officials, but it is likely to focus on providing security rather than training Iraqi forces.

The proposal, if it comes, will be highly controversial.

Already one senior Republican senator has called it Alice in Wonderland.

The need to find some way of pacifying Iraq has been underlined by statistics revealed by various ministries in the Iraqi government, suggesting that well over 1,000 civilians a month are dying.

This is a striking example of George Bush and his gang just not getting it.

Yes indeedy. Since I am 99.99% certain that the Bush gang stole two elections fraudulently, and the dissatisfaction in the U.S. is mounting sky high, for Bush to fail to realize that the American people are extremely dissatisfied with him and his policies, and have been loudly telling him in every legal way possible that his decisions stink; for him to listen to the same gang and actually decide to send MORE TROOPS when 80% (or more) of Americans want the troops home YESTERDAY, is probably going to be his fatal error.

Because, of course, it is not going to change anything in Iraq other than to make it worse.

Damnedest thing, isn’t it?

Well, there IS a reason for it. Clinical psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski refers to it as “negative selection”. In the following passage where he talks about Kaiser Wilhelm, note how similar George Bush’s behavior is to the Kaiser.

Characteropathies reveal a certain similar quality, if the clinical picture is not dimmed by the coexistence of other mental anomalies (usually inherited), which sometimes occur in practice. Undamaged brain tissue retains our species’ natural psychological properties. This is particularly evident in instinctive and affective responses, which are natural albeit often insufficiently controlled. The experience of people with such anomalies grows out of the normal human world to which they belong by nature. Thus their different way of thinking, their emotional violence, and their egotism find relatively easy entry into other people’s minds and are perceived within the categories of the natural world-view. Such behavior on the part of persons with such character disorders traumatizes the minds and feelings of normal people, gradually diminishing their ability to use their common sense. In spite of their resistance, people become used to the rigid habits of pathological thinking and experiencing. In young people, as a result, the personality suffers abnormal development leading to its malformation. They thus represent pathological ponerogenic factors which, by their covert activity, easily engenders new phases in the eternal genesis of evil, opening the door to a later activation of other factors which thereupon take over the main role.

A relatively well-documented example of such an influence of a characteropathic personality on a macro social scale is the last German emperor, Wilhelm II. He was subjected to brain trauma at birth. During and after his entire reign, his physical and psychological handicap was hidden from public knowledge. The motor abilities of the upper left portion of his body were handicapped. As a boy, he had difficulty learning grammar, geometry, and drawing, which constitutes the typical triad of academic difficulties caused by minor brain lesions. He developed a personality with infantilistic features and insufficient control over his emotions, and also a somewhat paranoid way of thinking which easily sidestepped the heart of some important issues in the process of dodging problems.

Militaristic poses and a general’s uniform overcompensated for his feelings of inferiority and effectively cloaked his shortcomings. Politically, his insufficient control of emotions and factors of personal rancor came into view. The old Iron Chancellor had to go, that cunning and ruthless politician who had been loyal to the monarchy and built up Prussian power. After all, he was too knowledgeable about the prince’s defects and had worked against his coronation. A similar fate met other overly critical people, who were replaced by persons with lesser brains, more subservience, and sometimes, discreet psychological deviations. Negative selection took place.

That is exactly what Bush has done: negative selection. He has surrounded himself with persons with lesser brains, more subservience (or greed), and most definitely pathologies. And these are the people who he “trusts.” He’s got access to billions – trillions – of bux, and he listens to Cheney and Condi!!!

There is no point in asking why Bush and Cheney and Condi can’t see this; Lobaczewski has described that as well:

The pathological authorities are convinced that the appropriate pedagogical, indoctrinational, propaganda, and terrorist means can teach a person with a normal instinctive substratum, range of feelings, and basic intelligence to think and feel according to their own [pathology].. This conviction is only slightly less unrealistic, psychologically speaking, than the belief that people able to see colors normally can be broken of this habit.

Actually, normal people cannot get rid of their characteristics, with which the Homo sapiens species was endowed by its phylogenetic past. Such people will never stop feeling and perceiving psychological and socio-moral phenomena in much the same way their ancestors had been doing for hundreds of generations.

Any attempt to make a society “learn” the pathological experiential world view imposed by pathological egotism is, in principle, fated for failure regardless of how many generations it is tried. It does, however, call forth a series of improper psychological results which may give the pathocrats the appearance of success – temporarily. Eventually, however, it also provokes society to pinpointed, well-thought-out self-defense measures based on its cognitive and creative efforts.

Pathocratic leadership believes that it can achieve a state wherein those “other” people’s minds become dependent by means of the effects of their personality, perfidious pedagogical means, propaganda, and psychological terror; such faith has a basic meaning for them. In their conceptual world, pathocrats consider it virtually self-evident that the “others” should accept their obvious, realistic, and simple way of apprehending reality. For some mysterious reason, though, the “others” wriggle out, slither away, and tell each other jokes about crazy pathocrats. Someone must be made responsible for this – old time dissidents, liberals, leftists, cults, non-patriotic trouble-makers, or some corrupt radio-stations abroad. It thus becomes necessary to improve the methodology of action, find better “soul engineers” with literary talent, increase propaganda, and isolate society from improper literature and any foreign influence. Those experiences and intuitions whispering that this is a Sisyphian labor must be repressed from the field of consciousness of the pathocrats.

The conflict is thus dramatic for both sides. The first feels insulted in its humanity, rendered obtuse, and forced to think a manner contrary to healthy common sense. The other stifles the premonition that if this goal cannot be reached, sooner or later things normal people will overcome the pathocrats with a vengeful lack of understanding of the pathocrats’ personalities. So if it does not work, it is best not to think about the future, just prolong the status quo by means of the above mentioned efforts.

And that seems to be what Bush, Cheney, Condi and their Ziocon puppetmasters seem to be attempting to do: to prolong the illusion. Lobaczewski describes the outcome precisely:

The following questions thus suggests itself: what happens if … psychopaths achieve power in leadership positions with international exposure? This can happen, especially during the later phases of the phenomenon.

Goaded by their character, such people thirst for just that even though it would conflict with their own life interest…. They do not understand that a catastrophe will ensue. Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.

If, by negative selection, the many managerial positions of government are assumed by individuals deprived of sufficient abilities to feel and understand most other people, and who also betray deficiences as regards technical imagination and practical skills – faculties indispensable for governing economic and political matters – this must result in an exceptionally serious crisis in all areas, both within the country in question and with regard to international relations.
Within, the situation shall become unbearable even for those citizens who were able to feather their nest into a relatively comfortable “modus vivendi”.

Outside, other societies start to feel the pathological quality of the phenomenon quite distinctly.

Such a state of affairs cannot last long. One must than be prepared for ever more rapid changes, and also behave with great circumspection.

And so it is: such a state of affairs cannot last long… and, as Lobaczewski says, the outcome is inevitable:

Goaded by their character, such people thirst for [global power]. They do not understand that a catastrophe [will] ensue. Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.

Originally Published 2007_01_02