Reality Intrudes on Bumbling Bush

Laura

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http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060727/OPINION01/607270365

Thursday, July 27, 2006

President Bush was back to burbling yesterday before a military audience about the "foundation for peace" in Iraq. But the day before, in a rare instance of grasping reality, he hinted at just how rickety that foundation is.

Meeting at the White House with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the President acknowledged that security in Baghdad is "terrible" and pledged to boost American troop levels there significantly.

This comes at a time when things were supposed to be improving -- after formation of a new Iraqi government, more participation by Sunni politicians, a raid that killed al-Qaida's top operative in Iraq. And it is a time when Americans, and that certainly includes most Republican candidates this year, hoped the U.S. presence would start to diminish.

Instead, it is hard to think of anything that has gotten better.

The security situation has so deteriorated that, for the first time, the average daily death toll among Iraqi civilians last month exceeded 100.

The casualties are especially high in Baghdad, which is becoming unlivable. Businesses are closing, streets are often deserted and -- perhaps most ominously -- religious minorities are fleeing previously integrated neighborhoods, often with the intent of leaving the country.

The void created by inadequate American numbers and the failure of Iraq to develop effective security forces has been filled by sectarian militias, many of which operate as criminal gangs and death squads.

One of the most prominent, the Mahdi Army of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who says he modeled his movement after Hezbollah in Lebanon, could draw an enlarged U.S. military force in Baghdad into fierce combat.

Meanwhile, Mr. al-Maliki, who refuses to condemn Hezbollah, has harshly criticized Israel's actions in Lebanon, which the Iraqi parliament has called criminal. So much for Mr. Bush's hopes that Iraq would become a staunch U.S. ally.

Or, put another way, the American invasion of Iraq has produced a government that is an apologist for Iranian-backed terrorism.

At this point, hope seems slim for reducing the violence in Baghdad and other areas where Sunni and Shiite Muslims must live side by side. At a minimum, it would take a vigorous neighborhood-by-neighborhood fight, mostly by U.S. troops, and unstinting efforts by Iraq to create an effective national security force and to disarm militias.

Maybe the President's moment of realism means such overdue steps will be urgently pursued. Maybe.
From Andrew Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology:

Psychopaths are conscious of being different from normal people. That is why the "political system" inspired by their nature is able to conceal this awareness of being different. They wear a personal mask of sanity and know how to create a macrosocial mask of the same dissimulating nature. When we observe the role of ideology in this macrosocial phenomenon, quite conscious of the existence of this specific awareness of the psychopath, we can then understand why ideology is relegated to a tool-like role: something useful in dealing with those other naive people and nations. Pathocrats must nevertheless appreciate the function of ideology as being something essential in any ponerogenic group, especially in the macrosocial phenomenon which is their "homeland". This factor of awareness simultaneously constitutes a certain qualitative difference between the two above-mentioned relationships. Pathocrats know that their real ideology is derived from their deviant natures, and treat the "other" - the masking ideology - with barely concealed contempt. And the common people eventually begin to perceive this as noted above.[...]

Doubletalk is only one of many symptoms. Others are the specific facility for producing new names which have suggestive effects and are accepted virtually uncritically, in particular outside the immediate scope of such a system's rule. We must thus point out the paramoralistic character and paranoidal qualities frequently contained within these names. T...

Anything which threatens pathocratic rule becomes deeply immoral. This also applies to the concept of forgiving the pathocrats themselves; it is extremely dangerous and thus "immoral".
[...]


The actions of this phenomenon affect an entire society, starting with the leaders and infiltrating every village, small town, factory, business, or farm. The pathological social structure gradually covers the entire country, creating a "new class" within that nation. This privileged class of deviants feels permanently threatened by the "others", i.e. by the majority of normal people. Neither do the pathocrats entertain any illusions about their personal fate should there be a return to the system of normal man.

A normal person deprived of privilege or high position will go about finding and performing some work which will earn him a living; but pathocrats never possessed any solid practical talent, and the time frame of their rule eliminates any residual possibilities of adapting to the demands of normal work. If the laws of normal man were to be reinstated, they and theirs could be subjected to judgment, including a moralizing interpretation of their psychological deviations; they would be threatened by a loss of freedom and life, not merely a loss of position and privilege. Since they are incapable of this kind of sacrifice, the survival of a system which is the best for them becomes a moral imperative. Such a threat must be battled by means of any and all psychological and political cunning implemented with a lack of scruples with regard to those other "inferior-quality" people that can be shocking in its depravity.
[...]

Pathocracy survives thanks to the feeling of being threatened by the society of normal people, as well as by other countries wherein various forms of the system of normal man persist. For the rulers, staying on the top is therefore the classic problem of "to be or not to be".

We can thus formulate a more cautious question: can such a system ever waive territorial and political expansion abroad and settle for its present possessions? What would happen if such a state of affairs ensured internal peace, corresponding order, and relative prosperity within the nation? The overwhelming majority of the country's population would then make skillful use of all the emerging possibilities, taking advantage of their superior qualifications in order to fight for an ever-increasing scope of activities; thanks to their higher birth rate, their power will increase. This majority will be joined by some sons from the privileged class who did not inherit the pathological genes. The pathocracy's dominance will weaken imperceptibly but steadily, finally leading to a situation wherein the society of normal people reaches for power.

This is a nightmare vision to the psychopaths.

Thus, the biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of the majority of normal people becomes, for the pathocrats, a "biological" necessity. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power jeopardizing pathocrats rule: the sons of normal man sent out to fight for an illusionary "noble cause." Once safely dead, the soldiers will then be decreed heroes to be revered in paeans, useful for raising a new generation faithful to the pathocracy and ever willing to go to their deaths to protect it.

[...]

Pathocracy has other internal reasons for pursuing expansionism through the use of all means possible. As long as that "other" world governed by the systems of normal man exists, it inducts into the non-pathological majority a certain sense of direction. The non-pathological majority of the country's population will never stop dreaming of the reinstatement of the normal man's system in any possible form. This majority will never stop watching other countries, waiting for the opportune moment; its attention and power must therefore be distracted from this purpose, and the masses must be "educated" and channeled in the direction of imperialist strivings. This goal must be pursued doggedly so that everyone knows what is being fought for and in whose name harsh discipline and poverty must be endured. The latter factor - creating conditions of poverty and hardship - effectively limits the possibility of "subversive" activities on the part of the society of normal people.

The ideology must, of course, furnish a corresponding justification for this alleged right to conquer the world and must therefore be properly elaborated. Expansionism is derived from the very nature of pathocracy, not from ideology, but this fact must be masked by ideology. Whenever this phenomenon has been witnessed in history, imperialism was always its most demonstrative quality.
 
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