{"id":129798,"date":"2019-03-25T12:01:23","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T12:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=129798"},"modified":"2019-03-21T08:08:16","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T08:08:16","slug":"stoking-fear-we-must-remember-how-the-iraq-war-was-sold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/03\/stoking-fear-we-must-remember-how-the-iraq-war-was-sold\/","title":{"rendered":"Stoking Fear: We Must Remember How the Iraq War Was Sold"},"content":{"rendered":"

20 Mar 2019 – <\/em>History\u00a0shows\u00a0that fearmongering has long been a standard tactic used to rally public support and acquiescence for military interventions that are both unwarranted and unwise.<\/p>\n

\u201cVoice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2014 Nazi propagandist Hermann\u00a0Goering<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was 16 years ago this month, on March 19, 2003, that U.S. forces began a misguided and illegal \u201cshock and awe\u201d military assault on Iraq. The enormous costs of that invasion and subsequent occupation are all too clear today. Thousands of American soldiers and coalition allies were killed and many more suffered horrific, debilitating injuries; among the U.S. casualties, a\u00a0disproportionate number<\/a>were underprivileged youth. At the same time,\u00a0hundreds of thousands<\/a>\u00a0of Iraqi civilians died, andmillions<\/a>\u00a0were driven from their homes. To this toll we can also add the emergence and growth of the monstrous Islamic State (ISIS<\/a>). And our\u00a0Iraq War expenditures<\/a>\u2014past, present, and future\u2014total trillions of dollars, a massive drain on crucial domestic programs for those in need.<\/p>\n

Many painful lessons can still be drawn from this devastating war and its ongoing aftermath. Among them, the tragedy represents a distressing case study in the manipulative use of fear\u2014what I call \u201cIt’s a Dangerous World\u201d appeals\u2014by disingenuous leaders who insist that disaster awaits if we fail to heed their policy prescriptions. Unfortunately, dire warnings from influential figures can short-circuit our critical thinking and propel us toward action even before we\u2019ve examined the evidence or considered the consequences and alternatives. Psychologically, we\u2019re soft targets for these tactics because, in our desire to avoid being unprepared when danger strikes, we\u2019re often too quick to conjure catastrophe\u2014the worst outcome imaginable\u2014regardless of how unlikely it may be.<\/p>\n

These \u201cIt\u2019s a Dangerous World\u201d appeals were employed by the George W. Bush White House throughout the Iraq War. They began with repeated claims months before the invasion that Saddam Hussein\u2014the country\u2019s brutal dictator\u2014had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).<\/p>\n

In August 2002, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney\u00a0told attendees<\/a>\u00a0at the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville: \u201cThere is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two months later, President Bush\u00a0presented<\/a>\u00a0this frightful image to an audience in Cincinnati: \u201cKnowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof\u2014the smoking gun\u2014that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was\u00a0unequivocal<\/a>\u00a0at a December 2002 Department of Defense news briefing: \u201cAny country on the face of the earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t matter that these claims were\u00a0all untrue<\/a>; they were effective nonetheless. As White House officials had hoped, their warnings and alarmist predictions succeeded in persuading most Americans of two things: Iraq\u2019s dictator had WMDs, and \u201cpreventive\u201d military action was therefore necessary. Indeed, Bush knew he already had\u00a0won over<\/a>\u00a0a majority of Americans when he sat before the television cameras in the Oval Office 16 years ago and\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that U.S. forces had invaded Iraq.<\/p>\n

After the invasion, when WMD stockpiles couldn\u2019t be found, the Bush administration simply shifted gears a bit. It continued to feed the public\u2019s fears by linking the war in Iraq to the larger \u201cglobal war on terror.\u201d\u00a0Speaking at the National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society\u00a0in Washington, D.C., in 2006, Cheney\u00a0offered this<\/a>: \u201cOn the morning of September 11th, we saw that the terrorists need to get only one break, need to be right only once, to carry out an attack. We have to be right every time to stop them. So to adopt a purely defensive posture, to simply brace for attacks and react to them, is to play against lengthening\u00a0odds, and to leave the nation permanently vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n

When debate over the correct course in Iraq intensified even more the following year, the president yet again resorted to \u201cIt\u2019s a Dangerous World\u201d\u00a0appeals. Bush\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0of looming catastrophe with public statements like this: \u201cIf we do not defeat the terrorists and extremists in Iraq, they won’t leave us alone\u2014they will follow us to the United States of America. That’s what makes this battle in the war on terror so incredibly important.\u201d The fearmongering didn\u2019t stop when Bush left office. In a 2010 Veterans Day speech in St. Louis, General John Kelly\u2014most recently Donald Trump\u2019s chief of staff\u2014insisted<\/a>: \u201cOur enemy is savage, offers absolutely no quarter, and has a single focus, and that is either kill every one of us here at home or enslave us with a sick form of extremism that serves no God or purpose that decent men and women could ever grasp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today it\u2019s clear that Iraq\u00a0did not have<\/a>\u00a0an active WMD program. Yet many Americans\u2014including more than half of Fox News viewers\u2014continue to\u00a0erroneously believe<\/a>\u00a0that such a program was found. So too, in a 2011 poll almost half of Americans\u00a0believed<\/a>\u00a0that Iraq either gave substantial support to al-Qaeda or was involved in the 9\/11 terrorist attacks. Neither claim is true. The persistence of these false beliefs demonstrates the staying power of manipulative psychological appeals designed to exploit our fears.<\/p>\n

But despite the devastation wrought, we shouldn\u2019t overlook the fact that the Iraq War created its\u00a0share of winners<\/a>\u00a0too. Consider the executives and largest shareholders in companies like Halliburton\u2019s former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root; General Dynamics; Lockheed Martin; and ExxonMobil, to name just a few. These corporations garnered\u00a0huge war profits<\/a>\u00a0through no-bid defense contracts, oil sales, environmental cleanup, infrastructure repair, prison services, and private security. Indeed, speaking to defense contractors at an August 2015 private event, the former president\u2019s brother Jeb Bush\u2014who failed to gain the 2016 Republican presidential nomination\u2014explained<\/a>, \u201cTaking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, the high-level machinations that produced the Iraq War are far from\u00a0unique<\/a>. History\u00a0shows<\/a>\u00a0that fearmongering has long been a standard tactic used to rally public support and acquiescence for military interventions that are both unwarranted and unwise. It has happened many times before, it has happened since, and it will happen yet again\u2014perhaps soon\u2014unless we collectively learn to recognize, resist, and counter these false appeals from self-serving peddlers of war.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Roy Eidelson is a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a> and was a member of the American Psychological Association for over 25 years, prior to his resignation. He is a clinical psychologist and the president of Eidelson Consulting<\/a>, where he studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. He is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility<\/a>, associate director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College, and a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology<\/a>. Roy can be reached at reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cVoice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.\u201d \u2014 Nazi propagandist Hermann Goering .
\nIt was 16 years ago this month, on March 19, 2003, that U.S. forces began a misguided and illegal \u201cshock and awe\u201d military assault on Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":110813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}