This paper is being written to examine the decision of George W. Bush, our American President, who declared war in Operation Iraqi Freedom. President Bush deviated from the customary policy of declaring war on a nation and its population, to the subjective label of terrorism and members of certain organizations, and all nations who house or support terrorists. This paper will show that President Bush declared war in such a subjective matter, that any nation could be at war with the United States under this policy of warring with the idea of terrorism, and that there can never be a real end to the idealistic goal and battle between the subjective terrorist, and the subjective standard of good, Bush has placed on the United States of America. That a war declared on a philosophy, can never be won, as that philosophy is an idea, not a person place or thing; and thus just as Plato stated in his works, the ideal is eternal, and can never die, or be killed. We will also show through experimental philosophy, that the wording and context which became almost religious in nature, were used to subconsciously direct the American people into this idealistic war through the manipulation of media, and the use of crisis reaction, to justify the United States of America actions to illegally (and without following its own moral code), battle the idea of terrorism; or as President Bush states:
“Our war on terror begins with Al Qaida, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated “(Full Text: President Bush Declares War on Terrorism: http://middleeast.about.com/od/usmideastpolicy/a/bush-war-on-terror-speech.htm)
The United States of America has not formerly declared war since World War II. The process and understanding of the term “declared” was the formal process of Congress being addressed with a full understanding of what nations and peoples we were at war with and then voting and declaring the United States of America is at war. An example of a declaration of war can be seen as a war between two countries, with leaders, and populations, such as the declaration of war with Japan and Germany. The governments were what we were battling in World War 2, the governments were directed to surrender, and that a physical state of war was with our government and theirs. While governments had ideals, such as fascism and imperialism; our wars were not to find and destroy the ideal of fascism or imperialism, but with the governments who used the ideals of fascism and imperialism. This is a very distinct difference from the current practice of “going to war” which has been adopted since 1973, George Friedman in his book, “The Next Decade” states the changes as:
“After the war, Congress created the War Powers Act in recognition that wars might commence before congressional approval could be given. However, rather than returning to the constitutional method of the Declaration of War, which can be given after the commencement of war if necessary (consider World War II) Congress chose to bypass declarations of war in favor of resolutions allowing wars. Their reason was the same as the president's: It was politically safer to authorize a war already under way than to invoke declarations of war.” (What Happened to the American Declaration of War?: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110328-what-happened-american-declaration-war)
The reason this is significant is the context for understanding and declaring war was dismissed for a more dramatic context of all ready being at war. When one is all ready at war, certain moral implications and indiscretions can be downplayed, and the favor of the American people rallying around the flag during a war can be done much more effectively, then trying to seek approval for a war, in congress.
Experimental Philosophy experiments show that the context or wording of a phrase physiologically changes the areas of the brain that our choices will be made from. Using the Crying Baby model, Joshua Greene shows how reactions by emotions are different from those of reason:
“Consider the crying baby dilemma: It's war time, and you are hiding in a basement with several other people. The enemy soldiers are outside. Your baby starts to cry loudly, and if nothing is done the soldiers will find you and kill you, your baby, and everyone else in the basement. The only way to prevent this from happening is to cover your baby's mouth, but if you do this the baby will smother to death. Is it morally permissible to do this?” (Joshua D. Greene: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/)
Dr Greene showed physiologically through brain scans while people were thinking of this problem, the input and context of the speech went to a different area of the brain, then the usual reason decision making area of the brain. He states the emotional reaction of killing a baby, directed the brain to not treat this question as academic, but more of a threat to its personal physiological morality which engages a bias reaction to go to the emotional decision making area of the brain. Thus the context of our words, and phrases, can actually physiologically determine a subconscious answer, which would be different from our normal reason and decision making process without emotion. The subconscious reaction, DON’T KILL THE BABY! Supersedes the thought process of most people who with logic understand the baby will die with either reaction; suffocating by the mother, or the discovery of all by the enemy, when the baby cries, and all of their subsequent deaths result, including the baby’s.
George W. Bush and Congress did not want to declare war, listing reasons and facts, and thus invoking the reason center of most of the American Public. They wished to find an emotional response by the American people, a physiological response, such as fight or flight, or the physiological response to fighting evil as an ideal compared to a war with specific governments or populations. For the rest of his term President Bush began to state that God favored the United States of America, and its enemies were evil. That the war was not with nations, but with terrorism itself, much like Vietnam was justified for fighting communism, more than fighting for the population of Vietnam itself.
This attempt to keep emotion alive, and retribution in the forefront of the American people’s minds, can be shown by a speech given the day following the attacks on the World Trade Center is evident:
“What we live with now, beyond shock, and beyond the courage witnessed on the streets of New York and Washington yesterday, is an urge for reprisal. But this is an age when even revenge is complicated, when it is hard to match the desire for retribution with the need for certainty. We suffer from an act of war without an enemy nation with which to do battle. ..that leaves us all for now, with fully burdened emotions…I would like to thank the members of Congress for their unity and support. America is united. The freedom loving nations of the world stand by our side. This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil. But good will prevail” (The Bush Dyslexicon: Miller m, 2002, p324)
President Bush is clearly seeking the emotional responses of the American people decision making side of their brains, the emotional side which demands retribution, and justifies its actions in the name of being good. Miller in his book The Bush Dyslexiconstates his reactions to this 911 speech: “…the president kept trying to qualify the sadness with reminders of how angry we all were.” He gives examples of this in statements made by President Bush, such as:
“Behind the sadness and the exhaustion, there is a desire by the American People to not seek only revenge, but to win a war against a barbaric behavior, people that hate freedom and hate what we stand for.” (The Bush Dyslexicon, Miller m, 2002, p322)
This statement seems emotionally solid to an audience who just watched their country attacked on television, but logically we can see that it means the United States of America is civilized and all its enemies are barbarians. The United States is declared to be Freedom, and we are at war with any who oppose us, because in contrast with the United States, they must hate Freedom. President Bush is not speaking of individual freedom, but the ideal of freedom. The terrorists are ideologically freedom haters if they are battling the United States, because the President states the United States and what we stand for, is freedom.
Once the emotional appeal has been agreed to, moral considerations and attitudes can be given greater latitudes to fight evil, instead of a government or population. Nietzsche explained this as the herd mentality. He states the herd creates morals and ideals, such as good and evil, to justify its own actions. Especially when it comes to dangers and fears that concern all the members of the herd. This time of emotion and danger is when the herd can be directed in directions it has declared as immoral. Nietzsche states:
“…the need thereof is now innate in everyone, as kind of formal conscience which gives the command, Thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally refrain from something. In short, ‘Thou shalt’. This need tries to satisfy itself and to fill its form with a content; according to the strength, impatience, and eagerness, it at once seizes as an omnivorous appetite with little selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into its ear by all sorts of commanders-parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices or public opinion” (Ethics, Sterba j, 2000, p284)
This is the justification George Bush uses. He discards reason and logic for his decision to torture human beings, in the need to show that he is protecting the herd. Understanding and using the fear of the herd that has been attacked, to justify whatever actions he takes, in his battle against good and evil; even actions which the herd had declared to be immoral before. Even though every United States Military Member is taught annually that torture is never allowed to be used on the enemy, per a contract signed during the Geneva Convention, because the American war was on an ideal, a higher calling as it were, our Commander and Chief drops this reasonable and long standing code of honor, and gives the okay to water boarding, use of dogs on prisoners, isolation, and indeterminate incarceration without trial; for we according to his logic, or lack of it, are fighting Freedom hating evil barbarians who have no borders. His thought process on this choice is clearly not logical, for he believes much as the church of the dark ages, that torture can be considered moral, if it is in the fight against evil. Thus water boarding a technique of choking a person into believing he was drowning, by pouring water into his mouth and throat, was not torture as long as medical personnel and CIA interrogators trained in its use, gave their word that the procedure would not have long term medical or mental problems for the detainee.
“I knew that an interrogation program this sensitive and controversial would one day become public. When it did, we would open ourselves to criticism that America had compromised our moral values. I would have preferred to get the information another way. But the choice between security and values was real. Had I not authorized water boarding on senior Al-Qaeda leaders, I would have to accept a greater risk that the country would be attacked. In the wake of 9/11, that was a risk I was unwilling to take. My most solemn responsibility as president was to protect the country. I approved the use of interrogation techniques.” (Decision Points, Bush g, 2010, p169)
Again emotionally this logic may seem sound, and would be directed to the emotional response area of the brain. We have been attacked by evil barbarians, everything is justified in the battle of good and evil, and thus the logic of torturing human beings was allowed to be used. But reasonably we must understand the President of the United States, takes an oath, to defend and uphold the constitution of the United States of America, and the implied understanding that he will abide by the Bill of Rights which states all men are created equal, and all men must be tried by their peers. Fear and emotion take us where logic and reason cannot go; and in the herd instinct that Nietzsche describes, the herds fear will create or drop morals whenever it needs to, to alleviate that fear.
Declaring war on an idea, like terrorism, and labeling it as evil ensures that we respond out of emotion, but if we look at this without emotion, we can see our ideals have been lost to fear. For example, any reasonable person who has been arrested as an American citizen and was water boarded for information from by the local police with a doctor present, I submit, would find drowning a person to be torture, and that Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome at the least, death at the most, would find this procedure to be torture; but when fighting evil freedom haters, compared to individuals with families and unfamiliar philosophies, we can see that the administration is clearly using the context of good versus evil to justify its actions, and the threat to the herd, to change its morals.
Bush’s policy towards terrorists has elevated the terrorist to some kind of super human enemy. If a person is not in a uniform, is not fighting for his country, population, or government, he is not a soldier, he is a criminal. If the President had directed the prisoners of Guantanamo Cuba to court as it claims for all men, under it constitution, the American people would have demonstrated the justice and goodness he speaks of. In contrast by declaring war on an ideal, and elevating the terrorist to a soldier for another ideal, President Bush is creating new martyrs for the enemy and with it new soldiers for the enemy, because of our different treatment and elevation of the terrorist beyond that of the common criminal.
Another aspect of the war on ideals is the “Us versus Them” syndrome described by Pope. This aspect of the terrorist psychological profile described in Origins of Terrorism seems also to describe the Bush mentality in its war against evil. This same type of emotional need to blame others for evil, because we being good, cannot do evil, is described as:
“Unable to face his own inadequacies, the individual with this personality style needs a target to blame and attack for his own inner weakness and inadequacies. Such people find polarizing absolutist rhetoric of terrorism extremely attractive. The statement: ‘It’s not us-it’s them’; they are the cause of our problems, provides a psychological satisfying explanation for what has gone wrong in their lives.” (Origins of Terrorism, Reich w, 1998, p28)
The problem with 9/11 for Bush was not the loss of lives in New York, it was not that our country was found wanting in its defense; it was that evil had struck, and needed to be punished. Bush and our country had done nothing wrong in defending our country, it was evil barbarians who hide with no borders and that do not fight fairly with the morals of good people, which were to blame.
Jacob Webster in The Bush Tragedy shows this aspect of President Bush, and his growing need to fight on idealistic and religious reaction to the war on evil:
“On September 14th at the memorial service at the National Cathedral he said his responsibility was ‘to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil’. Bush talked about the power of prayer and asserted again that the side of good would prevail because ‘this world he created is of moral design’. Two days after that, answering questions on the South Lawn, Bush used the term ‘evil’ nine times in thirteen minutes. ‘My administration has a job to do’, he said, ‘We will rid the world of evil-doers’” (The Bush Tragedy, Webster j, 2008, p103)
Summing up:
George W. Bush, the president of the United States of America started a war of ideology between good and evil. He clearly understood that the reactions of Americans to an attack on its population would allow him great latitude in response, because the emotions of the American people would support him, just as Dr Greene, showed us, with his experiments in philosophy and mapping the areas of the brain in emotional decision making, verse fact reason decision areas of the brain. That by creating a war on ideals and ideas, President Bush could justify new moral guidelines, or exclude old moral guide lines that the population had accepted in the past, in the name of fighting evil. That the American people were reacting and allowing changes in morals for themselves and others, out of the fear of the herd mentality which must do something when it is attacked, even if its logic is unreasonable, or found wanting, and that leaders using this vacuum of form, can lead the herd if it perceives it will end the fear of the herd.
That our presidents allowance of torture and indeterminate incarceration are examples of the moral changes he has been allowed to introduce in the name of protecting good people versus evil people; and that by doing these actions, he has placed the enemies of his nation into a new idealistic classification as terrorist, which reasonably can never have an end state. He has declared war on all nations who harbor terrorists and evil-doers, and that this declaration is so subjective, that this battle can never be one; and last that when one declares that he is good as Plato described good, that good is the absence of evil, and therefore the “Us versus Them” mentality will believe all evil is external, and being good, we the United States of America cannot be evil, and thus we can change our morals and ideology at will in a world of “evil-doers”.
REFERENCES:
Full Text: President Bush Declares War on Terrorism: http://middleeast.about.com/od/usmideastpolicy/a/bush-war-on-terror-speech.htm