Losing Our Humanity

The war in Iraq is lost. The tipping point has been surpassed and no amount of violence unleashed by the U.S. military can restore the equilibrium in that country. Our invasion has plunged them into chaos. Iraq has now entered the beginning stages of civil war which will last for many years to come. The delusional dream of installing a model democracy in the Middle East has gone up in smoke, along with much of the country's infrastructure. Iraqis are now clearly worse off than they were under Saddam Hussein. Much more bloodletting will come and thousands more will die because Bush, as he has recently asserted, "miscalculated." He purloined the passions of 9/11 by manipulating those feelings with lies about the threat Iraq posed to us and the world and falsely linked them to the terrorist attack in New York City. He deviously used the psychology of war-making to inflame a nation into sacrificing over 1000 of its young for a folly that he bet would ultimately inflate his political stature by making him a war time president. Now, in the face of overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence that the dream is lost, Bush continues his deception. His campaign ads and political speeches before carefully selected and fawning crowds, assert that Iraq is free and building a democracy.

The media which played its time honored role in trumpeting and supporting the war has taken to a more objective reporting approach, with the exception of the more autocratic cable and radio stations, and has more realistically depicted the unfolding disaster in Iraq. Sadly, the myth of war, abetted by the Bush crowd, continues to trump the truth in spite of the statistic that nearly 60% of the public think something has gone awry over there. Even the hapless John Kerry has succumbed to the war myth. His courage from an earlier time was lost in his political calculus that speaking the truth about Iraq would lose him the election.

As much as Bush has lied about this war and it consequences for Iraq and us, the responsibility for its continuance now lies with each of us. As this mirage of a noble and just war evaporates in the desert heat each of us must take responsibility for ending the war by not glorifying it, by awaking up and condemning the senseless and wholesale slaughter that continues in our name. More importantly we must not allow our young people to be recruited into believing that this war is being fought for anything more than one man's foolhardiness. There is nothing patriotic about this war. It is wholly nationalism, our collective dark side, the underbelly of what is moral and decent about this country. It is fueled by our ignorance, our hatreds, our racism, our anger, and the thousand unfathomable fears that our minds author. The Bush crowd cunningly manipulates these fears with their spurious terrorist alerts.

Instead of us wrapping our small towns in red, white and blue bunting and sacrificing more of our young to the carnage of war, we should wrap them in our arms and refuse to let them go. Instead of raising ole' glory, we should embrace our humility and fly her at half mast in homage to those we have killed. Instead of sticking a yellow magnet on our car that says "pray for our troops" we should pray for ourselves asking god's forgiveness for worshiping the violence done in our names.

Unless we the people demand it, the killing and dying will continue. There is no other exit. The political season is upon us and for this period truth telling is forbidden. Neither of the candidates for president deserves our votes on this issue. Kerry because he sees the truth and will not speak, and Bush because he is blind to the truth and yet will not be silent.

Bud A. McClure is professor and chair of the Psychology Department at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He can be reaches at bmcclure@d.umn.edu