Psychoanalysis offers a systematic description of how the mind is organized and how it works. There are many different theoretical strains in the field and the theories are heavily influenced by the milieu in which they arise. American Psychoanalysis has been powerfully influenced for the last 20-30 years by our increasing understanding of pathological Narcissism, understanding which has been spurred by the theories of Heinz Kohut. European Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, has been dominated by the theories of Melanie Klein. The Kleinians believe that at the core of our mental processes are powerful, archaic, and primitive mental states which are dominated by hate, envy, greed, and rage.
[It has always been a source of fascination to me that patients can do well in treatment with Kleinians, Kohutians, neo-Freudians, et al; this has always implied to me that the curative aspects of our treatment are only partially related to our theoretical understanding of the process.]
Kleinian Psychoanalysts are constantly on the look out for hints of the raging, psychotic infant at the core of their patients. I suspect this is a reflection of the European experience of the 20th century as well as a profound cause of the current European diffidence in confronting the problems facing the West.
In America we are more concerned with how we feel and how we function in the world; we care about others but are not pre-occupied with what they will think of us. The Europeans are very concerned, perhaps primarily concerned, with how others react. The "other" in Europe quite notably is seen as filled with envy and hatred of the withholding maternal object. In Europe the state has become the maternal object of last resort and as such, the agents of the state (its elites, for example) and the state itself, are objects of avarice, frustration, despair, and rage. Of course, this argument has also contributed to our diffidence in conducting the war, a diffidence that has made the job in Iraq much more difficult and uncertain.
Much of the opposition to the American led war in Iraq stems from those who are fearful that our behavior will evoke and provoke the primitive rage they imagine exists throughout the Arab and Muslim world.
2007 is likely to be a pivotal year in the War in Iraq and by extension, the War against expansionist Islam. We will either do what it takes to win the Iraqi theater, which means changing the Rules of Engagement in ways which we have thus far shown no inclination to do, or we will stumble along, not quite losing, until the pressure to withdraw our troops becomes irresistible, and we effectively surrender. Ralph Peters describes how we might maximize our chances to win by altering the ROE in his article this morning and offers this conclusion:
If we're unwilling to take such stern measures, we won't make durable progress, no matter how many troops we send.
Who would resist such a program? There's the problem. The partisan Maliki government would refuse to go along with a crackdown on Shia militias. Unless we're willing to overrule the regime we recently celebrated, none of this can happen.
And, of course, the media would accuse us of a war crime every five minutes. The global media want Iraq to fail and revel in the current level of suffering. If we're unwilling to defy the media, Iraq is finished.
Oh, and that increase in troop strength would have to last two years.
It all comes back to President Bush. If he won't lay out clear goals, then approve a serious plan to achieve them, sending more soldiers to Iraq would only worsen our problems in the long term. If a troop boost failed to produce results, it would further encourage our enemies while crippling our worked-to-the-bone ground forces.
Send more troops? Only if we mean it.
For moral and ethical reasons, it would be preferable for us to win in Iraq, ie support the birth of a democratic, relatively secular state in the middle of the Arab Middle East. Where Ralph Peters falls short is in neglecting to mention that such an approach will almost certainly require confronting Iran. However, as bad as our options appear to be in Iraq, failing will have much more catastrophic results.
Gerard Vanderleun discussed Toying with Genocide this weekend; this is the terrible fear that many of us have understood to be the core issue of the current hostilities; after describing the problem, he concludes:
This is why I still deeply believe that the current effort in Iraq and the Middle East to counter and expunge Islamic terrorism and turn Islam from the road it is on towards one of reformation and assimilation is the best path that can be taken at this time. Indeed, for all the ineptitude of the current administration, for all the expense in treasure and lives, this shoot-the-moon, Hail Mary of a foreign policy in Iraq is not just a policy to make America safer at home. It is the only thing that stands between Islam and its own destruction.
Sometime shortly after 9/11 in an online forum I frequented then, an exasperated idealist proclaimed that "After all, you can't kill a billion Muslims." Like so many others he spoke from somewhere outside History. History, especially the world's most recent history, shows us all how wrong that statement is. The hard truth is rather that, "Yes, if you really want to, you can."
And that is the most terrible and terrorizing thought of the 21st century.
In the Dar al-Islam, the world of Islam/submission, there is currently no real discussion about Islam changing in such a way as to accommodate other religions. The radical Shia of Iran and Hezbollah and the radical Sunni of al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia may dispute each other's correctness, but neither major sect questions the supremacy of Islam over Dar al-Harb. Both groupings believe that their job is to bring the entire population of the world under the dominion of Islam. Until fairly recently, this could be ignored unless you suffered the misfortune of being a non-Muslim living in a Muslim country. Unfortunately the combination of great oil wealth and the development of lethal WMD, fueled by envious rage, has eventuated a sizable cohort of Muslims willing, and increasingly able, to bring mass death upon Western civilian populations. As Vanderleun pointed out, the West can easily absorb multiple 9/11s (though a nuclear explosion taking out a city would likely lead to a world wide depression of some duration); as he also astutely pointed out, Western countries are unlikely to remain rational for long in the face of further outrages.
The European view, that we must avoid doing anything that risks stirring up the primitive rage of the Muslim street, presents a very dangerous position. Anyone who has ever given in to a demanding child knows that since you can never completely satisfy another's needs, except temporarily, there are always new and escalating demands for those who are unable to set limits. We have already seen this in the Muslim reaction to cartoons and ice cream cones. Since the demands of the Muslim community is that you surrender to them, at some point the West will have to come to terms with their choice of surrender or fight back. (For just such reasons, it will be quite interesting to see the response to Idomeneo.) The Europeans, perhaps much more than Americans, are subconsciously aware of their own propensity for primitive rage.
The early years of the 21st century are going to feature either another genocide or an attempted genocide. The Europeans may hope that they will remain uninvolved, perhaps guiltily watching Iran from the sidelines, since their fecklessness is encouraging the Iranians to believe they can finish the job with nothing more than verbal reprimands from Europe and the International Community. However, Europe has been doing their best to convince the Arab Street that they are easier pickings; push will come to shove when it is their maternal nurturance that is threatened. Frightened nations tend to regress to more primitive levels of functioning. This is as true of the sophisticates of Europe as it is of those they imagine to be primitives in their midst, so perhaps Europe is where we should be looking for the next genocide.
Failure in Iraq, especially a failure that can be presented as a loss of will by the West, will lead to the unthinkable, possibly sooner rather than later. It is worth wondering if one of the unconscious determinants of appeasement is a derivative of the knowledge of what evil lurks in the hearts of those civilized people who abhor war and thus ease the way for genocide.
[Dr. Sanity has been thinking unthinkable thoughts as well.]
Recent Comments