Tag: Dean Hammer

Rampages, drones, and moral insanity (Part 2)

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Dean Hammer, Psy.D.

Drones ready for launch. Image in public domain

The escalation of drone warfare by the Obama administration is 
not being scrutinized by the same moral compass as the rampage of Robert Bales.

Conservative estimations 
indicate that there have been minimally three to four hundred innocent 
civilians killed by drone assassinations.

The public is dealt the expected 
rationalizations. We are told that these military interventions are 
sanctioned as “acceptable risks” in the war against terror. The mounting 
civilian deaths are written off as “collateral damage” and “incidental 
killing.” Unlike Bales, who was acting with severe cognitive deficits, Obama appears to be an intelligent person with intact cognitive capacities.

So how do we understand the errant 
leadership of those justifying the drone killing fields?

 In 1835, physician James Cowles Prichard coined the term “moral 
insanity” to denote abnormal emotions and behavior in the apparent absence 
of intellectual impairments. He highlighted that this type of madness 
entailed morbid perversion of feelings, habits, and moral behavior.

The 
construct of moral insanity helps us to understand a dimension of the 
impaired leadership of our government.

 Faithful peace activists continue to challenge the 
drone assassinations (e.g., the ongoing resistance campaign at Hancock Air 
Base in Syracuse, NY). However, the steamrolling of our government’s war machine threatens to overshadow the protesters’ voice of sanity.

As electoral fever mounts, the electorate 
has a critical responsibility to raise questions regarding the immorality of drone warfare. Amidst the cacophony (the “droning,” if you will) of the debates between Obama and Romney, we need to put them to the test to see if either recognizes that drone warfare is unacceptable and insane behavior.

The Fourth Geneva Convention (adopted by the United Nations in 1949) grew out of the bloody wars of the 20th century. This body of international law mandates the protection of civilian populations in war zones. These codes of ethics are a critical safeguard against falling into the clutches of a collective form of moral insanity.

Reclaiming an ethical plumb line that includes the protection of innocent civilians is essential to any sense of true democracy and sanity.

Dean Hammer practices and teaches clinical psychology in Vermont and New Hampshire. He is a member of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. 
Contact information: dhammer2@tds.net

Rampages, drones, and moral insanity (Part 1)

Posted on by kathiemm

by guest author Dean Hammer, Psy.D.

The war in Afghanistan has borne a series of gruesome events including: 
marines urinating on dead civilian victims, U.S. soldiers bringing home victims’ fingers and other body parts as souvenirs, and most recently the 
rampage by Robert Bales.

Robert Bales
Robert Bales. Image in public domain; from Wikimedia Commons.

The juxtaposition of these events with the scourge 
of drone warfare raises critical questions regarding the disintegration 
of the moral fabric of our country.

The etiology of the gruesome actions of the marines and other soldiers in the Afghanistan war is a complex question. However, the deleterious effects 
of these types of actions on the collective psyche and on the reputation of the U.S. are clearly very severe.

The profile of Robert Bales indicates that he suffers from a traumatic brain injury and was deployed for one too many 
tours of duty. Adding probable alcohol intoxication, he was an accident waiting to happen.

There is also strong evidence that he did not act alone and that the Pentagon has covered up the complicity of his accomplices.

The 
immorality of these events seems quite evident. Even Leon Panetta, U.S. Secretary of Defense, has declared the Bales rampage “morally deplorable.”

The repulsive behavior by the U.S. soldiers claiming dead victims’ body parts and urinating on dead victims is mind-boggling and heart-wrenching. Wikipedia’s discussion regarding necrophilia suggests that this type of pathological behavior is related to the impulse to “seek self-esteem by expressing power over a homicide victim.”

This disorder is also likened to thanatophilia, which can be defined as “an obsessive fascination with 
death and corpses.” Perhaps this is one of the resultant side effects of 
fighting a war in general.

Dean Hammer practices and teaches clinical psychology in Vermont and New Hampshire. He is a member of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. He may be contacted at dhammer2@tds.net.

A bouquet of stories: Valentines for peace

Posted on by patdaniel
Malbin peace sculpture
"Vista of Peace" sculpture by Ursula Malbin. Photo by Guillaume Paumier / Wikimedia Commons, CC-by-3.0.

For the second Valentine’s day in the life of Engaging Peace, we want to re-share some posts that have been among the wonderful gifts our readers have given us.  The following selection focuses on messages of peace and love.

(1) A few years ago I joined “Checkpoint Watch,” an Israeli human rights organization of women who monitor and report human rights violations towards Palestinians who move from the occupied territories of Palestine to Israel.  Continue reading →   (Dalit Yassour-Borochowitz, October 21, 2010)

(2) It has been a privilege for the Paraclete Foundation to bring the Benebikira Sisters to Boston and to tell their story of courage and love during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide that claimed over 800,000 lives in 100 days.  Continue reading →   (Sister Ann Fox , November 8, 2010)

(3) In a way that only being physically present in this country could convey, I’ve realized that the genocide is a very difficult thing for Rwandans to talk about. If people do speak about the horrors they have encountered, it is only under very hushed circumstances or around people they trust.  Continue reading →   (Andrew Potter, June 23, 2011)

(4) The framework for my reflections is constructed from Dr. Martin Luther King’s Speech delivered at Riverside Church in April, 1967 (a year before his assassination).  Continue reading →   (Dean Hammer,  July 21, 2011)

(5) My father was born and raised in Basra, Iraq. Graduating from Baghdad University, he earned a government scholarship to study in the United States. He completed his graduate studies at Georgetown University. While in DC, he met and married my mom, a nice Jewish girl from New York. Her parents had fled their homeland … Continue reading →   (Dahlia Wasfi, September 19, 2011)

(6) I have just returned from the demonstration to support Occupy Boston (10-10-11) and can happily report that it was a successful march of probably two or more thousand people.  Continue reading →  (John Hess, October 17, 2011)

(7) Over the past few weeks we have heard stories of bravery, courage, hope, happiness, and grief from Palestine. The stories accompanied the news that just over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners would be freed in exchange for … Continue reading →   (San’aa Sultan, November 3, 2011)

(8) Eva Mozes Kor, a “Mengele Twin” who survived the genetic experiments at Auschwitz, chose the non-standard route to recovery: forgiveness.  Continue reading →  (Elina Tochilnikova, December 26, 2011)

(9) From the time of… Moses, who helped guide the Israelis out of slavery and oppression to freedom, to Jesus, who preached equality and love and changed the whole human understanding of power structures, to … Continue reading →   (Majed Ashy, January 12, 2012)

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology, and Pat Daniel, Managing Editor of Engaging Peace

Beliefs that perpetuate war

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we again welcome a post from guest author Dr. Dean Hammer, a psychologist and peace activist.]

In 1989, Roger Walsh (a professor of psychiatry at University of California Irvine) wrote a seminal paper entitled, Toward a Psychology of Human Survival: Psychological Approaches to Contemporary Global Threats. 

Ploughshares 8
Ploughshares 8, including Dean Hammer (second from left)

Walsh identified several global threats that continue to plague us today including: malnutrition, resource depletion, the ecological blight, and nuclear weapons.  These threats to human survival and wellbeing “are actually symptoms of our individual and collective mind set.”

Walsh’s assessment of societal psychopathology provides a useful approach to understanding the pathology of  war-making, including the fatalism and Social Darwinism that create a self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuating war.

During my 35 years of peace activism, I have engaged in many conversations regarding the possibility of abolishing war. One of the most prevalent attitudes keeping people from imagining a world without war is the assumption that “there always have been wars and there always will be wars.”

This belief system is built upon a pessimistic view of human nature that sees human beings as essentially greedy and self-serving. The super-power nations, who depend on the military industrial complex as the backbone of their economies, depend on and promote this cynical view of human nature.

From a cognitive perspective, this core maladaptive assumption rejects the capacity of human beings to become altruistic and to commit ourselves to the well-being of the entire human family as a prerequisite for our individual well-being.

Therefore, an initial step in developing a revolutionary hope for our future is to promote an alternative vision of human nature that portrays humankind as having the capacity to create global peace and justice.

Dean Hammer