Tag: Roy Eidelson

Give peace a chance: Don’t believe the war profiteers, Part 2

Posted on by kathiemm
Vereshchagin’s painting The Apotheosis of War (1871) came to be admired as one of the earliest artistic expressions of pacifism – Public Domain

by Roy Eidelson

My research shows that the one percenters’ manipulative messages—what I call “mind games”—target five concerns that dominate our daily lives: namely, issues of vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. These are the psychological templates we use to make sense of the world around us. Each is associated with a key question we ask ourselves regularly: Are we safe? Are we being treated fairly? Who should we trust? Are we good enough? And, can we control what happens to us? And it’s no coincidence that each is also linked to a powerful emotion that can be hard to control: fear, anger, suspicion, pride, and despair, respectively.

War profiteers prey on these five concerns with two simple goals in mind. First, they aim to create and maintain an American public that either embraces or at least accepts an endless war mentality. And second, they use these mind games to marginalize and disempower anti-war voices. For each of these five concerns, I’d like to provide two examples of the mind games I’m talking about, and then discuss how we can counter them.

Let’s start with vulnerability. Whether as quickly passing thoughts or haunting worries, we tend to wonder if the people we care about are in harm’s way, and if there might be danger on the horizon. Right or wrong, our judgments on these matters go a long way in determining the choices we make and the actions we take. Our focus on vulnerability isn’t surprising. It’s only when we think we’re safe that we comfortably turn our attention to other things. Unfortunately, however, we’re not very good at assessing risks or the effectiveness of potential responses to them. That’s why psychological appeals targeting these vulnerability concerns are a core element of the war machine’s propaganda arsenal.

“It’s A Dangerous World” is one vulnerability mind game that war profiteers regularly use to build public support for their greed-driven activities. They argue that their actions are necessary in order to keep everyone safe from ominous threats. They exaggerate or entirely fabricate these dangers—whether they’re talking about dominoes falling to the Red Menace in Southeast Asia, or the Axis of Evil and mushroom clouds over U.S. cities, or anti-war protestors purportedly posing a threat to our national security. They know that we’re soft targets for such psychological tactics because, in our desire to avoid being unprepared when danger strikes, we’re quick to imagine catastrophic outcomes no matter how unlikely they may be. That’s why we can be easy prey when they urge us to fall in line, comply with their instructions, and perhaps relinquish our civil rights as well.

At the same time, war machine representatives often turn to a second vulnerability mind game—“Change Is Dangerous”—when they’re trying to marginalize their critics. Here, when a proposed reform would hamper their ambitions, they mislead us by insisting that these changes will place everyone in greater jeopardy—whether the proposal is about reducing our staggering 800 overseas military bases; or withdrawing troops from Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq; or cutting our enormous defense budget. This mind game often works because of what psychologists call “status quo bias.” That is, we generally prefer to keep things the way they are—even if they’re not particularly good—rather than face the uncertainty of less familiar options, even if those other alternatives are exactly what’s needed to make the world a safer place. But, of course, our welfare is not the most pressing issue as far as the war profiteers are concerned.

Let’s turn now to injustice, the second core concern. Cases of real or perceived mistreatment frequently stir anger and resentment, as well as an urge to right wrongs and bring accountability to those who are responsible. That can all be very good. But our perceptions about what’s just and what’s not are imperfect. This makes us potential easy targets for manipulation by those who have a selfish interest in shaping our views of right and wrong to their advantage—and it’s exactly what representatives of the war machine work hard to do.

For example, “We’re Fighting Injustice” is one of the war profiteers’ favorite injustice mind games for generating public support for endless wars. Here, they insist that their actions reflect an abiding commitment to combating wrongdoing—whether they’re falsely arguing that Iran has engaged in unprovoked hostility; or that Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, who exposed U.S. war crimes, deserve punishment for treason; or that government surveillance and disruption of anti-war groups are necessary responses to purported unlawful activity. This mind game is designed to misappropriate and misdirect our sense of outrage over injustice. It takes advantage of our psychological tendency to believe that the world is just, and to therefore assume that those who have obtained positions of power are fair-minded rather than driven by craven self-interest—even though their actions so often harm rather than help the prospects for peace.

Simultaneously, “We’re the Victims” is a second injustice mind game, and it’s used to marginalize critics. When their policies or actions are condemned, representatives of the war machine brazenly complain of being mistreated themselves. So, for example, the Pentagon expressed outrage that the Abu Ghraib torture photos were disseminated without its permission; the White House blusters that the International Criminal Court has a vendetta against innocent American soldiers, or so they say; and bomb-making companies gripe that they shouldn’t be criticized for selling weapons to overseas dictators since our government has authorized the sales—as if that somehow makes it the right thing to do. Claims like these are designed to encourage uncertainty and disagreement among the public over issues of right and wrong, and victim and perpetrator. When this turning of the tables is successful, our concern is directed away from those who actually suffer from our endless wars.

Note from Kathie MM: Tune in Wednesday for Part 3.

Give peace a chance: Don’t believe the war profiteers

Posted on by kathiemm
Vereshchagin’s painting The Apotheosis of War (1871) came to be admired as one of the earliest artistic expressions of pacifism – Public Domain

by Roy Eidelson

Last month I had the opportunity to share some thoughts at a Divest Philly from the War Machine event, hosted by Wooden Shoe Books and sponsored by World Beyond War, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and other anti-war groups. Below are my remarks, slightly edited for clarity. My thanks to everyone involved. 

In late May, Vice President Mike Pence was the commencement speaker at West Point. In part, he told the graduating cadets this: “It is a virtual certainty that you will fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life. You will lead soldiers in combat. It will happen…And when that day comes, I know you will move to the sound of the guns and do your duty, and you will fight, and you will win. The American people expect nothing less.”

What Pence didn’t mention that day is why he could be so sure that this will come to pass. Or who the primary beneficiaries will be, if or when it does. Because the winners won’t be the American people, who see their taxes go to missiles instead of healthcare and education. Nor will they be the soldiers themselves—some of whom will return in flag-draped caskets while many more sustain life-altering physical and psychological injuries. The winners also won’t be the citizens of other countries who experience death and displacement on a horrific scale from our awesome military might. And our planet’s now-fragile climate won’t come out on top either, since the Pentagon is the single largest oil consumer in the world.

No, the spoils will go to our massive and multifaceted war machine. The war machine is comprised of companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, among others, that make billions of dollars each year from war, war preparations, and arms sales. In fact, the U.S. government pays Lockheed alone more each year than it provides in funding to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Labor Department, and the Interior Department combined. The war machine also includes the CEOs of these defense contractors, who personally take in tens of millions of dollars annually, and the many politicians in Washington who help secure their jobs by collectively accepting millions of dollars in contributions from the defense industry—roughly evenly split between both major parties. And let’s not forget the retired politicians and retired military officers, who travel the pot-of-gold pipeline to become highly paid board members and spokespersons for these same companies.

Vice-President Pence also didn’t mention to the cadets that the U.S. military budget today exceeds that of the next seven largest countries combined—an enthusiastic display of Congressional bipartisanship at its very worst. Nor did he note that we’re the largest international seller of major weapons in the world, with ongoing efforts to promote even bigger markets for U.S. arms companies in countries run by ruthless, repressive autocrats. That’s how it came to pass last August, for example, that Saudi Arabia used an expensive Lockheed laser-guided bomb to blow up a bus in Yemen, killing 40 young boys who were on a school trip.

Given these realities, I’d like to offer my perspective—as a psychologist—on a question that has never really been more timely: How is it that the war profiteers, card-carrying members of the so-called 1%, continue to thrive despite all the harm and misery they cause for so many? We know that the 1%—the self-interested very rich and powerful—set the priorities of many of our elected officials. We also know that they exert considerable influence over the mainstream media regarding which narratives are promoted and which are obscured. But in my own work, what’s most important—and what too often goes unrecognized—are the propaganda strategies they use to prevent us from realizing what’s gone wrong, who’s to blame, and how we can make things better. And nowhere is this more apparent or more consequential than when it comes to the one-percenters who run our war machine. In my next three posts, I describe these strategies.

Stoking Fear: We Must Remember How the Iraq War Was Sold, Part 2.

Posted on by kathiemm

by Roy Eidelson

The high-level machinations that produced the Iraq War are far from unique. (Photo: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

After the invasion of Iraq, when WMD stockpiles couldn’t be found, the Bush administration simply shifted gears a bit. It continued to feed the public’s fears by linking the war in Iraq to the larger “global war on terror.” Speaking at the National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society in Washington, D.C., in 2006, Cheney offered this: “On 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 odds, and to leave the nation permanently vulnerable.”

When debate over the correct course in Iraq intensified even more the following year, the president yet again resorted to “It’s a Dangerous World” appeals. Bush warned of looming catastrophe with public statements like this: “If we do not defeat the terrorists and extremists in Iraq, they won’t leave us alone—they will follow us to the United States of America. That’s what makes this battle in the war on terror so incredibly important.” The fearmongering didn’t stop when Bush left office. In a 2010 Veterans Day speech in St. Louis, General John Kelly—most recently Donald Trump’s chief of staff—insisted: “Our 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.”

Today it’s clear that Iraq did not have an active WMD program. Yet many Americans—including more than half of Fox News viewers—continue to erroneously believe that such a program was found. So too, in a 2011 poll almost half of Americans believed that 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.

But despite the devastation wrought, we shouldn’t overlook the fact that the Iraq War created its share of winners too. Consider the executives and largest shareholders in companies like Halliburton’s former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root; General Dynamics; Lockheed Martin; and ExxonMobil, to name just a few. These corporations garnered huge war profits through 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’s brother Jeb Bush—who failed to gain the 2016 Republican presidential nomination—explained, “Taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal.”

Sadly, the high-level machinations that produced the Iraq War are far from unique. History shows that 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—perhaps soon—unless we collectively learn to recognize, resist, and counter these false appeals from self-serving peddlers of war.

Roy Eidelson is a member of the TRANSCEND Network 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, 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, 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. Roy can be reached at reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 25 Mar 2019.

Stoking Fear: We Must Remember How the Iraq War Was Sold, Part 1

Posted on by kathiemm

by Roy Eidelson

The high-level machinations that produced the Iraq War are far from unique. (Photo: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

History shows that fearmongering has long been a standard tactic used to rally public support and acquiescence for military interventions that are both unwarranted and unwise.

“Voice 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.”
— Nazi propagandist Hermann Goering

It was 16 years ago, on March 19, 2003, that U.S. forces began a misguided and illegal “shock and awe” 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 disproportionate number were underprivileged youth. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died, and millions were driven from their homes. To this toll we can also add the emergence and growth of the monstrous Islamic State (ISIS). And our Iraq War expenditures—past, present, and future—total trillions of dollars, a massive drain on crucial domestic programs for those in need.

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—what I call “It’s a Dangerous World” appeals—by 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’ve examined the evidence or considered the consequences and alternatives. Psychologically, we’re soft targets for these tactics because, in our desire to avoid being unprepared when danger strikes, we’re often too quick to conjure catastrophe—the worst outcome imaginable—regardless of how unlikely it may be.

These “It’s a Dangerous World” 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—the country’s brutal dictator—had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

In August 2002, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney told attendees at the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville: “There 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.”

Two months later, President Bush presented this frightful image to an audience in Cincinnati: “Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was unequivocal at a December 2002 Department of Defense news briefing: “Any country on the face of the earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.”

It didn’t matter that these claims were all untrue; they were effective nonetheless. As White House officials had hoped, their warnings and alarmist predictions succeeded in persuading most Americans of two things: Iraq’s dictator had WMDs, and “preventive” military action was therefore necessary. Indeed, Bush knew he already had won over a majority of Americans when he sat before the television cameras in the Oval Office 16 years ago and announced that U.S. forces had invaded Iraq.