There’s a lot of disappointment and anger over the Dems "backing down" on deadlines in Iraq, as shown by the number of diaries during the last couple of days. I’ve tended to swing between feelings of rage, disgust and futility whenever I’ve thought about it. However, a diary last Monday
**** the Dems. That's it. I'm done by theyrereal started me thinking about why incredibly smart and politically astute people like Pelosi and Reid seem to be pulling their punches on Iraq.
More unsubstantiated, unsolicited, and uncompensated opinion from a first-time diarist below.
One of the first things that need to be established when dealing with a mentally disturbed individual is if they are a danger to themselves or others. Mental health professionals, crisis counselors, and presumably hostage negotiators put a priority on assessing the lethality of an individual as quickly as possible. Assessing lethality involves investigating how detailed the plans are (detail = immediacy), access to means, prior acts, precipitating events and mental health history.
It’s pretty clear that the President isn’t acting rationally in general, and his actions regarding the war appear to be completely disassociated from reality. I believe the President does in fact constitute a danger to himself and others, and what we have now is essentially a hostage crisis, with the troops as hostages. The President has it in his power to cause the loss of large numbers of our troops, large numbers of civilians and even initiate another war, possibly involving unconventional weapons.
Assuming the President does indeed constitute a danger, let’s do a lethality assessment:
Plans:
- Has repeatedly said will not accept any interference
- Ego is clearly heavily invested in getting his way on this
- Is increasing number of troops
- Clearly making safety of troops a political issue
- Setting up classic "you’re making me hurt them" meme
- Apparently has a near infinite series of "new directions",
stalls and rationalizations, all of which effectively up
the ante
- Views war as his "legacy"
Means:
- Troops vulnerable to a few weeks or days of logistics delay
- Troops in an extremely hostile country, surrounded by other
hostile countries
- Small transport capability relative to troop strength
- Unlike Vietnam, shoulder-launched SAMs are everywhere—any airlift,
especially in uncontrolled areas will be lethal. There’ll be no
helicopter over the embassy scenario this time.
- Provocative actions toward other countries in the area, including
significant buildup of forces, resulting in high probability of
an "incident" or another Gulf of Tonkin.
Prior Acts:
- Institutionalized torture by US military, voided Geneva Conventions
- Has an extensive history of politicizing any government agency or
action
- Has exhibited a callous disregard for the safety and lives of the
troops, not limited to the casualties, but by delaying and
defunding necessary safety equipment and supplying inferior
equipment manufactured by political cronies.
- Has exhibited a callous disregard for the suffering and hardships
of troops injured in Iraq, from third-world like hospital
conditions to denial of disability benefits.
- Has exhibited a callous disregard for the lives of those who aren’t
injured: broken families due to excessive deployments, failed
businesses when small business-owning Guard troops are deployed
multiple times, loss of jobs or of key positions of Guard troops
with employers.
- Has decimated the armed forces and greatly decreased national
security by driving troops out of the military, so obviously
exploiting the troops that recruitment is down significantly
despite lowering of standards to the point where criminals
are receiving military training, and the mentally and educationally
challenged are expected to acquire skills formerly thought beyond
them--and within a few months use those skills in a war zone
Precipitating Events:
- Collapse and discreditation of neocon philosophy
- 88% of America doesn't approve of how he's doing
- An emerging consensus he's the worst President in US history
- Unprecedentedly, an ex-President publicly agrees with consensus
- Beginnings of serious pressure from within Republican party
- Siege/bunker atmosphere in White House
- In danger of becoming an adjective: "a bush-like administration"
- Severely damaged or ended Bush dynasty political aspirations
- Severely damaging Republican party
- Bungled yet another CEO job
Mental Health History:
- Addictive personality
- Indifference to suffering of others lying somewhere between
conservatism and sociopathy
- History of torturing animals
- History of initiating, directing, and requiring the torture of
human beings
- Inferiority, problems with father, overbearing mother
- Adopted Rambo-esque, hyper-macho persona, possibly as compensation
for above
- A win-lose, black and white worldview--and compromise constitutes
losing
- Believes Armageddon is a viable, desirable endgame
- Believes personally advised by, and accountable only to God
- Privileged life: rarely, if ever, suffered consequences for actions
- Guilt (maybe): dodged draft, now CIC
So how stabile is this guy? How hard do you push him? He essentially has a gun to the heads of the troops—a couple of weeks (maybe days) of logistical delay and they’ve got serious problems, and we simply don’t have the transport capability to get them out of there quickly.
So it looks to me like Pelosi and Reid have four paths of action:
1) Draw a line in the sand, hold fast and hope he acts rationally
2) Keep bargaining, care for the troops, and try to get some
concessions
3) Play for time, stay calm and run out the clock
4) Quietly, discretely work non-war related methods of
reducing his power or removing him from office
Mental health professionals and presumably hostage negotiators wouldn’t use the first option for obvious reasons—the person might attempt suicide or start killing hostages. Reid and Pelosi may be in the same situation and run the risk of troop abandonment, massive casualties, and a possible preemptive attack on Iran—or maybe the first military coup in US history as the generals step in to stop one of the above scenarios.
What we’ve seen them do is #2 and #3. Keep the dialogue (such as it is) going, try to diffuse the situation, care for the hostages, stay calm, and play for time. Maybe they're working #4--discretely.
Are we hostage to the President’s mental state? Quite possibly. Can we push hard and get a quick, clean resolution to the war? Only if the President acts in a rational, statesmanlike, humane and constructive way.
The only prudent action may in fact be what Reid and Pelosi are doing: adopt a cool, rational, measured approach to dealing with a disturbed, highly lethal individual.