http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/bushs-arab-dream-palace-is-it.html
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Bush's Arab Dream Palace
Is it Narcissism?
Bush said again on Monday that he would keep US troops in Iraq until
2009 and argued that for the US to withdraw would send a bad message to
reformers in the region. He said he is concerned about that talk of
civil war in Iraq and seemed to admit that he isn't very happy most of
the time about the way things are going, but added that he doesn't
expect to be joyous in wartime. He admitted again that Saddam Hussein
did not "order" 9/11, but went on to again link Baathist Iraq to the
threat of terrorism against the US, an unproven charge.
But what strikes me about Bush's Monday appearance is how consistent it
is with what I understand of the symptoms of narcissistic personality
disorder. Let's look at it this way:
1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates
achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without
commensurate achievements).
Bush is not content to be the most powerful man in the world. He thinks
he is on a mission from God, and has decided that he is going to
"reform" the Middle East, and turn Middle Easterners into something
else. He is the Great Transformer of these other peoples' lives. The
reason he has to stay in Iraq until the end of his presidency (it is
all about him) is that he cannot admit that he did not succeed in being
the great Transformer of the Middle East, that in fact he screwed up
the Middle East royally. Because such an admission of any slightest
mistake, much less a major series of failures, would fatally threaten
his sense of grandiosity. Thus, he can't pull troops out of Iraq not
because of practical military considerations, but because it would send
the wrong signal to regional "reformers," i.e. Bush's mini-me's, the
people fulfilling his sense of grandiosity.
Nobody else is in the picture here, just Bush. He doesn't ask any
sacrifice from the US public for the war, as Bill Maher and others have
noted. The heroics are his alone. The rest of us should go shopping (so
as not to interfere with his self-image as Atlas of the Middle East.)
2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power,
brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
Bush suffers from T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") syndrome.
Lawrence, despite polite denials, clearly thought that he led the Arab
Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I and wrote:
' All men dream: but not equally, Those who dream by night in the dusty
recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but
the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream
with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did. I meant to make a new
nation, to restore a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites
the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their
national thoughts. So high an aim called out the inherent nobility of
their minds, and made them play a generous part in events: but when we
won, it was charged against me that the British petrol royalties in
Mesopotamia were become dubious, and French Colonial policy ruined in
the Levant. '
Bush, like Lawrence before him, imagines that he is inspiring a people
to accomplish things they couldn't do without him. (That is why he
can't admit that the Lebanese have been having elections for decades,
and has to pretend it all started with him.) And all he gets for his
inspired Transformation of others' lives is carping about the expected
oil contracts in Iraq not being there. There is even prickliness from
the French. Lawrence might have sympathized.
3. Believes he is "special" and can only be understood by, or should
associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
4. Requires excessive admiration
5. Has a sense of entitlement.
He is the Decider. He doesn't need Security Council resolutions to
start wars. He doesn't need warrants for wire taps. He is entitled. He
is the War President (never mind that he chose to go to war in Iraq and
so made himself into the war president, and that the war presidency
would be over with by now if he were any good at it.)
6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his own ends.
7. Lacks empathy
Bush only "worries" that eventually there may be a civil war in Iraq.
He doesn't admit that he made a whole country of 25 million people into
guinea pigs, and that as a result 3,000 are dying a month in civil war
violence of the most brutal kind. '
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of
him
9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or
attitudes.
Saying that he can understand that having over 2600 of our troops come
home in body bags and over 8,000 come home seriously wounded, with
limbs gone or brain or spinal damage, is a cause of "anxiety" to the
American "psyche" is patronizing. He knows better about why this has to
be. The inferior people are a little upset, but that is because they
don't understand that he is the Transformer. What they're upset about
is just the side effect of the Transformation. They don't believe. They
can't see the Transformation before their eyes. They are inferior.
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just call him *****.
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