Pro-War Personality Disorder
As a result of the 9/11 attack US forces invaded Afghanistan at a cost of billions of dollars to American taxpayers. Osama Bin Laden got away. The next target was Iraq, although not because of Al Qaeda, but because of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Director General of the IAEA, Mohamed El-Baradei, informed the US government that his Chief Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix, had found no reliable evidence that WMD's still existed, let alone that they could be ready for deployment. The US invaded Iraq nevertheless, at a cost of billions of dollars to American taxpayers. There were no WMD's. Three thousand military personnel had been killed by the end of 2006 and many more have been maimed for life. What do the pro-war lobby mean by "Freedom Fries" anyway? Are they referring to bodies that get pulled out of military vehicles?
Back in the 1970's the Vietnam War ended in victory for the North Vietnamese at an even higher cost to the USA. The rest of the world looks on in horror at the eargerness with which the US government goes to war. Just think what could be done to improve the quality of life for American citizens with just a fraction of the war budget. Free healthcare anyone? It would cost a lot less than invading foreign countries. Perhaps the US should re-introduce the draft, but restrict it to pro-war cheerleaders. Then send them to Iraq.
Kurt Vonnegut, author of the anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five, said in an online article that he believes many corporate executives and government leaders are afflicted with psychopathic personalities which match actual textbook definitions:
"PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care... Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich..."Why are political views more deeply divided in America than anywhere else in the free world? According to Michael Milburn, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, the difference is in the way individuals were raised, as he explained in a Newsweek magazine interview [another copy of the text].
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Mohamed El-Baradei spoke out against war and nuclear weapons, but he refrained from naming the USA and Israel as transgressors. It was a different story when British playwright Harold Pinter gave his acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature, titled "Art, Truth & Politics." The first 20 paragraphs of his Nobel Lecture are about the way he tackles the creative process of writing a play, but the part that followed was a powerful indictment of United States foreign policy. And Tony Blair wasn't spared either: Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel Lecture in English, or German, French or Swedish.
