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Our Feelings Are The Key To Why We Went To War
My neighbor once announced righteously when describing a dispute at work: Feelings are facts! Well, not exactly. But what's great about them is we don't have to check them like we check facts. We just announce them. Or share them.
This is a column that's only marginally about the war in Iraq. It's not a fact column. It's a story about feelings.
Let's start by remembering how we got there. We watched the towers burn and fall. We cried and kicked the furniture. We felt angry and sad, and then we attacked Afghanistan. That's where the bad guys who'd hijacked our planes and blown up our buildings had been trained. That's where their bosses lived. We didn't catch Osama bin Laden but we killed a lot of his friends.
Yet it was over so fast and we still felt angry and sad. We'd been attacked spectacularly on Sept. 11. Could it happen again? Everybody said it could. So we began to feel scared, too. Especially when we were told Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction.
He'd used them before, so why not again? And why not against us?
This was a battle over the future of the world, our president told us. "You are either for us or against us," he told the world. He had his dukes up. He'd just bare-knuckled Afghanistan. So we cheered him on when he squared off against Saddam. The television news cheered him on.
When a singer said she felt embarrassed by him, her band's music was banned by hundreds of radio stations. We felt happy and righteous. We liked our cowboy.
Admit it. Many of us didn't, but most of us did.
So that's why we went to war in Iraq. Because we felt like it. We were feeling hurt, and we were feeling threatened. And this war was about our feelings. Not facts. We felt righteous and angry, and as my brother-in-law wrote me: We have to do something!
So we marched to Baghdad. We didn't even need that many troops. We had bombs guided by lasers -- and a national will guided by the illusion that others love us as much as we love ourselves. We imagined Iraqis would line the streets waving flags.
Instead, they spent a couple of weeks looting. All the stores and markets. All the weapons caches. Hey, we thought as we watched, what about us? Don't you feel happy we're here?
In the meantime, our president had landed on an aircraft carrier, hopped out of the jet wearing a flight suit, and announced that our mission in Iraq had been accomplished. We cheered lustily. Not all of us, but most of us. He was the boss of the biggest war machine in the history of Earth. He had ships, he had planes. He had lots of serious men and women ready to kill and die for him. So in a way, we all did! We felt very powerful!
No wonder the president thought he was doing God's work. No wonder when no weapons of mass destruction were found we easily changed the mission from the banal to the sublime -- we would bring the light of freedom to this dark part of the world!
Hey, why not? Wasn't it pretty to think so?
That was four years ago.
Since then there's been an election in Iraq. That made us feel great. But the Iraqi government has yet to pass even one law. At least not one that anybody follows. So we feel frustrated. And we are trying to feel patient.
But hundreds of people are dying every week. Thousands a month. Tens of thousands a year!
So we feel confused and exasperated, and every time an American soldier comes home to be buried, we feel very sad. Especially when we hear that the brave soldier died fighting to keep America free. Because we ask ourselves: Do we feel freer?
Since the start of the war, the laws in America have changed. Our government can now listen to the conversations of its free citizens. Our government is now permitted to haul people away in the middle of the night and put them in prison indefinitely. If the president feels you are an enemy combatant, he can legally have you locked up, tortured. And nobody you know will even know where you went.
Feeling free?
Maybe not. How about safe? Do you feel safer yet?
Before you answer, here are a few things to consider. I won't call them facts, just things: There are hundreds of thousands of brothers and cousins and uncles and fathers of the tens of thousands we have killed -- and there are more every day. Many might not have thought two seconds about America before the war, but they don't like us very much now.
Or this: Before we invaded Iraq, there had never been a suicide bombing there.
One more: Before the war, moderate Muslim leaders around the world had a much bigger following than the radical Muslim leaders. Now, who knows? Do you?
So maybe we don't feel so safe either.
The Republicans in Congress have called the Democrats' plan to withdraw from Iraq a "surrender" plan. Surrender is a bad word, and we feel ashamed when we hear it. I know I do. Ashamed because of the mess we made. Ashamed because four years ago we sent our army into another country to kill thousands of human beings because we felt unsafe. Ashamed because we kept the war going because we felt all those good people who have done our killing and dying must have done so for a good reason (although the reason kept changing).
Ashamed because our big feelings and big weapons have caused big misery. The administration tells us to be brave, and to stick with the new war plan: to keep Iraqis safe! We've warned that if we think we feel unsafe now, we will be feeling really unsafe it the Iraqis are unsafe.
Why is it we are urged to be brave, and then asked to make foreign policy based on fear?
But don't think about that. And don't think about how none of the previous goals of the war panned out according to plan. As I said at the beginning, this column is only marginally about Iraq. And it's not about facts. It's about our feelings.
David Cates, a native of Madison and son of Madison attorney Richard Cates, lives in Missoula, Mont., where he teaches and writes.
© 2007 The Madison Capital Times
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13 Comments so far
Show AllThe question still remains, how do we get a handle on our feelings, and put them into a constructive perspective? Yes, most of us here share the sentiment of kivais, but many others do not. And absolutely yes, our feelings can be used by others to manipulate us. Indeed they have. So, how do we rise above and get beyond the emotional divide-and-conquer strategies, the hate propaganda that really does work, the flag burning, gay rights, abortions issues, etc. that have been so effectively used to manipulate the body politic? For most of us our feelings are necessary and important, For some, they are the key to guiding us in our life journey. So, how do we learn to separate the wheat from the chaff? I'm asking, because many people I know, family and friends alike, simpIy will not learn, listen or reason beyond what they want to hear and believe; ie, they see and hear what they want to see and hear.
The I-Ching says, "one small passion lurking in the heart has the power to obscure all reason."
"Feelings" are especially played on in elections where hot-button issues like abortion or gay marriage are thrown out. The repugs will no doubt do everything they can to play on fear of muslims and gays. Any real opposition should focus on fear of economic crisis, war and environmental catastrophe with emphasis on New Orleans.
There are consequences for choices one make, both as a society and as individuals.
One of the finer arguments in favor of thinking instead of feeling.
I have a feeling that we all reap what we sow.
Human feelings are the leverage point for manipulation. But we (the people) did not demand the war in Iraq. Washington gave us this war.
Not just George W. Bush, not just the Neocons, not even just the Republicans. Not just the Congress caving to voters' fears of "a mushroom cloud" and passing the AUMF that was Bush's blank check to invade Iraq, wiretap the nation, suspend Habeus Corpus, and who knows what else.
Washington is a whole system that is way out of step with the people it governs.
One election cycle in which the choices are between complicitous parties isn't going to come close to fixing that. Neither is blaming people for being easily manipulated through their feelings.
Absolutely! But what is the key to getting a handle on our feelings?
Fact is humans rationalize what they want to be true, based on how they feel. And although we can temper and even change our feelings through open and constructive thought processes, few folks actually do. Many won't even try. It often takes a crisis, a life-altering traumatic event before it will happen.
Even then, as 9/11 clearly demonstrates, they react with their feelings, and then base their reason on those feelings. They accept those feelings as true and necessary, in spite of the few great examples, such as the Amish have demonstrated, to inform us that our feelings, our responses are choices, not incontrovertible absolutes.
Most folks I know, whether for or against the war, then or now, still have little or no concept of all the facts. Regardless of their level of information, education or intelligence, they do not seem capable of honest mindful objectivity, being much too quick to say "I think..." or "I feel..." with little regard for their obvious, even pious personal subjectivity - for their ignorance of the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They feel and think the way they do because it's the way they want to think and feel.
Anais Nin said it best, "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.... because it is the 'I' behind the 'eye' that does the seeing."
Until there exists a singular common vision for humanity, which all peoples embrace as good and supreme, there cannot be anything but cycles of conflict and struggles for power.
Corporate capitalism, military hegemony, and the religious culture of would-be man-kings simply can not provide the framework of enterprise, cooperation and shared spirituality that will take the human race the whole distance to peace and good will amongst men. Ultimately, our guiding life-building principles must be founded upon honorable service and altruistic accomplishment rather than self-promotion and self-interest. Until then, it's each man, woman and child, each culture and country for themselves.
Voltare said, "If you can be made to believe absurdities, you can be made to commit atrocities."
Feelings are something normal humans have. Sociopathic villians know how to manipulate and exploit those feeling for their own vile agendas.
I remember feeling extreme disgust and anger when a figurehead ignoramus, who walks like a trained chimpanzee, made some idiotic speech, with blood figuratively running down the sides of his mouth, about some people on the other side of the world that he planned to annihilate, with weapons he controlled but he could not even begin to understand, for reasons he hoped that the public did not understand.
I remember feeling bewildered and stunned that some would compare a barely literate stooge as he read a prepared speech with Winston Churchill, a brilliant though flawed man, who had shown real courage and real tenacity in the face of real threats.
I remember my feelings of disappointment in the country of my birth becoming feelings of outrage and embarrassment that this country, which always had maintained a few good qualities to go along with its many faults, was becoming pure evil and the harbinger of the nightmare future that Orwell had envisioned.
Those are the feelings I remember.
Right on, party of one and Jaded Prole. I don't buy one presumption of this article, that a majority from the get go supported this war. Just about everyone I know sensed something was UP when the twin towers came down, and Bush masked the PREMISE of justice as a call to vengeance. Some Christian! I hope he GETS his audience with Jesus on the other side once he makes the great crossing. He probably thinks he can tell death to take a walk along with The Constitution, decency, Truth, The Geneva Conventions, etc. Just make a signing statement. A new version of "The Devil and Daniel Webster." My FEELING was that these dangerous neocons who had stolen an election were going to use violence as a means to clamp down. Watching so many fall to fear and vengeance was painful, but the lies never obscured the truth for those with eyes to see (it).
No, we didn't all succumb to the fear mongers. Some of us protested. We marched, we wrote, we called. We knew.
Before "shock & awe", I wrote a letter to President Bush. In it, I described what would happen if he attacked Iraq. I was right... absolutely right. Of course, he didn't read it. Our President doesn't read. He's too busy thinking up some new way he can screw the people of this country, and do more damage in Iraq. Hmmm... maybe Iran...
You honestly believe the American population is capable of rational thought? Please. This is by far the most irrational bunch of morons on the planet. We are getting exactly what we deserve.
NO!!!! It's not about "feelings". To point to "feelings" is just to beg the question: What caused the "feelings"?
It's the OIL, stupid!! The fascist-korporatists who rule this unfortunate nation carefully manipulated our "feelings" to swindle us into a war which has so far transferred about a trillion dollars of our tax money into the coffers of the most odious bunch of liars and thieves to ever hold power here--or probably anywhere. They used their ownership of the Weapons of Mass Deception (apologies to Thom Hartmann)--CBS, ABC, NBC, Wall Street Journal, FOX, and, sadly, the New York Times and many others--to lie us into an emotional state which allowed many of us to be manipulated into believing the Thief in Chief and the criminals who cheated him into power.
And, no, there were MANY of us who knew better at the time. The Nation magazine told us in real-time about the lies and the underlying economic forces who were propagating them. We had "feelings", but they were not jingoistic blood lusts; they were such things as dread, amazement, and a deep, abiding anger at these liars, emotions which which persist today.
The hoss has left the burning barn. It doesn't matter now whether or not we close the door. The thieves have our money and are gone, leaving behind ashes and hopelessness. Gods help us.