Rumsfeld, War Fever and the Lynching of Iraq

Who is really to blame for the Iraq war? With the big Republican losses in the midterm elections and the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, everyone will be scurrying around in search of scapegoats. President Bush and his Cabinet, the Pentagon, Congress and the media all bear a share of the blame. But their share is minimal at best. For the real driving force behind this war was the American public. After the 9/11 tragedy, America’s precious democracy morphed into a lynch mob, stirred to a frenzy of war fever and vengeance for Arab blood. In their haste, they were unable or unwilling even to tell one Arab from another, the secular Saddam Hussein, from the Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden.

Polls on the eve of the 2003 invasion showed seventy percent of the American population insisting that the Administration had provided convincing evidence that Iraq contained Weapons of Mass Destruction. However, the Administration hadn’t provided any evidence. Surely that fact ought to have alerted someone in authority to the fact that America was metamorphising into a mob. Reason simply could not penetrate the ecstatic fog of catharsis Americans felt by invading Iraq.

Any serious Democratic opposition to the invasion, collapsed under the weight of Lynch Mob America, which included their constituents as well. After all, how many elected officials would have the courage to stand before a lynch mob and risk having their political careers trampled to death underfoot? The answer was very few indeed. President Bush, may be America's Commander in Chief, but after 9/11, he merely tagged alongside the mob with a megaphone, shouting zealous platitudes about “freedom,” and the “War on Terror.” Donald Rumsfeld stood at the fore, signaling the way to the victim’s door.

America, not just Donald Rumsfeld or the Republicans, has destroyed Iraq. Now that the ghastly deed has been done, the good, democratic people of our nation return to their senses, feeling just a little grubby and just a little shamed. There is blood on their hands but they can’t quite recall the despicable deed they joined into, en masse.

There will be political analyses aplenty about how America got into this Iraq mess. But if we really want to prevent another "Iraq" in our future, such reports will be irrelevant. What we should really be studying is the literature developed around the era of American segregation on the psychology of the lynch mob.