On Reading "Fiasco" and "Bush on the Couch" Back-to-Back

First of all, I'm not sure I would recommend such an enterprise. Although I must admit, "Fiasco" is explained to a large degree by "Couch."

"Fiasco," by Thomas Ricks, is about the failed American adventure in Iraq. The central thesis of the book appears to be that all of our problems in Iraq derive from the manner of its execution. Mr. Ricks, in general (as might be expected of a Pentagon writer for the Washington Post), takes a sympathetic view of the military's efforts to succeed. Such charity must not always have been easy, as for example when reporting on the treatment of Iraqi detainees by U.S. forces. Nevertheless, he appears to imply, amid the dense flurry of military acronyms and code-named operations, that the U.S. military might have "accomplished" their "mission" had it not been for civilians screwing up the enterprise. Thus, Mr. Ricks hits all the usual points covered on cable talk shows and Tom Friedman apologetic columns. We didn't have enough troops. We disbanded the Iraqi army. The de-Baathification proceeded too soon and too comprehensively. We alienated the populace with strong-arm detention practices and mistreatment of prisoners.

Blah, blah, blah. It's a long book, but that's essentially what it says. Its value lies mainly in creating a source book for Administration critics who want to argue that the Bush people took an adventure doomed from the start and then proceeded to make it much worse than it needed to be. But that's about all, in my opinion.

The truth is simpler. Donald Rumsfeld may have been more prescient than we give him credit for. He was not gung-ho on this invasion from the beginning. It may have been his decision not to waste more of the U.S. military than was absolutely necessary. More perceptive critics of the war, such as Peter Galbraith, are now pointing out that Iraq is not now nor ever has been an actual "country," in the sense of a people sharing a unified indentity committed to a common polity. Since Churchill stitched its three essential fragments together in 1921, Iraq has struggled restively to break apart at any opportunity. The iron hand of Saddam Hussein held it together by means of a police state during modern times. The United States, on the other hand, in its blissful ignorance decided that the same cohesion could be accomplished by the "Iraqi" people through voluntary commitment to democracy.

This is not going to happen. George W. Bush can continue to say that it is happening until he's left office and is permanently employed as chief brush-clearer at the Crawford ranch. It will make no difference. The Kurds, as the favored sons of the U.S. occupation, are biding their time until they can present their secession as a fait accompli. The Shia are waiting until the U.S. leaves so they can enlist the aid of the Iranians in finishing a Sunni genocide, utilizing their growing militias (trained as the "Iraqi army" by the U.S.). The Sunnis are wondering what to do and who will be on their side.

As for "Bush on the Couch," by Justin Frank, M.D.: Dr. Frank styles this book a work of "applied psychoanalysis," by which he reaches tentative conclusions on Bush's psychological "formulation," both its origins and its current manifestations. In essence, he reaches the conclusion that Bush is a megalomaniac, with strong currents of paranoid ideation, and probably a sufferer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Dr. Frank traces Bush's mental problems not so much to his decades of alcohol and substance abuse as to formative experiences as an infant under the cold and distracted care of Barbara Bush. Relying heavily on the work of Melanie Klein, Dr. Frank attributes Bush's learning disabilities, linguistic difficulties and anxiety-management problems to a fundamental lack of nurturance. The good doctor is honest in admitting the limitations of diagnosis-at-a-distance and reliance upon secondary sources for much of the evidence.

I think it is interesting, in the first place, that a well-respected psychoanalyst would be moved to engage in such an endeavor. For there definitely is something about Bush that is so perplexing, so troubling, so creepy, that one wants to contain and control it through understanding. Bush is like the girlfriend who drove us nuts with her flightiness, her infidelity, her indifference, her casual cruelty, so much so that we begin to read about "borderline personalities" and "narcissistic disorders" on the Internet, and we check books out of the library and read at great length, all in an effort to distance ourselves from our emotions, to see ourselves as victims in solidarity with other poor souls who have suffered at the hands of similar monsters lacking any trace of empathy....it's kind of like that. Dr. Frank pours it on, adding anecdote to observation, mining the great seminal texts of his specialty (Freud, Jung, Klein), building an airtight case...which, as he knows and as we really know, doesn't really tell us all that much.

Bush is sui generis, one of those nightmarish apparitions who come along once in a great while to vex and haunt us, the girlfriend who cures you of all future "borderlines," who makes you yearn for someone down-to-earth and sensible who doesn't make your life "exciting" all the time. Just lets you breathe, and calm down, and stop worrying. Coming to terms with such a person is the great enterprise of which psychoanalysis and "understanding" are but a part. Mostly, you simply wait for it to be over.