Robert Bly

’s "War Is The Health Of The State" (1991) Essay, Research Paper

President Bush’s decision to attack Iraq is the greatest

mistake ever made by an American president. Because the soul of the nation is still torn

by the Vietnam War, the banking community is in desperate shape, research funds

disappearing, schools being abandoned, the nation cannot afford this manic adventure, this

inappropriate Good Friday of fireworks, this resolute walking off the cliff that

"beetles o’er its brow into the sea."

The Mexican War, in 1846, was an ugly event, and we recall Abraham Lincoln saying of

the then president, Polk: "His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and

thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it

can settle down and be at ease." The decisions to break the Indian treaties, to

attack North Korea, to go off the gold standard, to fund "Star Wars" were all

bad decisions, but none of them imperiled the republic as the attack on Iraq does. The

Iraq operation is larger than the arms runs to the Contras, but it depends similarly on

secretive governmental decisions for war, supported relatively by Congress when it is too

late to change. The government decision gives no hint of shadow motives. Deception goes to

the heart of the decision and deception is dangerous to the republic.

The president, speaking the other day to religious leaders, said, "We seek nothing

for ourselves." Can one imagine Napoleon sending 500,000 troops across the plains to

Russia and declaring, "We seek nothing for ourselves"? He got nothing, but he

sought much. So do all sovereign states that enter war.

A revolting high-mindedness surrounds the decision. We say that Saddam is a demon, and

we are angels. Saddam is a disgusting murderer–resembling in that respect Pinochet,

Marcos, Franco, Trujillo, and many old solemn friends of the United States.

We see Iraq’s shadow, but not our own shadow. President Bush could mention that he used

to be head of the local KGB–I mean the CIA–which kills secretly, close up and at a

distance. I know that one may expect self-righteousness, pious rhetoric, hypocrisy, verbal

chicanery, entire sheep pulled across one’s eyes, outright lies from presidents and prime

ministers, but this high-mindedness takes place in some new area. The media accept the

hypocritical rhetoric and pass it on virtually without comment. They invite generals to

discuss the morality of war.

Shadow-concealment on a large scale is going on, and that leads the nation to act out

the myth of St. George and the Dragon. Curiously, the myth first entered Westerners’

consciousness during the Crusades. In Mediterranean versions the hero engages the

dragon for some ritual time, whereupon the Dragon transforms into human shape. But the

Europeans perverted the myth into a killing myth. The knight kills the Dragon. Bush

–strangely named George–has been turning Saddam Hussein into a dragon so he can kill

him. Both Saddam and Bush have adopted the myth to blacken and demonize the other side.

For a planet that can now be glimpsed whole from space, these incitements to tribal

hatreds are too primitive. The perverted Dragon myth is driving Western and Near Eastern

consciousness on to the coming disaster.

If we return to psychological thought for a moment, we notice that something we can’t

see in our own shadow prevents us from grasping Saddam’s motives and thought. Bush,

relying on contemporary up-to-date Beltline models, assured us that Saddam, sufficiently

threatened, would withdraw. "I feel it in my gut." Four hundred thousand troops

would do it; wrong. Security Council backing would do it; wrong. A deadline would do it;

wrong. Congressional backing would do it; wrong. Who has ever, as a war leader, been so

wrong?

Saddam is not operating in the Western psychological mode. He is apparently in the

Crusader mode–ancient enmities, death for God, manic warriorhood, sacrifice, loss,

advance, sacrifice, loss, advance. We behaved that way in 1100 also, so it is part of our

shadow, but not now available to us. President Johnson, relying on attrition in the South,

and bombing in the North, failed to grasp Vietnamese psychology. Bush is repeating this

colossal error.

The United States, like every other nation, finds itself both a state and a country.

The state has a valid interest in oil, whether or not oil continues to be sold in dollars,

and how oil is funneled to Germany and Japan. The state’s interests are international

interests; Bush has always done best in representing the state. Randolph Bourne once said,

"War is the health of the state."

In other words, if the state doesn’t go to war for a while, it begins to feel

sick. But included in the United States there is also a country, and in this decade the

country has its con

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