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Recent
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May
8, 2003
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
May
7, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Quoting Under the Influence: Breasts,
Martinis, Hitchens
David
Krieger
Winning the War; Alienating the World
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush's Troubling Speech
Bruce Jackson
Bill Kunstler's Last Big Speech
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/07
Website
of the Day
The Truth About Bush's Military Records
May
6, 2003
Paul
de Rooij
An Activist in the Trenches: an Interview
with Gretta Duisenberg
Anthony
Gancarski
Money to Burn: in Defense of Bill Bennett
John
Stanton
Bush's War on Jesus
Sam
Hamod
W. Bush: the Little Snot, the Little
Bully
Robert
Fisk
Bush Says the War is Over: Tell It to
the Shi'a
Kathleen
Christison
A Roadmap to Nowhere
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/06
May
5, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Phase Two: Syria and Iran
Jorge
Mariscal
The Militarization of US Culture
Ishmael
Reed
A Family Values Man
Tarif Abboushi
Sharon's Confidence: Bush Won't Come to Shove on Roadmap
Leila
Matsui
Regime Change Begins at Home...Literally
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Sam
Smith
Coalition of the Shilling
May
3, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970
Elaine
Cassel
William Bennett, a Freudian Perspective
Sam
Hamod
Understanding the Shi'a of Lebanon
Scott
Fleming
Getting Shot on the Oakland Docks
Mickey
Z.
Cuba and Puerto Rico: 100 Years of Terror
William
S. Lind
Don't Take Col. John Boyd's Name in Vain
Dr.
Bruce Blair
The New Nuclear Terrorism Threat
Joanne
Mariner
Cluster Bombs Over Iraq
Anthony
Gancarski
Hot Fun in the Summertime
Ilian Pappe
Searching Jenin
William
MacDougall
America's Kids Are All Right: Pre-Teen Conservative Commentators
Seth Sandronsky
Incarcerated and Invisible
Rich
Procter
Over Our Dead Bodies
Lenni Brenner
How Bob Dylan Found His Voice
Adam
Engel
American Bulk
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/03
May
2, 2003
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
May
1, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Santorum: That's Latin for Asshole
Iain
Boal
A May Day Message to the FCC: "We
Are Many; They are Few"
Diana
Johnstone
About Cuba
Sam
Hamod
Killings at Al Fallujah, City of Mosques
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Fiasco
Lee Sustar
Greed Air: Airline Workers Agree to Pay Cuts, While Bosses Stuff
Their Pockets
Peter
Linebaugh
May Day at Kut and Kenthal
Stew Albert
Straight Shooters
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/01
Website
of the Day
South Bay Mobilization
April
30, 2003
Ashley
Smith
Under Uncle Sam's Thumb: a History
of Washington's Occupations
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/30
Gary
Leupp
Shooting Schoolboys: Preliminary Thoughts on the Fallujah Massacre
Robert
Jensen
Fighting Alienation in the USA
Wayne
Madsen
The Four Horsemen of Propaganda
Ahmad
Faruqui
Bush's Strategic Myopia About the Middle East
Gabriel
Kolko
Iraq, the US and the End of the European Coalition
Adolfo
Perez Esquivel
A Nobel Laureat's Letter to Bush:
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April
29, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Disorder and Opportunity: the Results
of the Iraq War
Uri
Avnery
Don't Envy Abu-Mazen
Anthony
Gancarski
Brush with the Law
Mickey
Z.
POWs: Then and Now
CounterPunch
Wire
How to Spin Israel on the Hill: Internal Lobbying Documents
Robert
Fisk
Did the US Murder Journalists?
Chris
Floyd
Bush Telegraphs His Punches on Syria
Wayne Madsen
About Those Iraqi Intelligence Documents
Wallace
Gagne
Pilgrimage or Demolition Derby?
Eliot Katz
Playing Catch with Cracked Globes
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/29
Hot Stories
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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May
9, 2003
G.W. Bush:
Drunk on Power
by SAM HAMOD and ELAINE
CASSEL
The president he got
his wars
folks don't know just what it's for;
No one gives us a rhyme or reason
have one doubt they call it treason.
Eugene
McDaniels
"Compared to What?"
An addicted brain is a changed brain. When you
ingest a substance like alcohol, cocaine, or nicotine, your brain
recognizes those substances as dopamine. These substances "bind"
to dopamine receptors in the brain. Dopamine is also released
every time you do something pleasurable. But you get your dopamine
kicks, so to speak, in a different way from your friend. Your
friend may get a jolt from winning a tennis match; you might
get it from accomplishing some task at the office.
Dopamine is the brain chemical (neurochemical) that produces
the "high," the sense of satisfaction and well-being
that you think came from the alcohol or the pleasurable activity.
The little-known secret, demonstrated amply by recent neuroscience,
is that that "feel-good" state actually arises from
the dopamine. The person continues to use the substance because
he is trying to feel normal. But he (or she) cannot feel normal
without the substance-or a substitute. That is why people recovering
from one substance addiction often choose a substitute-recovering
alcoholics are notorious smokers, for instance. They are replacing
alcohol with nicotine, because nicotine also binds to the brain's
dopamine receptors. But the more they do it, the more they have
to do it. Why? To try to feel normal. The brain is not
making the stuff anymore, or making little of it, and they have
to help it along by continuing substance use or activities that
cause great pleasure.
What does this explanation of the brain's
dopamine system have to do with President G.W. Bush?
George Bush is an alcoholic. Once an alcoholic,
always an alcoholic, according to neuroscientists. Bush's brain
was changed by his substance use. And his brain did not return
to its "normal" or predrinking state after he stopped
drinking. Proof positive of that is that he is showing signs
of a new addiction-an addiction to power. (See Katherine Van
Wormer's prescient piece in CounterPunch: Dry
Drunk Syndrome and George W. Bush, from October, 2002.)
He has gone from being a drunk, to being drunk on power. Iraq,
rather than cooling his addiction, fueled it. As he said on the
aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln, off the "perilous"
coast of San Diego, "This is but ONE victory." He implied
there will be more victories; thus, he will need more conquests
to feed this new addiction to power.
Before September 11, The Washington
Post focused more on his long, intense morning workouts than
on his domestic policy. He had no foreign policy; he looked
upon that with disdain. But with the tragedy of September 11
came a plethora of unexpected ways to get high.
We all know the famous dictum from Lord Acton, "Absolute
power corrupts, absolutely." Today, we have a situation
that is rare in history. Today, the US is an absolute super power.
Bush is its Commander-in-Chief and president, and there is no
one to stop him from using the awesome power of the US military
might. Having tasted power, first with the ability to pass virtually
without objection a sweeping law that changed what it means to
be free (and unfree) in America today-the USA Patriot Act, then
with so-called "success" in Afghanistan (though the
big fish got away), he had a new substance to give him his dopamine
jolt -- Power. Power became his new addiction. Clearly, from
the changed tone of his rhetoric, his adrenaline is working on
Power. He has it and craves more. And not just in America, but
in the world.
His addiction to power has corrupted his view of what America
is about. He has decided, along with his "enablers,"
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft, Rove and Perle, that he
should make pre-emptive strikes against any possible future foes
and justify those strikes to the American people wrapped in a
cloak of "I protected you for the sake of your future and
that of your children." He has also created a rhetoric of
exclusion, wherein anyone who does not buy his side of the argument
or its premises, is labeled a "traitor." And in his
rhetorical and psychological scheme, the patriots are those who
buy into his vision.
His rhetoric of exclusion has frightened and intimidated the
Congress and the media. Neither of them is willing to stand up
to his ad hominem attacks for fear of being called a "traitor."
Thus, Bush and his Iraq invasion advisor, Rumsfeld, attacked
any journalist who made negative or critical comments. Even the
celebrated Christine Amanpour had to defend herself and her fellow
journalists because they'd reported the killing of civilians
and the looting of the Iraq Museum.
And this is the problem with an addict: His world must be under
his control; he cannot tolerate any ambiguity or threat to his
perfection. At times we have heard addicts say, "Man, this
cocaine is better than sex, better than heaven itself."
Because they have control of that world and only they
inhabit it and they circumscribe its realities.
We need not mention what happened to Al Jazeera and other foreign
media when they criticized Bush or US actions in Afghanistan
or Iraq. They were bombed, killed or shelled until they went
off the air, fled or were forced out. No one is allowed to disrupt
the perfection of the addict's power hungry world. This was seen
in dictatorships of Joseph Stalin, Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Idi
Amin, and even Bush's contemporaries, Saddam Hussein and Robert
Mugabe. They were all men who were addicted, drunk with power
and did, and would do, anything necessary to assert their perfect
control over their universe.
Of course, this is anathema to a real democracy. But kind of
democracy do we have? Secret searches, secret detention, secret
trials? What's next? Secret executions?
Bush is destroying the country he swore
to protect. As Paul Krugman wrote on May 7, in the New York Times,
"that was another country", referring to America and
where it is today in comparison to what we were before Bush got
drunk on power. September 11 gave Bush the dopamine substitute
he needed, and the need for more grows each and every day.
Bush's speech aboard the aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln, was
pure theatre, designed to exult in maximum power. The tactics
included arriving by jet fighter, which he proudly claimed to
have piloted when he could have more safely arrived by helicopter
(the carrier was not at sea, but close in to San Diego). Then,
the ship was positioned in such a way to give Bush the maximum
effect with the ocean behind him, as if he was an admiral of
the open sea, of the world-not just aboard a ship close in to
a safe port. And in wearing the official flight suit of the ship's
squadron (when he shunned the trappings of his National Guard
squadron), it was transparently clear that Bush was on a high
like no other. Doubtless, it surpassed any alcohol binge.
But of course, like the family of an alcoholic, we, the family
of G.W. Bush, the citizens of the United States, pay a heavy
price for the drunkenness of our "father," if you pardon
the analogy. This week, the Dean of the U.S. Senate, Senator
Robert Byrd, lashed out at Bush for making a "campaign speech"
that "disrespected" the U.S. military and shamed the
country. Ask any one who has had a parent or a spouse who is
an alcoholic-they will tell you what shame is all about. Shame
and disgrace aptly describe Bush's drunken excess on board that
Navy vessel.
Bush is now demonstrating what Alcoholics Anonymous refers to
as the "dry drunk syndrome"--a sense of false self-aggrandizement,
a belligerency against those who disagree with him, a logic that
brooks no shades of gray or complexity, a glorification of having
"conquered alcohol" (but not realizing that another
addiction has taken its place) and an unsatisfied feeling at
the core of his being that must constantly be fed by new and
exhilarating experiences or adventures to satisfy his new addiction.
Sam Hamod
is an expert on world affairs, especially the Arab and Muslim
worlds, former editor of THIRD WORLD NEWS (in Wash, DC), a former
professor at Princeton University, former Director of The National
Islamic Center of Washington, DC, an advisor to the US State
Department and author of ISLAM IN THE WORLD TODAY. He is the
editor of www.todaysalternativenews.com,
and may be reached at shamod@cox.net
Elaine Cassel
teaches law and psychology and practices law in the District
of Columbia and Virginia. She is a contributor to CounterPunch
and Findlaw.com's Writ, and keeps a watch on the Bush Administration's
rewriting of the Bill of Rights on her Civil Liberties Watch site hosted by Minneapolis,
Minnesota's City Pages.
Cassel can be reached at: ecassel1@cox.net
Yesterday's
Features
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
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