War-Mongering is a Family Affair

A Knight-Ridder article published in Sunday newspapers across the nation on September 29, 2002 quoted President Bush as stating family reasons behind his militaristic approach toward Iraq’s leader: "After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad." Ron Hutcheson writes of the President, "He has spent much of his life following in his father’s footsteps, and his filial loyalty is unquestioned."

The elder George Bush is quoted also: "I hate Saddam Hussein." And in a 1991 diary entry, the former president wrote, "He’s got to go."

A pastoral psychology perspective pays attention to systems and not just individual players in the current U.S.-Iraq crisis. Especially we raise questions, without diagnosing, about what might be going on systemically in a multi-generational presidential family.

When an individual's expressed will to kill seems inexplicable on the basis of rationale provided otherwise, the behavior is understood better by seeing it within the larger context of his family system. In President Bush's case, we would ask questions such as these: To what extent is the President's passion for "removing" his father's yet undefeated would-be assassin motivated by being "George, Jr.," by having "followed in his father's footsteps," by filial loyalty and his assumed eldest sibling role within the family-of-origin?

How much of this disproportionate warring response derives from a likely felt need to prove oneself a worthy warrior after earlier life experiences of not living up to the family name, of even having brought shame perhaps to the family via a destructive lifestyle of heavy drinking, vocational aimlessness and failures?

One's cultural system impacts individual behaviors as well. In this case, to what extent does the President's cultural background of Texas machismo influence his war-making? Does it derive in part from a systemic expectation that a "real man" will avenge his family's enemies and protect his own household, especially his wife (who was home in the White House and then on Capitol Hill on "9-11", hence the perceived target of one foiled terrorist attack)?

To what extent is the vengeful focus on Saddam Hussein a displacement of national systemic anxiety arising from other elusive sources: frustrated efforts to kill Osama bin Laden, corporate fears about "homeland security," public dissatisfaction with economic recession, and impending electoral changes in the wake of November elections or those anticipated in 2004?

These are not idle speculations. World war has been kindled before in the households of those whose power included that of conscripting for war the sons and daughters of other family systems. May it not happen to us--and them--now once again.

Tarris D. Rosell