Arguably, finding God further warped his character. Instead
of remaining an unread, ill-traveled, inarticulate, crude, callous,
mean-spirited, trouble-making, revenge-seeking, Vietnam-evading,
incompetent, loud-mouthed, cheap-shot, but consistenly-bailed-out
narcissist, Bush became a narcissist emboldened by the belief that God
had called upon him - him! — to lead the United States.
Moreover, if Bush was narcissistic enough to claim: "I feel like God
wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my
country is going to need me," [p. 171] simply imagine the extent to
which his fatally flawed narcissism metastasized after he "won" the
White House (and, subsequently, reelection). As Aesop once observed:
"The smaller the mind the greater the conceit." [p. 172]
According to Hossein-Zadeh, America's neoconservatives manipulated
Bush's Manichaean certitudes about good and evil by presenting the
September 11 atrocities as a "lightning bolt" and, thus, a sign
indicating Bush's God-given destiny to destroy the evil of terrorism.
[p. 172, borrowing from Stephen Sniegoski, "The War on Iraq: Conceived
in Israel]
Moreover, "having helped define the president's mission, the
military-industrial-Likud-Christian Right interests, working largely
through the neoconservative militarists, have taken the most advantage
of the thus energized president. By deliberately couching their
nefarious objectives in missionary terms, and repeatedly defining their
enemies, real or imaginary, in biblical language ('axis of evil,
evildoers, good versus evil, day of reckoning,' and the like), they
have had no difficulty getting the president to carry out their agenda,
including the plan to recast the geopolitical map of the Middle East,
starting with the invasion of Iraq." [p. 172]
Did it work? Simply recall candidate Bush's suspicion that God wanted
him to be president. Then recall that, on June 4, 2003, President
George W. Bush confided to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas:
"God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them, and then He
instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did." [Dilip Hiro,
Secrets and Lies, p. 1]
Which raises two questions: (1) Given all the mistakes and failures
attending Bush's heinous invasion and, now, unwinnable war, why didn't
the same God, who told Bush to "strike at Saddam," also tell him how to
achieve certain victory in Iraq? (2) And why shouldn't Americans
suspect that Bush's latest plan, the "surge," is nothing more than
another neocon manipulation of his God-emboldened narcissism?
Republican party operatives and right-wing media pimps might sign on,
if only to delay defeat in Iraq until after their President leaves
office
After all, as esteemed analyst Anthony Cordesman has observed: "The
minimal requirement for a successful U.S. strategy is a relatively
stable and secure Iraq, not temporary U.S. military control of
Baghdad." Why? Because "the U.S. needs a strategy for all of Iraq, not
a single city - particularly when a focus on control of Baghdad could
mean leaving most of the country to divide on sectarian and ethnic
lines." ["The New Strategy in Iraq: Uncertain Progress Towards an
Unknown Goal,"
Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 14, 2007, p. 4]
Yet, as Professor Hossein-Zadeh warns, the greatest immediate danger to
the U.S. and the world does not come from yet another flawed strategy
in Iraq, but from the fact that the U.S. still is led by a
God-emboldened narcissist, who is divorced from reality and subject to
manipulation, especially by Vice President Cheney and the neocons.
Thus, he quotes Paul Craig Roberts, who has written: "People with power
in their hands who are detached from reality are the most dangerous
people of all. The delusional quality of their rantings disarms people
from taking them seriously: 'Oh, they couldn't mean that.' But they
do." [Pp. 175-76]
Detached from reality? Consider these lies and delusions: Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction. Saddam's ties to al Qaeda. We will be
greeted as liberators. A "Coalition of the Willing." Shock and awe. A
liberation, not an occupation. "Dead enders," not an insurgency.
Bringing democracy to the Middle East. Mission accomplished. Sectarian
violence, not civil war. The "surge" is working.
When the American electorate finally came to its senses in November
2006 and registered its opposition to the war in Iraq by evicting the
complicit Republican-controlled Congress that practiced stay-the-course
bootlicking rather than critical oversight of Bush's war, delusional
Bush responded with his neocon-inspired "surge," an escalation of his
war in Iraq. Similarly, when the Iraq Study Group recommended a
diplomatic offensive, to include Iran and Syria, as well as "a change
in the primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq that will allow the
United States to move forces out responsibly" ["Iraq Study Group:
Change Iraq strategy now,"
CNN, Dec. 6, 2006], delusional Bush responded with his "surge."
Thus, there's abundant external evidence to substantiate Professor
Hossein-Zadeh's exposure of the unique and immediate dangers posed to
the United States, Iraq, Iran and much of the rest of the world, due to
the delusions of America's God-emboldened narcissistic President,
George W. Bush. Quoting Lew Rockwell, Hossein-Zadeh agrees: "Bush is
alarming, the kind of president who seems capable of blowing up the
world and calling it good." [p. 174]
Lest that sound over the top, consider Zbigniew Brzezinski's testimony
to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as recently as February 1,
2007: "Practically no country in the world - no country in the world -
shares the Manichaean delusions that the administration so passionately
articulates."
Watch out, Iran! For as Brzezinski also warned: "Indeed, a mythical
historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and
expanding war is already being articulated."
Yet, Professor Hossein-Zadeh has still bigger fish to fry. In his view,
"The moral priority is…to dismantle…the warfare state, or the
socioeconomic structure that cultivates and elevates the likes of
George W. Bush [and Dick Cheney] to positions of power." [p. 178] His
examination of the dangers posed by that warfare state will be the
subject of Part Two of this article.
Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose
work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation,
the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History,
the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President
of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).
waltuhler@aol.com
Writings 
Had Ismael Hossein-Zadeh written nothing more than his seven-page snapshot of the God-emboldened narcissism of President George W. Bush, his recent book, 
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