As I have written about before, I am more than passingly familiar with the euphoria of creativity-filled up-cycles as well as the darkness of their unfortunate counterparts, those hideous depressive phases during which everything seems boring or bleak; tears and hopelessness are the order of the day; and even simple activities [...]]]>

As I have written about before, I am more than passingly familiar with the euphoria of creativity-filled up-cycles as well as the darkness of their unfortunate counterparts, those hideous depressive phases during which everything seems boring or bleak; tears and hopelessness are the order of the day; and even simple activities like picking out a shirt or brushing hair turn into loathsome, dreaded, and even inexecutable chores–forget actually doing anything productive. So it was with great interest that I dove into the literary results of Dr. Nassir Ghaemi’s intriguing research and analysis, A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness.

Mental illness–well, I like to call it being Mentally Interesting, for which descriptor I will thank the writer (and fellow Mentally Interesting Person) Jerod Poore–is not quite the taboo subject it was a few decades ago; it is no longer a hush-hush domain to which mysteriously disappeared classmates are consigned (“Where did she go?” “I don’t know, but I heard she had a nervous breakdown“); and–thank the Fates, along with relatively recent advances in neuroscience–it’s no longer a complete mystery (although, it must be said, the human mind is inarguably the last great frontier, and modern medicine has only just begun to embark on its journey toward solving the biochemical and behavioral puzzles therein).

The core thesis of A First-Rate Madness: Rational, calm, balanced, agreeable, reasonable, conciliatory, and sane people are lovely to have around. Ahem. But when all Hell breaks loose, you want a leader who can stand at the edge of the abyss, confront the monster within, and stare that horned and tentacled bastard down. For this kind of nation-saving and history-making leadership, only a Mentally Interesting person will do, knowing as he or she does (like the back of the hand, in fact) the precise reach of said monster’s limbs and the explicit scope of its awfulness.

At the outset, Ghaemi identifies the parallel nature of a clinician’s diagnosis (of a mentally ill patient) and a historian’s analysis. Both require a careful study of symptoms, of course, as well as an identification (if possible) of genetic components and an overview of indicated treatments–those sought, those avoided or not yet available, and those which succeeded (or failed).

Invoking the personal and fascinating stories of figures such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, and Mahatmas Gandhi, Ghaemi then points to the qualities–conspicuous in their abundance–that variously characterize those leaders who suffer with (and also, to be sure, exalt in) mental illness throughout the course of their lives, those being: Creativity, realism, empathy, and resilience.

In the case of General Sherman, for example, we are shown a leader who wholly transformed warfare from the faltering Napoleonic model of concentrated frontal assault to a bold and creative approach which took into account the economic and moral aspects of rebellion and thus enabled a totality of destruction that was at once brutal and wildly successful. But he was not, despite popular myth, a glorifier of war. Ghaemi explains:

Reconstructing the real Sherman, with his coercion as well as his complexity, means recognizing that he had manic-depressive illness. In fact, of all the leaders in this book, I would say that Sherman is the prototypical mentally ill leader. In different aspects of his bipolar disorder, he displayed many of the powers of mental illness to improve leadership: depressive realism, empathy for the South (before and after the war), resilience beyond measure, and unique military creativity. Yet until recently, no historian had carefully assessed whether Sherman himself suffered from deep, indeed sick emotions. This task was taken up by Michael Fellman, a gregarious American, self-exiled in Canada since the 1960s, where he is professor emeritus of history at Simon Fraser University. A specialist in the American Civil War, Fellman had been taught traditional history: trace the documents of who did what, who said what, and what happened; pull it together for the reader; and let it go. Such history seldom made well-grounded analyses about the abnormal mental states of the people it studied.

Having himself suffered a painful depression, Fellman realized that traditional history was mistaken because such conditions have an enormous impact on people–famous, infamous, and obscure. He became attuned to evidence of abnormal mental states among the Civil War figures he studied. Besides Lincoln’s melancholy, Fellman discovered depressive tendencies in Robert E. Lee, and outright mental illness in General Sherman. What followed was a biography–researching and reporting facts based on primary sources–that a century after Sherman’s own memoir unmasked the whole man: greater than we thought, in part because he was much sicker than we knew.

Greater than we thought, in part because he was much sicker than we knew.

A First-Rate Madness is suffused throughout with this generosity of spirit, with bittersweet reflections and a profoundly humane sensibility. (In fact, while reading it, one might wonder if the author himself is also a Mentally Interesting human being, so impeccable and accurate are his observations of the afflicted.)

To wit: the layperson, upon reading about the life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King, might infer that pacifism and idealism were both central components of his character and dominant forces that controlled his worldview. Not so, asserts Ghaemi, who proceeds to construct a portrait far richer, and more textured and heartbreakingly real, than any study of Dr. King this writer has encountered to date (my emphasis):

The Martin Luther King of popular mythology is a cardboard icon, brought out once a year on a holiday, with little resemblance to the real historical man. The cardboard King was a pacifist idealist; he wanted everyone to make peace and hold hands. The real King was an aggressive, confrontational realist; he believed that all men were evil in part, including himself; he thought that violence was everywhere and unavoidable, including within himself. “Nonviolence” did not mean the absence of violence, but the control of violence so that it was directed inward rather than outward.

And there are many, many more such insights to be appreciated in this fine book, as well as a clear-eyed analysis of those leaders whose personalities might best be described as even-keeled, rational, or else well-balanced, but whose marks on history–if even they made any–are mostly pastel-hued and watery as opposed to fierce, glittering, bloody, or–invoking here the title of another enlightening book by a thoughtful psychologist (Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison)–touched by fire.

A written work may be described as truly successful, I think, when you find yourself quoting it in your head, even weeks and months after having read its final passages. Inasmuch as I have been doing just that–taking in the words and deeds of our current American leadership with new eyes, even–I’d say that A First-Rate Madness is an extraordinary accomplishment. And I highly recommend it.

Footnote:

Unlike numerous recently-published tomes, Dr. Ghaemi’s book–refreshingly, and perhaps intentionally–steers clear of former half-term Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, despite her erratic behavior, propensity to deceive, and general mental instability, all of which are topics of analysis you’d think would be irresistible to any academic psychiatrist, particularly one who’s exploring the connection between mental illness and leadership. When I wondered aloud why this might be so, my eldest son’s quip provided the obvious answer:

“That’s because she’s not a leader, Mama.”

UPDATE: be sure to check out Dr. Ghaemi’s blog, Mood Swings.

Basically, a finding is one of the principal forms by which the president authorises secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency.

As an Iraq [...]]]> Yesterday, news broke that President Obama had signed a secret order – called a ‘finding‘ – which authorised the covert support of the United States government for the Libyan rebel forces.

Basically, a finding is one of the principal forms by which the president authorises secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency.

As an Iraq War veteran, I’ve approached our increasing involvement in the Libyan civil war with a gradually escalating sense of foreboding. The lack of clarity in what we want to achieve in Libya, and how we intend to achieve it, is eerily reminiscent to me of our entanglement in Iraq. Part of me will always be that team leader in Iraq in 2003, trying to discern my commander’s intent.

There are a few things that come to mind here, now that we are ‘covertly’ supporting the Libyan rebels.

1. Colour me totally unsurprised here. Matter of fact, from a foreign internal defence perspective, I’d believe it negligent to the point of incompetence if we didn’t have people on the ground from various, um, agencies on the ground already. That’s probably who’s calling in air strikes. I’m pretty certain that the UK has folks there, and so do the French – the French most of all, since North Africa was their version of Mexico/the Caribbean.

2. When I first saw the news of our covert involvement break, I was pretty ticked off at the leak – you just don’t go yapping about what the covert community is doing. The more I thought about it, though, this sounds like a deliberately engineered leak.

So, what now? Why do I continue to feel such unease about our Libyan War?

My guess, based on following the conflict and talking to various folks/listening to various folks? The Libyan rebel army doesn’t exist. Let me say that again:

The Libyan rebel army doesn’t exist.

What you’re seeing on CNN/MSNBC/BBC/your evening news is a rabble. A gang. Those guys on pickup trucks? They’re, at best, military tourists. You maybe have about 1,000 people in the Libyan rebel rabble that could compose the nucleus of a fighting force. It’s not just a question of providing them with arms. By now, the Libyan countryside is swimming with weapons. The rebels have access to weapons, and they have access to ammunition.

What they don’t have is the training needed to use those arms effectively, and to hold any ground that they capture. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that every single time the rebels retake, say, Misrata, the very moment that they come under bombardment, whether it’s by mortars or artillery, they immediately surrender that ground. That, to me, is a mark of an untrained fighting force.  I could go on, and on, and on…but really, what you all should do is read this by Gulliver at Ink Spots: http://tachesdhuile.blogspot.com/2011/03/arming-libyan-rebels-its-not-only.html

It goes into a lot of detail as to why arming the Libyan rebels is a very, very bad idea, and other subjects as well.

Also, if you’re following me on Twitter, you’ve seen me line up along with guys like Andrew Exum of CNAS and our own Richard Allen Smith, among others, in being very concerned about our war in Libya. Part of it is because a part of me will always be that forward observer in Balad, Iraq, in 2003, trying to discern my commander’s intent.

But part of it is because we’re trying to discern the Commander-in-Chief’s intent, and we’re failing to do so. Let’s say the goal is regime change, which the President has stated. I don’t have any doubt that Gataffi will fall. Nato has committed itself to seeing that happen, in effect, regardless of what UN Resolution 1973 says. The problem right now is that at least two things aren’t clear at the moment:

• how we get from where we are currently, with a disorganised rabble not doing much more than barely surviving against what looks like an 8,000-to-10,000 strong Libyan government force, to the fall of GDiddy’s government;
• more importantly – what does Libya after Khaddafy look like? Simply, we don’t know jack about who will take power in Libya once Qadafi falls. There’s a multiplicity of groups and interests at work here, not necessarily in sympathy with providing the people of Libya a greater voice in government, regardless of whether that voice is friendly to our interests or not.

Right now, it really does seem as though the Administration is fighting this war by the seat of its pants. It really does feel as though people expected that the initial Nato involvement would serve as the decisive factor, allowing the rebels to defeat Kazzafi without the need for added military aid. I don’t think that was ever going to happen, nor was I the only one.

So now, the next stage of the debate is going to take place. The longer the rebels take to defeat Qadhdhafi, the greater the chances are that you’ll see ground forces deployed to Libya, regardless of what President Obama says. I’m already seeing the precursors of the arguments for that eventuality being made by folks like Anne-Marie Slaughter and John Judis, among others.

That’s why I stated earlier that maybe that disclosure of CIA presence in Libya was a planned leak. Now we have CIA on the ground. The next step will be disclosing that Special Forces are on the ground. Let’s say that it’s June of 2011, and we’re still watching the rebels futz around, which wouldn’t be surprising. You’ll see the President make another address, saying that we’re now deploying Nato forces to assist the Libyan rebels in a final push against Gheddafi’s forces…

But I digress. The bottom line is that we own Libya now, for the long term. We won’t abandon the rebels, regardless of how utterly feckless they are. We also own the Libyan aftermath – and we have no idea of how that looks like. We have a lot of hopes for what it may look like, but as we learned in Iraq, hope is not a plan. And that’s why those of us who served in Iraq and Afghanistan were so bloody reluctant to get involved in Libya – because in some key respects, it bore a highly uncomfortable resemblance to what we experienced.

The [...]]]>

Having mixed feelings about the no-fly zone established over Libya by the UN Security Council seems wholly appropriate. One can’t ignore the massacre perpetrated by Gaddhafi’s air-force, yet at the same time, events of the past decade have given the concept of “humanitarian intervention” a black eye. We can thank the neocons for that.

The good news is that Obama said exactly the right thing about his policy at today’s presser:

Obama, offering his first justification to Americans for getting the U.S. military involved in Libya, said the goal is to protect Libyan citizens from what he called Gaddafi’s campaign of repression against his people.

And he said the U.S. role would be limited.

“The United States is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya and we are not going to use force to go beyond a well-defined goal, specifically the protection of civilians in Libya,” he said.

The problem is that it’s easier said than done; once the “international community” resolves to use military force, history suggests those modest goals are easily replaced with a more far-reaching policy — it’s easier to engage militarily than it is to disengage.

The classic example is probably Truman’s decision not to cease his campaign in Korean after achieving the originally stated goal of pushing the North Koreans past the 38th parallel — a decision that cost tens of thousands of lives before eventually leading to a decades-long stalemate along that very same 38th parallel.

But Bush the senior’s intervention in Somalia is also illustrative, and more similar to Libya in terms of context. Most people think of Somalia as a disaster — a boondoggle made famous by Blackhawk Down. But what many don’t remember is that it began with what was arguably among the most successful examples of humanitarian intervention in the history of the United Nations.

In the early 1990s, Somalia was facing a humanitarian crisis — its people were starving. Aid was being diverted by the “Somali warlords” and aid workers’ lives were being threatened. The UN Security Council authorized a modest intervention, UNOSOM I, with very limited and achievable goals: to create a safe zone through which vital humanitarian supplies could be delivered. This worked pretty well: Blue Helmets secured the main port, and the major thoroughfares through which food, medicine and other relief aid could be delivered.

It wasn’t perfect, however. The warring factions defied the UN, the ceasefire that had been established was broken many times and less than 100% of the aid got through. But matters got considerably worse with the launch of UNOSOM II, which had a much broader mandate — nation-building — and authorized all necessary means to achieve it.

Of course, authorizing and doing are two different things, and the UN has no troops of its own, so what we eventually ended up with was a sweeping mandate backed by a woefully insufficient military force for the task at hand. The legitimacy of the intervention was questioned, and the whole enterprise soon devolved into a typical interventionist farce.

So the worrisome thing about this Libyan no-fly zone is what happens next. Gaddhafi isn’t going to cede power, his forces appear to be in control of large swaths of the country. His military probably won’t be able to simply crush the rebel forces with ease, which is obviously a good thing. But it means we’ll likely see a stand-off, and it will be very tempting for the “international community,” having invested in the despot’s ouster, to escalate that no-fly zone to a peace-keeping force in Benghazi, and who knows where that might lead.

The “limited humanitarian intervention” certainly has its appeal, but easily becomes a gateway drug leading to the hard stuff.

A new human rights initiative may be the stuff of which peace is made.

The Satellite Sentinel Project is an unprecedented effort [...]]]> Earlier this year, a new initiative called the Satellite Sentinel Project launched a new era in peace activism and the prevention of genocide. I wrote at the time:

A new human rights initiative may be the stuff of which peace is made.

The Satellite Sentinel Project is an unprecedented effort led by Not on Our Watch (an advocacy group of leading Hollywood figures) and the anti-genocide Enough Project of the Center for American Progress.

For the first time in history, they intend to provide peace groups with the capacity to monitor potential war zones via commercial satellites. The goal is nothing less than to stop wars and war crimes in their bloody tracks.

A pilot project will try to help head off a potential civil war in Africa’s largest nation — Sudan.

The project will monitor the border area between north and south Sudan, which have been engaged in an intermittent civil war for 50 years. An uneasy truce has prevailed since 2005, but there is a potential for further war in the run-up to a Jan. 9 referendum, when the oil-rich south will decide whether to secede from the north.

Border villages in the south have already reportedly been bombed, though the north has denied responsibility.

This situation underscores the potential value of independent groups being able to provide pictures of the smoking guns.

The satellites will also be able to document such features of war as burned villages, masses of people fleeing and movements of troops and tanks.

Much has happened since then — including a cover story in Newsweek.

Satellites are now sending daily images that have documented, among other things, the massing of troops and heavy military equipment on the border, and most recently broke the story of how whole villages near the border between Northern and Southern Sudan had been burned to the ground.

The government of Northern Sudan is led by internationally wanted war criminals, whose atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan shocked the conscience of the world, underscoring what may be at stake in the current crisis.

Satellite imagery and video of the burned villages in the Abyei region obtained by the anti-genocide Enough Project were featured on the PBS News Hour on March 17th.

Jonathan Hutson of the Enough Project told the News Hour:

…for the first time outside the national security sector, non-profits are now making use of high-resolution satellite imagery to track the buildup and movements of troops near a border.

We can keep an eye on it and give some early warning to the world, and give people a chance to get involved, to pressure policy-makers, to press for quick and immediate responses.

After we launched the project on Dec. 29, the government of Sudan put out an official press release, and they decried Clooney for being a celebrity activist and for using his name, his cash and his clout to focus world attention on the tense situation to try to get help. They didn’t like it one bit. But then, you can’t please all the war criminals all the time.

Hutson said that for the first time, ordinary people can have access to near-real-time information on the world’s most dangerous places.

We’re not telling the president of the United States something that he doesn’t already know. We’re not telling leaders of other nations something that they don’t already know through their own satellites.

What’s new and transformative here is that we can share high-resolution commercial satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe, so that you can see the same information that lands on the president’s desk during his daily Sudan briefings.

Watch the five minute PBS News Hour segment on You Tube.

Deficits weren’t a priority when nearly all Republicans and a good number of Democrats voted for the ill conceived and ill advised invasions and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq close to a decade ago. They weren’t a priority when tens, if not [...]]]> What “the great deficit debate” really boils down to is one thing: priorities.

Deficits weren’t a priority when nearly all Republicans and a good number of Democrats voted for the ill conceived and ill advised invasions and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq close to a decade ago. They weren’t a priority when tens, if not hundreds of billions went to waste or were just “lost” in Iraq – not knowing if they ended up in the hands of those who were the stated enemy. They weren’t a priority when billions of no-bid contracts were handed out like candy, with no accounting.

There were some in Congress, including my Representative, Scott Garrett, who weren’t yet elected when the first vote was taken to start the folly in Iraq. However, he, and his ilk have been present for all or most of the subsequent economy killing votes to continue funding these disasters with our children’s, grandchildren’s and great-grandchildren’s money. There wasn’t even a hesitation on most of this – even with the very basic premise that cutting taxes in conjunction with a war is unheard of and pretty much unprecedented.

There was little to no concern of the drain on the economy, the massive deficits being caused by these trillions – coupled with the massive tax cuts at the same time. There was little to no concern when the levees in Louisiana couldn’t hold back, despite prior warnings. There was little to no concern when bridges were collapsing in Minnesota, when a failure of the power grid knocked out much of the east coast for over a full day or as our country’s roads were given failing and close to failing grades.

There was little to no concern when the amount of money being borrowed was a neverending pit, or when the weapons being used weren’t really suitable for the kind of “war” that was being waged. There was little to no concern when the debt was piling up and our country’s coffers were being raided for “business opportunities” for looting by private companies post invasion rebuilding. There was little to no concern that this government was paying private contractors scads of money for “security” in Iraq – with no accountability and on numerous instances, with highly questionable behavior.

So now, as we hear suddenly from the same people that brought the ill advised invasion and occupation of Iraq, the same people that doubled down on Afghanistan, the same people who have no interest in holding those accountable for stealing untold billions from We the People – we hear that this country can’t afford to take care of its own?

Really? Really? Perhaps if any thought was given to the plight of Americans and the US economy for the past 8 years, then we wouldn’t be in a “nobody could have guessed” scenario as the guilty parties try to give moral advice.