What’s happening on the ground in Iraq?

In November 2003 a major from the judge advocate general’s office working on establishing an Iraqi judicial process told me that there were at least 7,000 Iraqis detained by American forces. . . .  A lieutenant colonel familiar with the process told me that there is no judicial process for the thousands of detainees. If the military were to try them, there would be a court-martial, which would imply that the U.S. was occupying Iraq, and lawyers working for the administration are still debating whether it is an occupation or liberation. Two years later, 50,000 Iraqis had been imprisoned by the Americans and only 2% had ever been found guilty of anything.

The above was reported by Nir Rosen.   On his website, Rosen describes himself as follows:

Born in New York City in 1977, Nir Rosen is a freelance writer, photographer and film-maker who has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and other popular tourist destinations. 

Rosen, who speaks Arabic and who passes as Middle Eastern, recently wrote “The Occupation of Iraqi Hearts and Minds,” a piece that was published on Truthdig.com.  In this disturbing piece, he sized up the American occupation of Iraq:

In reality both Abu Ghraib and Haditha were merely more extreme versions of the day-to-day workings of the American occupation in Iraq, and what makes them unique is not so much how bad they were, or how embarrassing, but the fact that they made their way to the media and were publicized despite attempts to

…

Continue ReadingWhat’s happening on the ground in Iraq?

Coordinated violence and the frame of “war”

Imagine that it is broad daylight and you are attending a large public festival.  Now imagine that you suddenly realize that you are walking around in your underwear.  Perhaps you are one of the many people who would find it disconcerting to suddenly find that so much of your skin, and most every crevice, curve and imperfection of your body was exposed to public view.

This thought occurred to me while I was at a municipal swimming pool with my children.  I was surrounded by hundreds of people who were wearing swimming suits that covered no mobeach-at-nantucketre skin (and often less) than the underwear that many of these people likely wore.  Yet these people strutted about and proudly spread out on their towels and lawn chairs without any apparent concern that they were flagrantly exposing so much of their “private” areas to total strangers.

What is it, then, that convinces people to expose so much of their bodies to strangers in one case but not in the other?  It would seem that the context of being at a public swimming area constitutes a “frame.”

George Lakoff wrote of the great power of frames in his book, Don’t Think of an Elephant!  Know Your Values and Framed the Debate (2004).  Here is how Lakoff describes frames:

Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world.  As a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a

…

Continue ReadingCoordinated violence and the frame of “war”

What the “god gene” means.

In 2004, the same geneticist who had earlier discovered a gene linked to male homosexuality found a gene associated with religious belief. The geneticist, Dr. Dean Hammer of the National Cancer Institute, used a 226-question survey to determine a person’s feelings of spirituality, or willingness to believe in supernatural phenomena. He found that those with an inclination for religiosity tended to share a gene called VMAT2. Nicknamed the “god gene”, it purportedly dictates the flow of mood-altering chemicals in the brain, and determines one’s level of belief in religious experiences.

I first accepted this research with a sense of mild dread. I assumed, forgetting that the devoutly religious tend to eschew all scientific or logical prospects, that the religious would respond to this discovery as a palpable sign that God exists. It seemed like a perfect opportunity for classic religious circular logic, the same used to “prove” the significance of the Bible: We know God exists because we believe in him, and we believe in him because he wants us to.

Even Dr. Hammer used this train of thought. In an interview shortly after his discovery became public, he said, “Religious believers can point to the existence of god genes as one more sign of the creator’s ingenuity – a clever way to help humans acknowledge and embrace a divine presence.”

However, the religious community did not embrace Hammer’s findings. Christian reviewers of Hammer’s book on the subject labeled it as bad science, and claimed that he didn’t define …

Continue ReadingWhat the “god gene” means.

Just because . . .

In his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1998), Robert Cialdini describes an experiment that illustrated the power of the word "because."   The experiment was conducted by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer, who found that people are highly motivated by the form of others’ reasons, even reasons lack persuasive content. …

Continue ReadingJust because . . .