Military interventions were
launched throughout a sizeable part of the world over 300 times by 43 of our 44
presidents. President Benjamin Harrison didn't have time or strength to flex
his muscles, dying from an illness after being in office only 32 days. The
death toll of Americans alone from all those interventions amounts to over two
million. Between six and seven million civilians died from U.S military
intervention in
Why do
To understand why anyone, presidents included, do what they do requires acknowledging their gender and knowing their character and their circumstances. As an organizational psychologist turned political psychologist in retirement I am going to tell you what I have concluded from decades of studying leadership. It's been leadership outside the Oval Office, but I think what I have learned can be generalized to it. What influences CEOs and presidents alike is more similar than different.
Gender
Need more be said? In the
corporate world males sit atop the glass ceiling. Atop the political world is
always a male warrior-in-chief. Wars throughout history have been started and
fought by males with very few exceptions (Cleopatra and Margaret Thatcher, for
example).
Character flaws
Several character flaws predispose leaders to abuse their power in harmful ways whenever they are in tempting or pressuring circumstances of their own or others' making. Four flaws in particular would seem to apply perfectly to our presidential warriors; greed/ambition, moral frailty, narcissism, and close-mindedness.
1. Greed/Ambition. Greed is when
enough is never enough, wanting more becomes a craving, getting more later
isn't soon enough, and thus motivates the abuse of power. In the corner offices
of the corporate sphere, the profit motive and greed go hand in hand. In the
political sphere greed becomes excessive ambition and in the Oval Office
motivates an imperialistic drive. It has been a hallmark of all
2. Moral frailty. This
characteristic is the sine qua non of people for whom the ends justify the
means. The late psychologist Lawrence Kolhberg's theory about levels of moral
development and how by adulthood the person's moral development would come to
rest at one or the other of the levels is instructive here.[3] I've condensed
his six levels into three; unconditional ("wrongdoing is wrong"), conditional
("it depends"), and unprincipled ("do whatever is necessary") morality. People
at these last two levels always rationalize their bad actions as good ones Most
of our presidents rested at the third level. Historian John Dower refers to
them as "moral imbeciles' for "grossly misunderstanding or simply ignoring
their enemies, their own impulses, and history itself."[4]
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