Zogby, Zogby, what's the deal with the troops?

A recent Zogby poll on U.S. troops in Iraq shows that nearly 90% of our soldiers believe that their mission is to "retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attacks." 

Well that's funny!  You see, Saddam Hussein did not play a role in the Sept. 11th attacks.

Over at Leiter Reports, Marcus Stanley thinks the explanation is Jack Nicholson.  "You want the truth?  You can't handle the truth!"

That observation lines up very well with my own beliefs about human nature.  There has been a curious unreality in the public debate about the war.  I think it is driven by just this type of cognitive dissonance.  People can't quite seem to handle the truth.  Especially in the case of soldiers serving in Iraq, I don't really blame them.

There's a lively discussion about this poll in the comments section of this thread over at Liberal Avenger.  The general consensus answer there seems to be "indoctrination" (one right-winger at the site insists that Saddam was behind 9/11).  Cognitive dissonance also surfaces as a thesis in one of the comments, esp. insofar as it works synergistically with the indoctrination.  Yet on the surface, indoctrination hardly seems to be a satisfactory answer; it is difficult to believe that "Saddam was behind 9/11" is really part of the indoctrination program for soldiers.  I'm not sure I have a perfectly fitting label, but I do think I have an explanation, at least a partial one.

The "indoctrination" of American soldiers probably looks something like this: We're in Iraq fighting terror.  We're fighting terror because of 9/11.  We're in Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people and spread freedom and democracy.  We're in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein.  We're fighting a war on terror/terrorism/Islamofascism.  I'm sure there's a word for what I'm trying to describe here, but it escapes me at this late hour.  The point is, none of these statements is facially untrue (though the "war on terror" bit just begs to be deconstructed).  And while no two of these statements are related beyond the fact that they are supposed to be stand-alone rationales for the war in Iraq, it's difficult to separate them.  The natural desire (especially for soldiers, I'd imagine, but likely for all patriotic non-cynics) is to want to lump these statements/arguments all together: we're fighting terror in Saddam-Iraq, and 9/11 was the causal act of terrorism.  Don't you just sort of have to look at it to see the erroneous conclusion waiting to be drawn?

I think the official Bush Administration line is also worth noting.  Originally, Dick Cheney expressly stated that Saddam was involved with the 9/11 attacks.  Then in Sept. 2003 the Administration issued a carefully worded and deliberately misleading mea culpa: "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11" attacks (CBS).  At the same time George Bush said that, he was careful to note, "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties"--this public statement in response to the mainstream media backlash to polls showing that 70% of Americans believed Saddam was behind 9/11.  Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld would go on to echo the "we have no evidence" refrain.  Not "Saddam was not involved."  Not even "we don't believe he was involved."  No, we have no evidence.  The implication of that precise phrase is that Saddam was involved--the listener is supposed to confuse evidence with proof (after all we have an evidentiary standard of proof in this country) and understand that Saddam probably was involved but we just can't prove it.  The only way I see to dispute the charge I'm making is to claim careless wording on behalf of the Administration, and that defence strikes me as implausible to the point of absurdity.

And for what it's worth, this is a faith-based Administration and not a scientific one.  Unsubstantiated belief is the modus operandi; a reasonable system of starting with skepticism and building up by means of rational empiricism does not apply (nor, evidently, does it apply to Bush's followers or even the majority public).  The shorter President Bush: "Just believe that Saddam was involved."  And because in general the psychological desire is to believe this statement, people allow themselves to be swayed by this flawed, almost-but-not-at-all reasoning.

Comments

[Ruchira Paul]

I am not sure that it is indoctrination necessarily. After all, the troops have access to news and the internet. My own feeling on this is that there may be a bit of self delusionary wishful thinking going on here. They were told that they would be welcomed with open arms for deposing Saddam. And what do they see? Near civil war, utter chaos, death, dismemberment, distrust of and by the Iraqis. How else do you justify your open ended presence in a foreign country, unless it is by connecting it to a grievous harm done to you?

I am in fact surprised that they did not plant some WMDs to further shore up the cause for war in their own minds.