"With a voice or without a voice, the people can always be attracted to what their leaders say," said Nazi propaganda expert Hermann Goering. This is easy and all you have to do is tell them that they are under attack, and those who call for peace lack patriotism and endanger the homeland. And it works in any country in the world. "

Sixteen years ago, on March 19, 2003, American forces began a deceptive and illegal military operation called "Shock and Fear" on Iraq. The costs of this massive invasion seem to be clear, and the results are now clear. Thousands of American soldiers and coalition soldiers have been killed and many have suffered horrific injuries. The largest number of American casualties was from poor families. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed and millions fled their homes. In addition to this, we can also add to the emergence of a "buoyant" organization and its growth in Iraq. The cost of the US war in Iraq is trillions of dollars, a huge drain on local programs for the poor.

Painful lessons

So far, we draw painful lessons from this devastating war and its aftermath. Among them is a sad disaster to study the use of fear tactics, dubbed the "world of danger," by fraudulent leaders insisting that a catastrophe will happen if we do not comply with their policy guidelines. Unfortunately, the emergence of frightening warnings from important personalities can shorten our thinking and push us to move even before we test the evidence, or study the results and the alternatives. Psychologically, we set easy targets for these tactics, as a result of our desire to avoid being unprepared for the danger, so we often rush to bring disaster to our foresight, and the worst possible outcome, regardless of whether this is out of the question .

Former US President George W. Bush used the "son" as an attractive tactic "a dangerous world" throughout the Iraq war. His administration began with repeated allegations, several months before the invasion, that Saddam Hussein, the ruthless dictator, possessed weapons of mass destruction.

In August 2002, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney, at the National Conference on Veterans of Foreign War, said in Nashville: "We have no doubt that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And without you, he is accumulating these weapons for use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. "

A few months later, President Bush presented the "son" with this horrifying picture of his audience in Cincinnati. "Given that we are aware of these facts, America should not ignore the danger against us. "Because we have clear evidence of the danger, we can not wait to get the final proof, the smoke of the guns, which could be in the form of a mushroom cloud."

The Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was very clear in December 2002 at his Defense Ministry press conference: "Any country on Earth has a good intelligence apparatus, knowing that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction."

The problem is not that all these allegations were all false, but were effective in influencing the people. As the White House wished, its dire warnings and expectations have convinced most Americans of two things: that Iraq's dictator possesses weapons of mass destruction and that preemptive military action is necessary. In fact, Bush realized at the time that he had won most Americans when he sat in front of television cameras in his Oval Office 16 years ago and announced that US forces had invaded Iraq.

A clear lie

After the invasion, and the existence of weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration changed the rudder easily. It continued to fuel people's fears by linking the war in Iraq to a larger issue, the "war on terror." At the National Bar Association Conference in Washington The capital, Cheney said. "On the morning of September 11, we saw the terrorists want to carry out the attacks. But we have to be always ready to stop them alone. If we take a defensive stance and act as a reaction, to counter the attacks against us, we will make the country in a fragile situation. "

When the debate on the right course of war in Iraq intensified, even the year after it began, President Bush turned the "son" into a "dangerous world" attraction again. "If we can not defeat terrorists and extremists in Iraq, they will not leave us alone, and they will follow us to the United States," he said in a public statement. So this war on terror is very important. " The tactics of spreading fear and fear in the hearts of the people did not cease after George Bush came out of power. In 2010, during his speech on Veterans Day in San Luis, Gen. John Kelly, who was recently chief of staff in the administration of President Donald Trump, said: "Our enemies are savage, they have no mercy, they focus on one issue, All of us in our homeland, or our enslavement in one form of extremism, which serves no purpose and which no decent person can accept. "It is clear today that Iraq did not have an effective weapons of mass destruction program. However, Americans, including more than half of Fox News viewers, continue to erroneously believe that such a program existed in Iraq. A poll conducted in 2011 in the United States showed that half of Americans believe Iraq either gave strong support to al-Qaeda or participated in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Of course, both claims are incorrect. The insistence on these false beliefs shows that the power of psychological manipulation, designed to exploit our fears, remains.

But despite the devastation caused by the Iraq war, we must not lose sight of the fact that it also had its share of the winners. If we look at executives and senior investors in companies such as Halliburton, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Exxon Mobil, and other companies, we see that these companies made huge profits from this war, through contracts obtained without tender, oil sales, , Infrastructure reconstruction, prison services, and private security. In fact, when talking to defense contractors in August 2015, on a special occasion, Bush's brother, the "son", George Bush, who failed to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, said: "The overthrow of Saddam Hussein has turned into a very wonderful deal And profitable.

Sadly, the machinations at the highest levels that contributed to passing the Iraq war are not unique. History shows that fear deployment tactics have always been a method used to mobilize popular support and to approve military interventions that are unsafe and far from wise. . It has happened many times, and will continue to happen and perhaps soon, unless we all learn to recognize and resist and counter these counterfeit pretexts of war from people who are war sellers, and seek the benefit for themselves only.

Roy Edelson is an expert in political psychology

Americans, including more than half of Fox News viewers, continue to erroneously believe that such a program existed in Iraq. A poll conducted in 2011 in the United States showed that half of Americans believe Iraq either gave strong support to al-Qaeda or participated in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Of course, both claims are incorrect.