ImmoralitywithinBushsWarCabinet

Adam Whitcomb Psych 391MP
Final Integration Paper 1
Moral Manipulation and the Sin of Omission within Bush’s War Cabinet
Morality is a shady subject within the field of politics. When running for election or
reelection, politicians advertise themselves as representatives of the people, acting upon what is
just, moral, and the best for those they govern. However it is evident from our own legislative
system that priorities change once in office. This “bending” of morality is only exacerbated when
an individual is in power for an extended amount of time or in an extreme position of power,
such as President of the United States. This paper examines the policies that President Bush and
his administration put into place post 9/11 up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Through that
gathering of both political and psychological data, it is sound to say that the majority of actions
that led up to the invasion were manipulative of the American people’s morals, and detrimental
to the stability of Iraq and the Middle East as a whole. U.S. involvement in the Middle East and
North Africa has not had a longlasting positive impact, U.S. involvement is usually initiated to
satisfy its shortterm needs for security or for economic or democratic reasons. President Bush’s
speeches will be used as examples to showcase the veil of morality that he supposedly operated
under, contrasted with the policies and actions he took that were blatantly immoral, then
analysed using literature from the subject of moral psychology. This paper serves as an indicator
of the extent to which politicians, especially in the upperechelons of power, use or abuse
morality for their own justifications.
On September 11th
2001, the Western world was shock and horrified by the attack on the
World Trade Center by Muslim extremists and the thousands of innocent people who lost their
lives. The grief that encompassed the United States almost immediately turned into rage against
Muslims, specifically MuslimAmericans or anyone who fit the profile. Hate crimes against

MuslimAmericans increased by 1600% after the events of 9/11, not to even mention the amount
of racial profiling and stereotyping that occurred and occurs to this day (Naber, 2008). Men and
women alike were physically beaten based on their appearance, mosques were firebombed, and
businesses run by Arab Americans were sacked and burned (Ahmed, 2011). This senseless
hatred by Americans towards other Americans can be explained through Haidt’s Social
Intuitionist model, and the creation of Muslims being the outgroup (2001). Haidt’s model
describes the steps that one takes to arrive at a morally based decision: after exposure to a
dilemma (9/11 attacks), the subject will almost immediately have an opinion on the matter based
on personal intuition. Only after this step is reasoning applied, happening post hoc to the initial
decision. Oftentimes people’s reasoning will be biased to try and prove their personal intuition is
sound (hatred towards Muslims) regardless of the facts given. Haidt states that after posthoc
reasoning the subject will apply reasoning back to their personal intuition, and if there are still
incongruencies, then the subject will judge the dilemma on his/her own social norms. Americans
knew from news sources that Muslims were the perpetrators of the attack, which caused many
people to have the intuition that Muslims are evil. They reasoned their intuition with the general
facts about Islamic extremists and what they perceived jihad was, and acted upon the religious
outgroup with violence. However these actions were addressed by President Bush once the
prevalence of people’s actions were deemed too dire to ignore any longer.
On September 17th, 2001, President Bush gave a speech at the Islamic Center of
Washington, D.C. to combat the violent acts that Americans were committing:
“These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the
Islamic faith. And it's important for my fellow Americans to understand that...The

face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.  That's not what Islam is all about.  Islam
is peace.  These terrorists don't represent peace.  They represent evil and war...This
is a great country.  It's a great country because we share the same values of respect
and dignity and human worth.  And it is my honor to be meeting with leaders who
feel just the same way I do.  They're outraged, they're sad.  They love America just
as much as I do.” (Bush, 9/17/01)
Bush’s speech served him because he was seen as the voice of moral reason during a time
of turbulence. This can be observed by his approval poll following 9/11, which was at a
staggering 86%, in comparison to before 9/11, at a 56% approval rating (Gallup Poll). Bush
served as the moral leader that the nation so desperately needed, exemplifying the moral motive
of protecting the ingroup through inhibitive morality (JanoffBulman, 2013). This is based on the
study by JanoffBulman et al. that moral motives and decisions are based off of a 2x3 Model of
Inhibitive vs Active regulation crossed with morality of the self, of others, and of the group.
Bush saw that the ingroup of Americans were divided amongst religion, and through his speech
emphasized that Islam was a religion of peace, as many Americans would describe their own
religion. The leaders of Islam shared the same sentiment of the American citizens, thus
protecting the identity of the United States. Solidarity is of the utmost importance when creating
group loyalty and cohesion, and Bush needed that unanimous support in order to see his and his
cabinet’s ultimate plan regarding foreign policy.  In this speech can be seen the shadowing of
what was to come shorty, the placing of extremist jihadists and regimes in the outgroup, “These
terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.” It would only be three days later
that President Bush would address the nation on his plan of action to deal with the outgroup.

September 20th, 2001: President Bush addressed the joint congress and the American
people with the infamous “with us or against us” speech. However it it wouldn’t be until long
after the speech that it would be labeled with that title because of the rhetorical distraction of
freedom and terrorism embedded in the speech. The President starts the speech with the
harrowing images of the 9/11 attacks, and then thanking all those who have assisted in the time
of need, including the NYPD, Congress, and other nations who showed support and solidarity
during a time of sorrow. Bush then officially addresses those who committed the terrorist attacks,
al Qaeda and describes them thus: “The terrorists [al Qaeda] practice a fringe form of Islamic
extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics; a
fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.” (Bush, 9/20/01) He doesn’t stop
there, Bush continues to name the Taliban as a threat to Afghanistan and the United States. “The
United States respects the people of Afghanistanafter all, we are currently its largest source of
humanitarian aidbut we condemn the Taliban regime.(APPLAUSE)
It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and
sheltering and supplying terrorists.By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is
committing murder.” (Ibid.) President Bush through his speech to the American people created
the outgroup in which all the anger and violence could be placed.
This displacement of people’s aggression complies with George Steffgen’s paradigm of
Triggered Displaced Aggression (2007). During an event of frustration, subjects are likely to act
aggressively towards another subject, usually an outgroup affiliated with the event of frustration.
A key variable in the intensity of aggression is the amount of time that the subject is allowed to
ruminate about the provocation. Constant worrying about the provocation may lead to the

formation of cognitive prejudices, parallel in strength with the strength of the provocation. This
rumination is exemplified through the week after the World Trade Center attack. People
ruminated about the crime which only increased their aggression and they needed an outgroup to
inflict that upon. This outgroup derogation categorized Muslims and citizens of Arab origin as
the target group long enough that it needed to be addressed. President Bush didn’t label
AfghaniMuslims as the enemy, but the “fringe movement” of al Qaeda, making it and the
Taliban the outgroup of Muslims as well. Shortly after this the President makes the first of many
demands of foreign nations, “Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we
can make sure they are no longer operating. These demands are not open to negotiation or
discussion...Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end
until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”
(Bush, 9/20/01) Here Bush finally shows how the United States will display its aggression,
through the destruction of terrorist cells and and occupation of nations harboring them. This
message of aggression served as a bonding agent for the ingroup; social identity is as much based
on ingroup “love” as outgroup “hate.” (Parker, 2013) He then delivers his infamous line that
serves as the first calltoarms of allied nations. “And we will pursue nations that provide aid or
safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are
with us or you are with the terrorists.” This served as a moral demand of the United States to
whoever would stand beside them, so long as they joined in the international intervention of
terrorist cells. In a way, President Bush was offering to expand his moral circle to this ‘coalition
of the willing.’ Philosopher Peter Singer discussed how people expand their ethical circle and
what reasons would be most permissible (1981). He argues that if one individual were to try and

change the group dynamic because of his/her own moral belief, then the group will not conform.
However if the moral reasoning had a greater impact on the group as a whole, then cooperation
would be more likely. President Bush uses this strategy by stating that terrorism is a global
problem, and doesn’t solely happen in the U.S., therefore everyone is responsible in following
the U.S. in eliminating these immoral organizations. “An attack on one is an attack on all. The
civilized world is rallying to America’s side” (Bush, 9/20/01). However the real gauntlet is
thrown down when President Bush says all those who do not assist in destroying terrorist cells
are inherently assisting them; he threatens to make nations who considered themselves a part of
the U.S. ingroup, the hostile outgroup. The President’s address is wrapped up with how the U.S.
is going to protect against future terrorist attacks, and what the American people can do to assist
the country and themselves. The lasting message still remained, unbeknownst explicitly to the
American people but well understood by foreign diplomats and leaders: either help in the fight
against terror or invoke the hostility of the most powerful nation in the world through inaction.
Many nations adhered to the requests of President Bush in some capacity, such as
England, Canada and Australia Some nations that refused to help received public ridicule from
the American people, namely France. France became an ostracized outgroup to the United States,
through actions of journalism, diplomacy, and even culture. During this time Americans placed
their hostility on France so much that a portion of the population wanted to change the name of
french fries to ‘freedom fries.’ However the frustration aggression paradigm against those
unwilling to assist wouldn’t be enough to deter the United States from acting (Steffgen, 2007).
On October 7th, 2001, not even three weeks after Bush’s congressional speech, the United States
and allied nations conducted air strikes on terrorist camps in Afghanistan (Military, 2001).

President Bush fought for the approval of the American people and his fellow legislatures
in order to move forward with the war on terror. He did so by using rhetoric that could be
described as fear mongering, but the effectiveness of it was less than significant, as seen by his
declining approval rate until the 2003 invasion (Gallup Poll). However, President Bush didn’t
need the nation’s approval to move forward with certain policies which would help gain
evidence in the war on terror. In December of 2014, a document was declassified to the public
regarding the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation program during the post
9/11 years. In it was included the operations of the the CIA and the President’s actions to
increase the parameters of the program. Between September 17th, 2001, and March 2002, the
limits to who the CIA could capture and detain for questioning progressed exponentially.
Including those who posed a, “...serious threat to violence or death to U.S. persons and interests
or who are planning terrorist activities” until the definition expanded to “individuals who might
not be highvalue targets in their own right, but could provide information on highvalue targets”
(Feinstein, 2014). These policies simply widened the range of people they could detain for
interrogation, which in and of itself is not an immoral action. However secondary parameters that
President Bush loosened infringed on human rights.
In January of 2002, the National Security Council debated if Geneva standards for
Treatment of Prisoners of war should apply to the Taliban and al Qaeda. The CIA evaluated and
determined that they should be exempt from the Geneva code in order to use more techniques
other than asking questions. It was on February 7, 2002, that President Bush signed a
memorandum stating that prisoners of al Qaeda and the Taliban did not fall under the Geneva
code requiring the humane treatment of individuals in a conflict (Ibid.) This memorandum was

legitimized by the CIA asking if the violation of a few individuals’ human rights was worth the
saving of innocent lives. This exemplifies the model of Moral Justification laid out by
psychologist Albert Bandura, how an individual encounters a moral quagmire, but persists in
choosing the intuitively immoral action (1999). The model starts with the reprehensible conduct
(torture), but it’s justified through palliative comparison or euphemistic labeling, both of which
were used to legitimize the conduct. Palliative comparison is used by saying the outgroup has
committed atrocities so heinous that anything the ingroup does couldn’t be as bad; comparing the
9/11 attack to the torture of a few individuals. Euphemistic labeling is the renaming of grotesque
actions to something more acceptable; instead of calling the CIA’s actions torture, it was given
the title of “enhanced interrogation.” These two actions softened the moral blow to the CIA and
to President Bush, allowing them to continue with the interrogations. Next in the model are the
detrimental effects, or the actual torturing of possible informants, not even actual terrorists in
every interrogation thanks to the policies passed by President Bush in March of 2002. The act
was once again legitimized through the Machiavellian principle of saving American lives at the
cost of a few individuals’ humanity. This model ends with the victim and how the perpetrators
morally deal with their existence. The answer to this quandary would be the dehumanization of
the victim through all of the previously mentioned methods. Enhanced interrogation selected
individuals from the outgroup (terrorists/terrorist informants), who had supposedly committed
crimes far worse than the inhumanities they were currently enduring, and could potentially yield
information regarding terrorist cells that would save innocent American lives. This process was
more gradual than it may appear. At first a few laws were bypassed simply to widen the range of
subjects for interrogation, then it was the questioning of who qualified as deserving of natural

human rights. Bandura argues that the committing of immoral acts becomes easier when
desensitized to it through constant exposure to the material (1999). This all goes to show that
these policies and those who enact them do so on immoral principles, but the interesting aspect is
when those same people try to pass off as moral leaders, which begs the question of how far they
will delve into immorality while keeping up their public appearance.
The occupation of Afghanistan was only the beginning of the United States’ and the
coalition of the willing’s international intervention in the war on terror. Between 2001 and the
invasion of Iraq in 2003, Bush and his war cabinet tried to find legitimate reasons to justify the
invasion, namely Iraq’s supposed supply of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). In a speech
given by President Bush in October of 2002, he stated some of the “definitive” reasons on why
Iraq, specifically Saddam Hussein, needed allied intervention:
“Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant who has
already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This same tyrant has
tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small
neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting
hostility toward the United States...If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous
weapons today and we do does it make any sense for the world to wait to
confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous
weapons?”
The first half of this excerpt is completely true. Saddam committed genocide on his own
people (Kurds) using biochemical weapons and invaded Kuwait in 1990. However the second
half turned out to be a complete lie. Another recently declassified document by the National

Intelligence Estimate (NIE) clearly explained what the U.S. intelligence knew about Iraq’s
programs of nuclear and biochemical weaponry. The actual reporting of intelligence was
performed by the Intelligence and Research (INR) branch of the NIE, and they stated that
Saddam continued to want nuclear weapons and that Baghdad was pursuing routes to accomplish
that. In that same section, the INR states, “The activities we have detected do not, however, add
up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an
integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but
INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment.” This is definitive
evidence from U.S. intelligence that Iraq was not accruing WMD’s, but only a few pages later
the NIE states that Saddam is gathering the efforts of his chemical weapons project after the
1998 UN inspection. Due to Iraq’s denial and deception efforts, enough intelligence could not be
acquired to point the finger of nuclear proliferation at Saddam, but this is interpreted as
Saddam’s elaborate effort to cover his WMD’s, instead of admitting that they did not exist.
Herein lies the hypocrisy of President Bush and his war cabinet: what was defined as
probable denial of WMD’s was reinterpreted into Iraq probably building up their supply of
WMD’s, but because this document was classified until 2014, what was said into a microphone
was taken as truth. Lying to the nation in order to pursue war mongering is incredibly immoral,
but is somehow justified by Bush and his cabinet.Valdesolo performed a study which observed
the perceived morality of actions performed by themselves or by others, and results showed that
individuals perceived their own conduct more permissible than the same transgression performed
by another, or an outgroup member (2007). The NIE viewed Saddam’s deception of a nuclear
program as reprehensible, and this was the proof that they were storing WMD’s and should be

invaded. However the Bush cabinet deceived the American people into thinking that Iraq had
WMD’s, when in reality it did not, and the cabinet members knew that; it shows the moral
hypocrisy performed in order to keep a positivity bias about themselves. They could only hope
that the results from the invasion of Iraq would morally justify their transgressions, but in the end
the world saw what came of the Iraqi occupation (Bandura, 1999).
The post9/11 era of American government is not known for its transparency. This lack
of transparency was substituted with moral convictions and fear mongering, exemplified by the
usage of euphemistic labels such as “The War on Terror,” “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and
even “9/11, never forget.” These phrases were intended to instill a fear of terrorism and Muslim
extremists, or a fear of the outgroup, facilitating the dehumanization of said outgroup members.
These strategies ended up backfiring in terms of approval rates; between the 2001 and 2003
invasions Bush’s rates dropped from 90% to 58%, and after the invasion they spiked to 71% but
again deflated to an alltime low of 25% approval (Gallup Poll). In the end, the world would see
the immoral actions Bush and his war cabinet performed in order to attain their goal of physical
influence in the Middle East, only affecting how people view the United States; a land where
capitalism and immorality can thrive hand in hand.

ImmoralitywithinBushsWarCabinet

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