Robert Jay Lifton
He is professor of psychiatry and psychology at the Graduate School University Center and director of The Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at The City University of New York. He has written books on many topics, including a Japanese cult that released poison gas in the Tokyo subways, Nazi doctors, Hiroshima survivors and Vietnam vets. He will discuss the emotional impact of the Columbia shuttle disaster, as well as the impact of an impending war in Iraq, and the looming nuclear crisis in North Korea.
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Other segments from the episode on February 5, 2003
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DATE February 5, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A⨠TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A⨠NETWORK NPR⨠PROGRAM Fresh Airâ¨â¨Interview: Peter Galbraith discusses past Iraqi atrocities againstâ¨Kurds and what a post-Saddam Iraq might look likeâ¨TERRY GROSS, host:â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.â¨â¨Even before Colin Powell's presentation today to the United Nations Securityâ¨Council, my guest Peter Galbraith supported a war against Iraq to overthrowâ¨Saddam Hussein. Galbraith describes himself as a liberal interventionist.â¨From 1979 to '93 he was the Iraq expert for the Senate Foreign Relationsâ¨Committee. For over a decade he's worked closely with the Kurds documentingâ¨Saddam Hussein's campaign against them. In 1992 Galbraith smuggled 14 tons ofâ¨documents out of the Kurdish region that outlined Saddam's atrocities againstâ¨the Kurds. Galbraith is now a professor of national security studies at Theâ¨National War College in Washington, DC. In 1993 he became the first USâ¨ambassador to Croatia. I asked him if watching the effects of the NATOâ¨bombing in the Balkans helped convince him that we should intervene now inâ¨Iraq.â¨â¨Professor PETER GALBRAITH (The National War College): The thing I came awayâ¨with from the Balkans was first that intervention can do some good. There'sâ¨no question but that in Bosnia the United States intervention, the NATOâ¨bombing saved many, many more lives than were cost by that action. It helpedâ¨bring the war to an end. It was a war in which 200,000 people had beenâ¨killed. And it enabled Bosnia to get on with the process of reconstruction,â¨and it is, admittedly slowly, becoming a more normal part of Europe.â¨â¨Iraq--in the 30 years that Saddam Hussein has been in power, at least a half aâ¨million Iraqis have died as a result of actions taken by Saddam Hussein. Butâ¨sooner or later I think it's likely to come to some kind of military action.â¨If it's sooner, we're simply going to save the lives of Iraqis.â¨â¨GROSS: Let's look at some of the possible scenarios if we do overthrow Saddamâ¨Hussein, scenarios for a post-Saddam government. What's your sense of whatâ¨the best-case scenario would be?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: Well, the nature of what follows depends in good measure onâ¨how the war proceeds. In the best case, there is--nobody wishes to fight forâ¨Saddam Hussein. You have a situation in Iraq in which 80 percent of theâ¨population are Kurds, Shiites or Christians. That is from groups that haveâ¨been brutally repressed by Saddam Hussein. They welcome the United States asâ¨liberators. And those segments that do support Saddam, which are veryâ¨limited, come to the conclusion that there's no point in standing with aâ¨dictator who is in any event going to fall, and so you have an orderlyâ¨process. That obviously will make it easier to set up a post-Saddamâ¨government than some other circumstances.â¨â¨But I think necessarily there will be a period of US military occupation, butâ¨I believe that we should move quickly to setting up an Iraqi government. Andâ¨the Iraqis are a sophisticated people with a high level of education. Iraq isâ¨today very much a Third World country as a result of what Saddam Hussein hasâ¨done to the country, but it wasn't. It was a country making great progressâ¨back in the late 1970s in which a lot of people have gotten educated, a lot ofâ¨professional people. And those are the people who ought to be involved inâ¨rebuilding the country.â¨â¨Now we're not going to find anybody inside Iraq who can be part of theâ¨government except from the Kurdish area, which has been free from Saddam'sâ¨control for 11 years, because anybody inside the country who might haveâ¨opposition tendencies either has kept them very secret and is not known or, ifâ¨it is known, he's in prison or dead. So I think necessarily a future Iraqiâ¨government should come from the opposition, it should be set up quickly, itâ¨should work with the American military occupation forces. But the Unitedâ¨States shouldn't itself get into the business of running Iraq. This really isâ¨for the Iraqis to do, and they are very competent and able to do it.â¨â¨GROSS: How long do you think the United States would have to keep a militaryâ¨presence in Iraq in order to make it possible for, you know, a new governmentâ¨and for elections to proceed in some kind of orderly fashion?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: I think it would take at least a year before you can holdâ¨elections. It's not just a matter of the process of preparing forâ¨elections--developing an electoral roll, taking a census--but there also haveâ¨to be a process of purging the Ba'ath Party, purging the security servicesâ¨which are pervasive in this society. In essence, Iraq is going to need toâ¨have a period of de-Nazification. There will be some institutions that simplyâ¨will have to be abolished outright; this would include the security services,â¨Saddam's version of the Ba'ath Party. Other institutions will have to beâ¨completely remade. I think it's inconceivable to me that any person who hasâ¨served as a judge in Saddam's Iraq could possibly continue to be a judge inâ¨post-Saddam Iraq because inevitably this person has been involved in theâ¨enforcement of tainted law that grossly violates human rights. So that wholeâ¨process has to take place, I think, before you can go to elections.â¨â¨GROSS: Peter Galbraith, you were America's first ambassador to Croatia afterâ¨Croatia was established as Yugoslavia dissolved. And you know very well whatâ¨happened in the Balkans. You know, it's a multiethnic region that startedâ¨feuding with each other after Yugoslavia broke up and after that region wasâ¨held together by a dictator. If the United States ousts Saddam Hussein, doâ¨you think that there will be a lot of fighting between the ethnic and religionâ¨groups in Iraq such as the Shia and the Sunni Muslims and the Kurds?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: There is not a lot of history of intercommunal orâ¨interethnic conflict in Iraq. But I think this cannot be excluded once theâ¨dictatorship is gone. Actually I think the greater parallel to what happenedâ¨in Yugoslavia relates to the situation of the Kurds. Yugoslavia, you had theâ¨Tito dictatorship. He held the country together. And then after he died andâ¨then 10 years after he died with the end of the Cold War, there wereâ¨democratic elections and its constituent components basically split apart.â¨And that was because in the end the constituent components of Yugoslaviaâ¨didn't feel Yugoslav. They felt that they were Slovene, Croat, Serb and soâ¨forth.â¨â¨Well, in Iraq the problem is that the Kurds, who live in a geographicallyâ¨defined area in the North, who have been de facto independent for 11 years,â¨don't feel Iraqi. Over the last 11 years the Iraqi identity has beenâ¨disappearing in the North. For example, the language used is no longer Arabicâ¨but Kurdish; the schools teach in Kurdish. There's been a flowering of media,â¨20 television stations of different political views, all of this in Kurdish.â¨For younger people, they don't really have a memory of Iraq, and for olderâ¨people the memory of Iraq is a nightmare. And so I do have concerns as toâ¨whether over the long term Iraq is going to be sustainable as a unified andâ¨democratic state, which are what President Bush has articulated as US goals.â¨â¨GROSS: And just looking down the line, does that possibly lead to anotherâ¨war?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: It doesn't necessarily lead to a conflict within Iraq ifâ¨there is a clear definition, an agreed definition of what the boundaries ofâ¨the Kurdish region are. But at the present time, that issue hasn't beenâ¨settled. If there are agreed boundaries, then the separation of Kurdistanâ¨could be something as benign as the breakup of Czechoslovakia, which simplyâ¨divided into two countries quietly and with virtually no fuss.â¨â¨GROSS: My guest is Peter Galbraith. He teaches at The National War College.â¨We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨GROSS: My guest is Peter Galbraith. He's a former senior adviser to theâ¨Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and served as the first US ambassador toâ¨Croatia.â¨â¨The Kurds have a deep hatred of Saddam Hussein. He gassed the Kurds, and heâ¨exiled a lot of Kurds and destroyed some of their villages. You helpedâ¨uncover some of Saddam Hussein's human rights violations against the Kurds.â¨What are some of the things you helped uncover?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: The first thing that I discovered was in 1987 when forâ¨completely fluky reasons I was given permission to go to the north of Iraq, toâ¨the Kurdish region. And as I traveled from the last Arab town into theâ¨Kurdish region, I noticed that things that I expected to be there weren'tâ¨there. There were villages on the map that we had that simply didn't existâ¨anymore. And as I went on I saw villages and towns in the process of beingâ¨destroyed. For example, on one side of the road there'd be nothing but rubbleâ¨and on the other side of the road there'd be abandoned houses with bulldozersâ¨that were parked there, clearly there to continue the job of destruction. Andâ¨it became clear to me that there was this process, which ultimately destroyedâ¨4,000 villages and towns in Kurdistan, of wiping out the rural areas ofâ¨Kurdistan. And the population was then being concentrated into what the Iraqiâ¨regime called victory cities, but what were effectively concentration camps ofâ¨some 50,000 people each in which the population was very carefully guardedâ¨without possibility of employment, dependent on government-issued rations. Soâ¨that was one of the atrocities.â¨â¨GROSS: Well, let me stop you there and ask you, what did you do with thatâ¨information when you realized that Saddam Hussein was destroying Kurdishâ¨villages?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: I was working for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee atâ¨the time and I included it in the report, which was part of a larger studyâ¨that we were doing of the Iran-Iraq War. But, frankly, at that time, like theâ¨Reagan administration, we were more concerned about what might happen if Iranâ¨won in the Iran-Iraq War. And so this information did not get a lot of focus.â¨But I had it in the back of my mind and a year later, when Kurdish villagersâ¨crossed into Turkey, reporting that Iraq had used chemical weapons, I wentâ¨back and I thought about those destroyed villages and I put the two togetherâ¨and I came to the conclusion that what was really going on was a strategyâ¨aimed at eliminating the Kurdish presence in Iraq; that this was, in fact, aâ¨policy of genocide. It wasn't completed genocide. It was part of a process.â¨And so I went to the chairman of the committee, Senator Claiborne Pell, andâ¨said, you know, `We need to do something about this.' He agreed. He asked meâ¨to draft legislation, which I did, that imposed comprehensive sanctions onâ¨Iraq. It was called the Prevention of Genocide Act. Got Senator Helms, whoâ¨is a very conservative Republican and the ranking Republican on the committee,â¨to join him, Senator Gore, Senator Byrd, the majority leader at the time, andâ¨we got this legislation through the Senate in a single day.â¨â¨And then I went out with a junior staffer on the committee named Chris Vanâ¨Hollen. Actually he's just now been elected as a Democratic member ofâ¨Congress from Maryland. And we went all along the Iraq-Turkey border talkingâ¨to these refugees who had just come out. There were about 65,000 of them andâ¨all of them, virtually all of them, had been witnesses to the chemical weaponsâ¨attacks and we interviewed hundreds who described firsthand what had happened,â¨many of whom had actually seen family members or friends or acquaintances dieâ¨before their eyes. But it was a very, very brutal campaign. Overall, weâ¨documented that between the 25th and the 28th of August 1988, 49 villages hadâ¨been attacked, but it turned out these attacks had been going on since 1987.â¨And perhaps as many as 180 villages and towns were attacked by Iraqi aircraftâ¨using chemical weapons.â¨â¨GROSS: Now the Anti-Genocide Act that you mentioned passed the Senate, but itâ¨didn't finally pass Congress.â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: No, it did not. It was vehemently opposed by the Reaganâ¨administration, which, however, agreed that Iraq had used chemical weapons.â¨But the Reagan administration's position was that taking action was prematureâ¨and so they were able to derail the process in the House of Representatives.â¨â¨I think it was a great tragedy that this legislation didn't pass because Iâ¨think Saddam got the message that, while his atrocious acts might generateâ¨protests, nobody, in fact, was really prepared to take action against him.â¨And I think had comprehensive sanctions passed, he might have thought twiceâ¨before he invaded Kuwait. He might have thought there would be consequencesâ¨from doing it. Incidentally, it's often argued that unilateral sanctionsâ¨don't do any good, but in this case, even though the sanctions bill neverâ¨actually became law, even though it was simply a threat that it would becomeâ¨law, it did have one very positive effect, which was that Iraq never againâ¨used chemical weapons against the Kurds.â¨â¨GROSS: There's something else you did regarding the Kurds. You were one ofâ¨two people who smuggled out Iraqi documents documenting human rightsâ¨violations and atrocities committed against the Kurds. What were theâ¨documents? How did you get them?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: In March of 1991, there was an uprising in northern Iraq andâ¨the Kurds took over all the Kurdish majority cities and towns. And when theyâ¨did that, they captured the buildings and the records of the Iraqi secretâ¨services as well as of the Ba'ath Party. They took these records to theâ¨mountains so that when the Iraqis retook the Kurdish area at the end of March,â¨they didn't recapture--they didn't get the records back. I learned of thoseâ¨records in March of 1991 because I was in northern Iraq as the uprising wasâ¨collapsing. But there was nothing to be done about it then, but I had it inâ¨my mind.â¨â¨And when I went back in September of 1991, because the US had created a safeâ¨area in which the Kurds then had started to run their own affairs, I talked toâ¨Jalal Talabani, who was one of the two main Kurdish leaders, and he told meâ¨indeed that most of the documents had been rescued and moved to the mountains.â¨So I said to him, `Well, if they stay here, you know, there's a good chanceâ¨that they will fall into Iraqi hands. And anyhow, they won't be useful.' Andâ¨so he said, `Well, I agree. I think they should go out of Iraq, but I'm notâ¨going to give them to the Bush administration. I just don't trust theâ¨American administration.' He was very angry at the Americans for havingâ¨called for the uprising and then failed to support it. So he said, `I'll giveâ¨it to you personally.' Well, that was a bit of a dilemma because I didn'tâ¨know what I would do with what turned out to be 14 tons of documents. But inâ¨the end, we were able to get them out actually on US military aircraft;â¨cooperation of the Pentagon. And then I deposited them in the files of theâ¨Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which meant they went into the US Nationalâ¨Archives. A special room was built for them below ground out in Suitland,â¨Maryland. And then Human Rights Watch, the human rights organization, beganâ¨to do research on them.â¨â¨And they turned out to be extraordinary documents. They were ledgers ofâ¨executions. They included the orders for the destruction of the villages,â¨what was known as the Anfal campaign. They included orders for the use ofâ¨special weapons, which meant for chemical weapons. They included the tapes ofâ¨meetings of the Northern Bureau. One of these tapes, for example, is Aliâ¨Hassan Majid, who is Saddam's cousin who had been put in charge of theâ¨north, in which he talks about using chemical weapons. He says, `We will useâ¨chemical weapons on the Kurds. Who will object? The internationalâ¨community?' And here I paraphrase the language, `To hell with them.' So itâ¨is an extraordinary record from the point of view of the Iraqi regime of theirâ¨activities and, of course, it mirrors rather closely what the Senate Foreignâ¨Relations Committee documented in terms of use of chemical weapons and whatâ¨the Kurds themselves had been reporting.â¨â¨GROSS: Why do you think a regime would document atrocities like that,â¨document the destruction of villages, document the use of chemical weapons,â¨document executions? I mean, talk about smoking gun.â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: That's an interesting question, but regimes do this. In theâ¨case of Iraq, I had imagined, when I saw some of these documents, particularlyâ¨videos of executions and torture, that this was being done out of some--byâ¨sadists who wanted to--who were sharing their sadistic products with theâ¨higher-ups who would enjoy seeing people suffering. But as I thought moreâ¨about it and looked more into it, I realized that that wasn't the case. Theseâ¨were bureaucrats, in the security services, who were making records ofâ¨executions, who were keeping records of meetings, who were making videotapes,â¨to demonstrate how well they were carrying out their orders. Some of it mayâ¨have been self-defense, so that they themselves could not have been accused ofâ¨being soft on the enemy, and some of it may have been in the interests ofâ¨self-promotion, demonstrating again how well it is that you are actuallyâ¨carrying out these instructions.â¨â¨GROSS: Peter Galbraith teaches at the National War College in Washington, DC.â¨He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this isâ¨FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨(Announcements)â¨â¨GROSS: Coming up, we continue our conversation with Peter Galbraith, and heâ¨explains why he considers himself a liberal interventionist. And we check inâ¨with psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton and talk about how the rhetoric isâ¨changing surrounding the possible use of nuclear weapons.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Peter Galbraith. Heâ¨supports military intervention to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and describesâ¨himself as a liberal interventionist. He teaches at the National War College,â¨and served as America's first ambassador to Croatia. In the late '80s andâ¨early '90s, while serving as an adviser to the Senate Foreign Relationsâ¨Committee, he helped smuggle out of Iraq 14 tons of Iraqi files documentingâ¨human rights abuses against the Kurds.â¨â¨Have your experiences documenting Iraq's human rights abuses against the Kurdsâ¨played a big part in your analysis that the United States should militarilyâ¨intervene in Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: Looking at what the Iraqi regime has done, I've come to theâ¨conclusion that it is a fascist regime that bears close resemblance to theâ¨fascist regimes in the first half of the 20th century in Europe. It has anâ¨official ideology that glorifies one group, the Arabs, over the others. Itâ¨has engaged in escalating atrocities against the minority that ultimately, inâ¨my view, but also in the view of Human Rights Watch, rose to the level ofâ¨genocide. And I think that it is appropriate for the United States to takeâ¨action, preferably with others in the international community; preferably, butâ¨not necessarily, pursuant to Security Council authorization, against regimesâ¨that commit genocide. Genocide is an internationally recognized crime, andâ¨there is a convention to which the US is a party that obliges states to doâ¨something to stop and to punish the crime of genocide.â¨â¨GROSS: You've described yourself as a liberal interventionist. Is there aâ¨difference between a liberal interventionist and a Bush administrationâ¨interventionist?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: Well, I think that there is a place for intervention againstâ¨regimes that brutally repress their own people, that engage in homicide andâ¨genocide even when there is not some other strategic reason to do it. Iâ¨suppose the best case would be Rwanda, where the United States didn't have anyâ¨strategic interest, but a genocide was taking place, and I think we and othersâ¨should have intervened to try to stop that.â¨â¨The Bush administration has made its case principally on the issue of theâ¨threat that Iraq poses. I think Iraq does pose a threat, but probably it'sâ¨not the most serious threat that we face. For example, one shouldn't speak ofâ¨weapons of mass destruction, generally. There is a difference betweenâ¨chemical and biological weapons on the one hand and nuclear weapons on theâ¨other. Iraq is not going to be able to manufacture nuclear weapons under thisâ¨inspections regime. North Korea is in the process of manufacturing thoseâ¨weapons.â¨â¨So if it was simply on the basis of weapons of mass destruction, then I thinkâ¨North Korea should be our priority. But there are these other issues, andâ¨because of the humanitarian issues--I place a greater emphasis on that, andâ¨that's why I describe myself as a liberal interventionist.â¨â¨GROSS: Now you've said that you think President Bush faces the legacy of hisâ¨father's action and inactions. What do you mean?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: Well, in February of 1991, the first President Bush calledâ¨on the Iraqi people to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein. On March 3rd,â¨rebellion began in the south and on March 8th, a rebellion began in the north.â¨By the middle of March of 1991, most of Iraq was in the hands of rebels;â¨Saddam was about to topple.â¨â¨At that time, President Bush took the decision to let the rebellion fail. Notâ¨just to let it fail, but actually to facilitate its failure. So Americanâ¨troops who were on the Euphrates Valley in southern Iraq permitted Iraqiâ¨Republican Guard units to pass by their lines, and in some cases throughâ¨American lines, to put down the rebellion in the southern city of Basra andâ¨Nasiryah and in some other places.â¨â¨In the north, General Schwarzkopf allowed the Iraqis to use helicoptersâ¨against the Kurds. And one has to understand the role of helicopters in theâ¨Kurdish psyche. Helicopters had often been used to deliver chemical weapons.â¨So for the population in the city, when they saw those helicopters flying,â¨they panicked, they fled. The helicopters also gave the Iraqis intelligenceâ¨that they could use to target Kurdish militia units.â¨â¨The final thing that happened is that those people in Baghdad and in the Iraqiâ¨military who were wavering, trying to figure out whether they should overthrowâ¨Saddam or not, you know, looked at what the Bush administration was doing, gotâ¨the clear message that the Bush administration did not want the rebellion toâ¨succeed and decided to back Saddam. We are dealing--and as a consequence,â¨Saddam stayed in power. We are dealing today with the failure of the firstâ¨Bush administration to support the rebellion.â¨â¨Now there's one other very important point about this. The first Bushâ¨administration has tried to slough off this question. They've always said,â¨`Well, we didn't have a mandate to go to Baghdad.' This has nothing to doâ¨with American troops going to Baghdad. That war was over on the 27th ofâ¨February, 1991. We're talking about a rebellion that began after the war wasâ¨over in March of 1991.â¨â¨GROSS: Well, what's your understanding of why the first Bush administrationâ¨allowed the Iraqis to put down the opposition?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: The first Bush administration was afraid of the people whoâ¨were the rebels. This was a rebellion that began in the south, and it was aâ¨Shiite rebellion, and which was in the north and was a Kurdish rebellion. Andâ¨so the first Bush administration was afraid that the Shiites would come underâ¨the influence of Iran, which is a Shiite theocracy, and they were afraid thatâ¨the Kurds wold try to create their own independent state and that this wouldâ¨alienate Turkey, who had been a key ally in the Gulf War.â¨â¨Now there's an irony here, because President Bush had actually called on theâ¨Iraqi people to try to overthrow Saddam Hussein and, of course, the Iraqiâ¨people are overwhelmingly Kurds and Shiites. But the second problem that tookâ¨place here is that the first Bush administration never talked to anybody inâ¨the opposition. There was a ban on talking to the Iraqi Kurds that continuedâ¨until the beginning of April of 1991. So they had no idea of what the Iraqiâ¨Kurds were thinking. They saw them in caricature and they saw themâ¨principally as people who wanted to break up Iraq and who Turkey hated.â¨â¨The irony is that I had invited the Kurdish leadership to meet at the Senateâ¨Foreign Relations Committee. The meeting actually turned out to be on theâ¨27th of February, the day the war ended. I tried to get them in to seeâ¨Richard Haass at the NSC. I was told that I was behaving irresponsibly byâ¨having contact with them. I was told that the administration's policy was toâ¨get rid of Saddam, but not the regime, and they would certainly not meet withâ¨them. The Kurdish leaders then left Washington to go to Ankara at theâ¨invitation of President Ozal of Turkey. In short, the US administration wasâ¨trying to be more pure on this question out of deference to Turkey's concernâ¨than Turkey itself was, and so they didn't appreciate what the agenda wasâ¨going to be.â¨â¨The irony is that in addition to the fact that Saddam is still in power 12â¨years later, the Bush administration was forced to reintervene to save theâ¨Kurds in April, and by so doing, they actually created the de factoâ¨independent Kurdistan that they were afraid of, and that entity has functionedâ¨for the last 12 years.â¨â¨GROSS: So how do you think these actions of the first Bush administration areâ¨playing out now? What are the repercussions now for President Bush?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: The current Bush administration is not repeating thoseâ¨mistakes. Paul Wolfowitz, who is the deputy secretary of Defense, has knownâ¨the Iraqi opposition leaders for many years. They are very regular contactsâ¨with the Kurdish leaders, they're developing contacts with the Shiite leaders.â¨So I think that they have taken that lesson on board.â¨â¨GROSS: Well, finally, do you think we're going to be going to war soon, andâ¨do you have any sense of how soon?â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: I have no inside information, but my sense is that we areâ¨going to be going to war, that it will be in the next six weeks to two months.â¨â¨GROSS: And you're optimistic about this.â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: Going to war is a very momentous decision, and war involvesâ¨lots of risks. And there'll be risks to the Iraqi people. One of the thingsâ¨that I worry about is that Saddam might again--with nothing to lose, mightâ¨again want to use chemical weapons. He probably would like to attack theâ¨United States, but he may not be able to do so. The people he can attack areâ¨the Kurds in the north and indeed, even more easily, Shiites in the south. Soâ¨I mean, this could end up being very devastating for the Iraqi people, so Iâ¨think there are lots of risks, but--so I don't think anybody can beâ¨optimistic. But I do think it is necessary.â¨â¨GROSS: Peter Galbraith, thank you very much for talking with us.â¨â¨Prof. GALBRAITH: Well, thank you.â¨â¨GROSS: Peter Galbraith teaches at the National War College in Washington, DC.â¨He is, by the way, the son of John Kenneth Galbraith.â¨â¨Coming up, we check in with psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton on his thoughtsâ¨about the march to war.â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *â¨â¨Interview: Dr. Robert Jay Lifton discusses the current nuclearâ¨weapons situation, going to war in Iraq and the impact of theâ¨Columbia shuttle disasterâ¨TERRY GROSS, host:â¨â¨Ever since September 11th, we've been checking in from time to time with Dr.â¨Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who's an expert on extremist religions, cultâ¨groups and the appeal of apocalyptic thinking. He's also written about globalâ¨terrorism and the psychological impact of living in an age of nuclear weapons.â¨â¨Dr. Lifton is currently a visiting professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medicalâ¨School. We called him to see what he's thinking as America marches towardâ¨war. He says he's concerned that if we launch a pre-emptive military strikeâ¨on Iraq, we'll be breaking a taboo against attacking a country that hasn'tâ¨attacked us first. I asked him to explain his concern.â¨â¨Dr. ROBERT JAY LIFTON (Harvard Medical School): Restraints in internationalâ¨behavior are not always adhered to, but they're very important to try to keepâ¨in place. And one taboo, which is a very important restraint, is againstâ¨attacking a country when you yourself have not been attacked. In that sense,â¨the new American doctrine of pre-emptive warfare, if carried out in Iraq,â¨would be the breaking down of a very major taboo, and that wouldâ¨encourage--and to a degree, legitimate--breaking down taboos on the part ofâ¨others. And it could very well bring about more sympathy for terrorism, whichâ¨is also a violation of a taboo against civilians and people who aren'tâ¨militarily concerned as victims. But that, too, would be a breaking of aâ¨taboo which would have more support, because we ourselves are initiating thatâ¨violation of taboos. And another possible consequence here could be the useâ¨of nuclear weapons, which is the greatest and most important taboo, on theâ¨part of one of many different countries.â¨â¨GROSS: For years, you've been studying the psychological impact of living inâ¨a world with nuclear weapons. You started this kind of study during the Coldâ¨War. Now we're living in a post-Cold War world where we're worried aboutâ¨Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and at the same time, we'reâ¨worried about North Korea starting to build nuclear weapons and possibly evenâ¨give nuclear weapons to other countries or to terrorist groups, and I'mâ¨wondering how your thinking is changing as the world situation is changing.â¨â¨Dr. LIFTON: Well, there's still a very grave danger of the use of nuclearâ¨weapons and, in fact, that danger is increasing. Before, during the Cold War,â¨we had to be concerned with very large hydrogen bombs in the hands of the twoâ¨superpowers; one superpower threatening to use it against another with a realâ¨danger of destroying much of the world. Now the danger has shifted moreâ¨toward relatively smaller nuclear weapons, the so-called Hiroshima temptation,â¨which could be to use a weapon, a nuclear weapons, against a country thatâ¨doesn't possess them.â¨â¨But the danger of any regional conflict escalating to a nuclear conflict--andâ¨that's a real possibility right now. If we attack Iraq, there's a danger thatâ¨Iraq will respond with some use of weapons of mass destruction. It could beâ¨biological or chemical, and there's a danger that Israel may use a nuclearâ¨weapon. There's a danger that we, the United States, will use a nuclearâ¨weapon as we've threatened to do should Iraq or anyone else use weapons ofâ¨mass destruction. And whenever you escalate violence in a very intense way,â¨the nuclear option is thought about by certain powers who are involved, andâ¨you create the danger of what I call an `atrocity-producing situation,' whereâ¨a group of people feel impelled to use a nuclear weapon.â¨â¨GROSS: So do you find yourself being more worried about the use of nuclearâ¨weapons now than you've ever been before?â¨â¨Dr. LIFTON: I am more worried about the use of nuclear weapons now in theâ¨post-Cold War ear than ever before, because on the one hand, we should beâ¨grateful that the Cold War dangers of almost complete world destruction haveâ¨ameliorated in some degree. But on the other hand with nuclear proliferation,â¨and with what I call trickle-down nuclearism, the nuclear weapons-relatedâ¨passions now affecting smaller and smaller groups, including nongovernmentalâ¨groups like bin Laden or even Aum Shinrikyo. This increases the danger of theâ¨use of a smaller nuclear weapon, and there also are unaccounted-for nuclear Soâ¨weapons in the countries of the former Soviet Union. So that, all in all,â¨most observers would feel that the danger of nuclear warfare is greater thanâ¨before, and we have to always be cognizant of that.â¨â¨GROSS: One of the things you've thought about a lot is what does it take forâ¨a leader to say, `Yes, it's justified to use a nuclear weapon,' and do youâ¨think that that sense of what would make use of a nuclear weapon justifiableâ¨has changed?â¨â¨Dr. LIFTON: Well, it has in certain ways, because one very important matterâ¨is: How much you consider the use of nuclear weapons crossing a dangerousâ¨threshold or, alternatively, how much you consider it just another weapon?â¨And unfortunately, this administration, our present administration, has reallyâ¨opted for the latter. They've talked about nuclear weapons as though theyâ¨were just other weapons, and they've talked about more creative uses ofâ¨nuclear weapons; for instance, underground uses to attack underground caves orâ¨whatever.â¨â¨So that rather than seeing that as a very important threshold to keep as aâ¨barrier, we've taken the opposite view of rendering the weapons ordinary andâ¨normalizing them and, really, engaging in rhetoric that eases their use. Soâ¨prior rhetoric, prior policy that justifies and encourages their use on theâ¨one hand, can combine on the other with a sense of national emergency or aâ¨threat to so-called national security, and that can be a combination that canâ¨lead to their use. We have to start talking and thinking about these thingsâ¨right now before they actually happen.â¨â¨GROSS: You've studied the mind-set of cult group leaders and terrorists. Theâ¨Bush administration is making connections between Islamic fundamentalistâ¨terrorists and the Iraq regime led by Saddam Hussein. But you've suggestedâ¨that if we attack Saddam Hussein, it might actually please bin Laden, assumingâ¨bin Laden is still alive. Make that case for us.â¨â¨Dr. LIFTON: Well, a terrorist like bin Laden thrives on chaos. I think if Iâ¨were bin Laden, I'd welcome an American invasion of Iraq because that wouldâ¨intensify chaos. It would create something closer to an apocalypticâ¨situation. The use of high-tech weapons, the anger of much of the Islamicâ¨world over this use of that weaponry on an Islamic country--all this would beâ¨in a direction that bin Laden seeks. And he would emerge from it stronger,â¨with more appeal and with better recruiting possibilities.â¨â¨GROSS: You were telling me that the head of Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cultâ¨group that was responsible for the gas attack in the Japanese subway--that heâ¨was thrilled by the Gulf War. Why?â¨â¨Dr. LIFTON: That's right. Asahara was thrilled by the Gulf War. He had aâ¨kind of ambivalence. On the one hand, he identified with Saddam and thoughtâ¨that this was another example of American aggression toward a non-whiteâ¨country. But on the other hand, he was very excited by the high-tech weaponsâ¨that America was using in that Gulf War because they seemed to be a harbingerâ¨of Armageddon, and Armageddon was what he sought. And that's a kind ofâ¨parallel to what I'm suggesting with bin Laden.â¨â¨GROSS: My guest is Dr. Robert Jay Lifton. He is now a visiting professor ofâ¨psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. We'll talk more after a break.â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Announcements)â¨â¨GROSS: Let's get back to our conversation with psychiatrist Robert Jayâ¨Lifton. He's written extensively about cult groups, extremist religions,â¨global terrorism and living in a world with nuclear weapons. We called him toâ¨talk about the fear of terrorism, the march toward war and the horror of theâ¨shuttle catastrophe, which briefly knocked war preparations out of theâ¨headlines.â¨â¨I think the shuttle disaster has happened at a time when people's emotions areâ¨still very raw because of September 11th and fear of terrorism. Do you thinkâ¨that Americans' grief over the shuttle disaster was deepened by post-Septemberâ¨11th fear and anxiety?â¨â¨Dr. LIFTON: I think it certainly has been. Certainly, the American reactionâ¨would be very strong under any conditions, because just rendering human theseâ¨astronauts and their appealing kind of human quality is enough to move theâ¨country. But having said that, I think Americans are uneasy and agitated overâ¨fear of terrorism and fear of recurrence of terrorist acts, and also over whatâ¨is immediately happening now in terms of the danger of an American attack onâ¨Iraq and what that means for us and what it means for further terrorism in theâ¨world. All of these things lead to not only uneasiness but anxiety andâ¨intensified grief and fear of loss.â¨â¨GROSS: Do you think that that connects to the amount of coverage that theâ¨shuttle disaster has been given in the media and the desire of many Americansâ¨to stick with it and to just--to kind of keep with that disaster and keepâ¨learning as much as they can about it?â¨â¨Dr. LIFTON: To some extent, as painful as the whole shuttle disaster hasâ¨been, there's some comfort derived by public expressions of grief and someâ¨degree of satisfaction in doing that. Sustained coverage of that grief, andâ¨of the events surrounding the disaster, may have the effect of warding off theâ¨more difficult questions, the more troubling issues involving the possibleâ¨invasion of Iraq and the possible intensification of terror that that invasionâ¨could bring about.â¨â¨GROSS: You mean, because with the shuttle, we're not looking at terrorism;â¨we're looking at something mechanical, something in the structure of theâ¨shuttle that went wrong. We don't know exactly what that is yet, but it's notâ¨morally ambiguous.â¨â¨Dr. LIFTON: Well, the hope is that we can uncover the technological source ofâ¨the shuttle disaster and, in that sense, deal with the problem. That may beâ¨too simply stated because the problems are vast and there are issues aboutâ¨human beings in space that many people are raising. But all of this has aâ¨certain straightforward quality as compared to the unknowns of an attack onâ¨Iraq and the responses of the Islamic world to such an attack. The latter,â¨the attack on Iraq, is a matter of a very painful and dubious decision asâ¨opposed to the focus on the shuttle disaster, which at least brings theâ¨country together in shared pain.â¨â¨GROSS: As opposed to the division over whether we should invade Iraq.â¨â¨Dr. LIFTON: That's right. Invading Iraq divides the country in the mostâ¨extreme way. And there are voices on all sides, all of which claim to seeâ¨things clearly, and everybody perceives dangers. It was rather interesting inâ¨one recent news article that one of the people most involved with being anâ¨architect for the attack on Iraq called back the interviewer, or told theâ¨interviewer, that he has sleepless nights worrying about what I've beenâ¨calling unintended consequences; that is, that certain things would happen,â¨including further terrorism or the use of some kind of dirty bomb on anâ¨American city as a result of an attack on Iraq. So that there's a lot ofâ¨unease about what looks like a presidential policy.â¨â¨GROSS: As a psychiatrist, I'm wondering if you've been thinking a lot aboutâ¨Saddam Hussein's personality and how well-balanced he actually is.â¨â¨Dr. LIFTON: It's very hard to project future events on the basis of theâ¨personality even of demagogic figures like Saddam Hussein. He has shown soâ¨many different characteristics, including wild destructiveness, very cannyâ¨capacity for survival, responsiveness to deterrence, very bad judgment inâ¨relation to his own self-interests. He's shown all of those things. Perhapsâ¨the lesson should be that we can't predict his exact behavior or that of Iraq,â¨in general, should we attack that country. And any policy that's based uponâ¨an assumption that he'll behave in a particular way, especially if that's theâ¨way we want him to behave, is really ill-advised.â¨â¨GROSS: Well, Dr. Lifton, thank you very much for talking with us.â¨â¨Dr. LIFTON: Thank you.â¨â¨GROSS: Dr. Robert Jay Lifton is currently a visiting professor of psychiatryâ¨at Harvard Medical School. His latest book is "Destroying the World to Saveâ¨It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence and the New Global Terrorism."â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨(Credits)â¨â¨GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.