The captain of the ship invites mutiny from the sailors beneath him, not to mention his human cargo, when he continues driving the vessel into the teeth of a typhoon and it the risk of going down becomes too great.
One of the great books to come out of World War Two was The Caine Mutiny by Leon Uris. The movie of the same name stars (it's available in Barnes & Noble, $25, just the other day) the late Humphrey Bogart.
The typhoon in question there has been called Halsey's typhoon, because Admiral William Halsey, fleet commander, drove his fleet into the teeth of one of the greatest typhoons ever survived by any armada, but lost several warships and over 800 men as the war was nearing its end. After that he was given a desk to command in Washington, so big was his reputation. They couldn't cashier him just because he lost part of his fleet to a storm he'd been warned about by his weather operations officers. Individual captains had to ride it out, bucking and heaving, or break formation and flee the violent storm. Others also stopped to pick up survivors, also in violation of naval orders which require vessels in war to proceed with the mission, not risk the vessel by stopping to pick up survivors. The recent book is "Halsey's Typhoon."
In Uris's The Caine Mutiny, Captain Queeg has been showing clear signs of paranoia, meaning an irrational fear that one is being persecuted, followed by enemies, real or imagined, which is impervious to reason. The thing about insanity is that no matter what proof you offer, the sufferer cannot absorb it for what it is. When you tell a sane but panicked person that the danger is over, he can settle down and become restored to mental order, but not an insane person. They just cannot take it in for what it is worth, and what it is worth is reality, judged by the understanding of most sane people. Psychiatrists use a test called the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) to test for mental illness all over the world. The insane present as insane similarly in all cultures. A person who eats dirt is insane in America as well as in China.
Aboard the Caine, as Queeg insists on a suicidal voyage into the typhoon, his men begin stealing alarmed glances at one another and finally decide they must take matters into their own hands in order to save the vessel, a destroyer, as I recall, and the men by taking over command of the ship in accordance with a navy regulation that takes the commanding officer's mental health, or lack thereof, into account.
The resulting trial, a court martial over the correctness of this decision, or not, forms the bulk of the book and movie and it is one of the greatest trial representations in all literature. Capt. Queeg, rolling two steel balls in his hand to try to maintain calm under cross-examination, stating "I kid you not," (becoming one of the great
lines of the day when I was in high school) demonstrates on the witness stand his full-blown paranoia, every cross-examiners dream.
The question for us is what do we do when our captain demonstrates his imperviousness to reason? Do we mutiny? Impeach? Or just wait for the day he becomes term limited out? A captain can drive a ship onto a reef in less time than that.
We need to ask ourselves whether Pres. Bush is demonstrating Pres. Lincoln's steadfastness in the midst of a war that isn't going well, or Capt. Queeg's insistence on driving his ship into a typhoon that may sink the ship.
Eugene Robinson of the WaPo, below, suggests that Bush is more Queeg than Lincoln:
The last hawk standing
Friday, July 20, 2007
ONE HOPES the leader of the free world hasn't really, truly lost touch with objective reality. But one does have to wonder.
Last week, President Bush invited nine conservative pundits to the White House for what amounted to a pep talk, with the president providing all the pep. Somehow I was left off the list -- must have been an oversight. But some columnists who attended have been writing about the meeting or describing it to colleagues, and their accounts are downright scary.
National Review's Kate O'Beirne, who joined the presidential chat in the Roosevelt Room, told me that the most striking thing was the president's incongruously sunny demeanor. Bush's approval ratings are well below freezing, the nation is sooooo finished with his foolish and tragic war, many of his remaining allies in Congress have given notice that come September they plan to leave the Decider alone in his private Alamo -- and the president remains optimistic and upbeat.
Bush was "not at all weary or anguished" and in fact "very energized," wrote Michael Barone of U.S. News and World Report. He was "as confident and upbeat as ever," observed Rich Lowry of National Review. "Far from being beleaguered, Bush was assertive and good-humored," according to David Brooks of the New York Times.
Excuse me? I guess now he must be in an even better mood, because the feckless Iraqi government announced its decision to take the whole month of August off while U.S. troops continue fighting and dying in Baghdad's 130-degree summer heat.
It's almost as if Bush were trying to apply the principles of cognitive therapy, the system developed by psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck in the 1960s. Beck found that getting patients to banish negative thoughts and develop patterns of positive thinking was helpful in pulling them out of depression. However, Beck was trying to get the patients to see themselves and the world realistically, whereas Bush has left realism far behind.
"He says the most useful argument to make in support of his policy is to show what failure would mean," Barone wrote of the president and Iraq. "It would mean an ascendant radicalism, among both Shiite and Sunni Muslims, and it would embolden sponsors of terrorism such as Iran. Al Qaeda would be emboldened and would be able to recruit forces."
Excuse me again? This is what Bush believes would happen? Hasn't he noticed that these catastrophes have already befallen us? And that they are the direct consequence of his decision to invade and occupy Iraq?
At a news conference last week, someone tried to point this out. Bush replied with such a bizarre version of history that I hope he was being cynical and doesn't really believe what he said: "Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically. That's why I went to the United Nations and worked with the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. That was the message, the clear message to Saddam Hussein. He chose the course. ... It was his decision to make."
Let's see, we have learned that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. That means Bush is claiming that Hussein "chose" the invasion -- and, ultimately, his own death -- by not showing us what he didn't have.
"Bush gives the impression that he is more steadfast on the war than many in his own administration and that, if need be, he'll be the last hawk standing," wrote Lowry. The president says the results of his recent troop escalation will be evaluated by Gen. David Petraeus, wrote Barone, and not by "the polls."
Translation: Everybody's out of step but me.
One of the more unnerving reports out of the president's seminar with the pundits came from Brooks, who quoted Bush as saying: "It's more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn't exist."
It's bad enough that Osama bin Laden is still out there plotting bloody new acts of terrorism, convinced that God wants him to slay the infidels. Now we know that the president of the United States believes God has chosen him to bring freedom to the world, that he refuses to acknowledge setbacks in his crusade and that he flat-out doesn't care what "the polls" -- meaning the American people -- might think. I'm having trouble seeing the bright side. I think I need cognitive therapy.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/20/EDGNNQ50DG1.DTL
This article appeared on page B - 11 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Comments