|
Edited on Sun Apr-03-11 04:50 AM by howard112211
I think we should not fall into that trap. Often the argument for some sort of action, be it in North Korea, Iran or now Libya, is "This guy is a mad man. He is unpredictable.".
I think rarely is this truly a case. I don't know of many political figures that I would attribute an actual mental illness, in a clinical sense, to, except perhaps a tendency towards narcissistic disorder, which they all share to varying degrees, or a tendency to sociopathism, lack of empathy, which also many of them share to some degree. Note however that these are tendencies but usually rarely a full fledged illness.
Hitler was manic depressive in the late stages of the war, likely due to the stress of losing a war. His radical views may have been fueled by PTSD from World War one, but he was no Schizophrenic, or borderline personality, or suffered of any other form of illness that would have impaired his decision making.
Stalin was definately not mentally ill. He was a perfectly healthy, ruthless, person.
The thing is, that people do not stay loyal to someone who is showing signs of being impaired in their decision making, which is what mental illnesses do. To remain in power over prolonged periods of time requires a great capacity for calculating behavior. Signs of paranoia of a dictator, in this sense, are not a sign of illness but a reasonable response to the very real threat of assassination.
I think the reason why "mental illness" get's tossed around, when we talk about people like Ahmadinejad is twofold: For one, we, or the warhawks on our side have a reason to push this, to prove that such people are beyond diplomacy. And the second reason is that such leaders themselves sometimes have reasons to present themselves as "madmen" to the outside world. If one assumed, for instance, that Kim Jong Il is a perfectly sane individual, one might conclude that one can do scirmishes on his territory, because he would not be so nuts to escalate things into a full scale nuclear war. He therefore has an interest in presenting himself as a "raging madman" who will simply start popping off nukes randomly, as a means of deterring aggression.
Most politicians are simply following the logics of power politics. If someone makes a statement such as "leader X is nuts" this is often a good sign that this person has some sort of agenda.
|