Should the American Psychological Association disband its Military Psychology division?
The following is something I sent to a Listserv of Psychoanalysts for Social Responsibility, which has been campaigning to get the American Psychological Association [APA] to take a stand against psychologists being involved with torture. During this discussion one member suggested going further and pushing for the APA to kick out its Division of Military Psychology. He received an avalanche of negative responses from those who accused him of demonizing military psychologists. Instead, people suggested a dialog with the Division. I wrote the piece below in support of this member.
My Contribution:
I for one, am sympathetic to a campaign to terminate the Military Psychology division. I don’t believe there is a chance in hell that would occur, but it would make a statement. In my opinion, the question of torture is just one of many reasons this should be done. The US military has been a force for domination of innumerable other countries around the world: Iraq, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada, to cite just a few off the top of my head. Chalmers Johnson reports [America's Empire of Bases] that the US ” currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories.” The United States spends more on its military than do all other countries in the world combined! This vast organization has nothing to do with defense of the US and everything to do with the bipartisan consensus that the US is and should be the dominant power in the world. The illegal war in Iraq, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, [see my: 100,000 Iraqis Dead: Should We Believe It? for a discussion of deaths as of Sept., 2004] is just the icing, or perhaps strychnine, on the cake.
Thus, in my opinion, any ethical organization would be extremely reticent to be involved with this behemoth. It is not a matter of whether some Military Psychologists are nice people. I’m sure they are.[I'm not being facetious here. I mean this and respect many military people. I just don't respect their mission.] Some are even well-meaning. One doesn’t have to demonize individuals in order to declare that the organization and mission they serve is inimical to human well-being.
I would go further. I believe that the evolution of modern weaponry places the survival of the human race at risk. It seems inconceivable that nuclear and other hyperdestructive weapons will continue to flourish indefinitely without nuclear war or similar catastrophe being unleashed upon the human race. At the end of the Cold War there was a potential that the world would find some way to control this scourge. But the United States saw an opportunity, not for peace, but for world domination through being the only remaining superpower. The US took no steps to remove its nuclear arsenal and, in fact, has modernized it.
Among the worst horrors of the Iraq war is that it sent a clear message that the United States felt entitled to intervene in any country it deemed opposed to US interests, making up pretexts along the way, as states routinely do. The result is that countries such as Iran and North Korea know that their only protection is the possession of those nuclear weapons that Iraq failed to develop. Without a total turnaround in US policy and a major disarming of the US military, any hopes of avoiding major nuclear proliferation and an inevitable nuclear war are doomed.
Surely, those concerned with Social Responsibility could take a stand against cooperation with this leap toward human destruction. While being skeptical of drive theory, Freud, in postulating his death drive after World War I was anticipating the forces toward destruction that bedevil the human race.
1 comment January 18th, 2006