Invading and Occupying Iraq: Some Insights From Political Psychology

A quite extraordinary number of books and articles have now been published about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Although this is a noticeably atheoretical literature, these works collectively provide a wealth of raw material for the theorist. With that kind of project in mind, this article considers what light political peace psychology as a field can throw on Iraq. In doing so, it can be seen that George W. Bush and his colleagues seem to have committed an exceptionally wide-ranging catalogue of cognitive and motivational errors. With the goal of sharpening the senses of different psychological hypotheses rather than "proving" any of them, this article examines, in turn, decision making on impulse, the appearance of cognitive shortcuts resembling the drunkard's search, misperceptions and the failure to empathize, the use of analogical reasoning under conditions of structural uncertainty, the resistance of entrenched beliefs to disconfirming evidence, the prominence of denial and wishful thinking in the face of psychologically uncomfortable information, and groupthink.