In Al Gore’s book, The Assault on Reason, he discusses how fear, because of how the human brain reacts to it, actually inhibits rational thought. People are evolutionarily trained to avoid the object of their fear by whatever means possible, regardless of how rational their action is. Gore points out that, because of the grip fear holds on the human brain, it is far more often used in the media to increase the control of the medium on its user; just as dangerously, it is used by politicians to further a political agenda. Now, I don’t think that the Republican party has a monopoly on this: there is evidence that, although quite a serious threat, much of the evidence of global warming has been exaggerated in order to scare people into action (and to that effect, can sometimes be used for good – but the means obviously do not always justify the ends).

 We see this quite often with U.S. foreign policy. We saw it with Clinton’s “rogue states”, Bush’s “Axis of Evil”, then of course Iraq as part of that, and now Iran and China. The fear produced by global-warming-fighters produces the negative effect of over-stressing the public; however, the fear produced by those impugning Iran may lead to another unwanted war.

Today, Senator Bernie Sanders published a piece in The Huffington Post, in which he wrote:

A war with Iran, combined with what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, would be an horrendous disaster. Here’s what Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor, wrote recently: “An attack on Iran would be an act of political folly, setting in motion a progressive upheaval in world affairs.”

A major military action against Iran would almost certainly unleash a lengthy war with the Muslim world which would significantly increase the threat of attacks against the U.S. and our allies, as well as compound difficulties for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At least there is one Senator aware of the problem we face with U.S. foreign policy toward Iran: the lack of rational debate about foreign policy decisions and a culture of fear could lead to another Iraq, or worse. Bernie introduced “S. Con Res. 13 – which would express the sense of Congress that the president should not initiate military action against Iran without first obtaining authorization from Congress.” Hopefully, this time, there will be a rational debate so that the public can find out the facts before allowing another quagmire in their name. Unfortunately, I doubt Bernie’s measure will get much attention; there are no co-sponsors yet, and the politics of fear can be very helpful to the agenda of an ambitious congressman.

The 3-minute documentary Bernie discusses is below; it shows a comparison of the Fox News coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war and what appears to be a run-up to a war with Iran.

The American people were scared into supporting the Iraq war on the basis that Iraq was supporting terrorism. As we later found out, Iraq was not supporting terrorism, but now know that it is a breeding ground for terrorists. It seems our initial fear became a self-fulfilling prophesy. Unfortunately, the consequences of war with Iran could be even more serious; if Iran really is pursuing nuclear weapons, it will be more likely to use them to defend itself. And attacking another Middle Eastern – majority Muslim – country could lead to a larger war than the U.S. can afford (not that we can afford any other wars than the 2 we have on our hands now).

And that would come just in time for the height of China fear-mongering…