Sojourners: "American Mythology"

Sojourners applies Girardian analysis to Americans' self-delusion on Iraq:

In developing a theory of the origins of violence and culture, French intellectual Rene Girard discovered that in order to manage the violence and instability that arise within them, all societies blame (and then sacrifice) arbitrarily chosen scapegoats, a process that generates the needed social solidarity among those remaining. In other words, cultures keep the peace by projecting their evil onto specific individuals or groups, dividing the world into good and evil, and expelling (or killing) the 'evil ones.' This scapegoating violence can be as awful as the Holocaust or as banal as children excluding a playmate for the day....

The current deceptions around Iraq, in other words, are part of a powerful myth-making process to which human beings are particularly prone.