Abusing our feelings

I have explained the effects of fear on human beings, now I will explain how we use the same feelings for different purposes.

In general, fear helps us to continue our life in many ways. So lets start with a simple example of using fear for a good Purpose; when we were children our parents would tell us stories about fairies and other folk tales which would tell us of things that happened if you were bad. This encouraged us to have good behavior as we grew up. Fear helped us learn things like, if you don’t drink your milk you will grow up to be skinny and puny or if you go out in the dark alone the bogeyman will get you. Children learn from these types of stories, lessons that will help them.

Here is another story about using fear to help in learning; This is a true story and is still happening in Egypt. There are poor people in Egypt who work as monkeys trainers, to perform amusing shows in Bazaars and special occasions such as folk festivals, They make the monkey dance to music and to act out mimes of things like a woman cooking or washing clothes.

The amazing thing about that story is the way that the Egyptians train the monkeys to do this. They put the monkey in a room with a goat, and then try and make the goat do some performance or dance. Now it's very difficult to get a goat to dance so the trainers start to beat the goat with a stick. They do this many times in front of the monkey. Now monkeys have much higher intelligence than goats after all they say that monkeys are our ancestors. So the monkey watches with terror to watching what is happening to the goat in front of him.

When the Egyptian thinks the monkey has learned the lesson well and he is ready to perform what the goat refused to do. He will ask the monkey to perform the acts, and guess what???? The monkey does exactly what the man wants, he is intelligent enough to realize that it will be his turn to be beaten I he doesn't act well.

Fear made the monkey learn to do something because he was afraid of the punishment if he refuses to do what his master wants. I don't think the dancing monkeys of Egypt, dance for money, what do you think????

Unfortunately there are many abusive uses of fear also, we need some fear not to its extreme. An example of this would be the situation that Saddam put the Iraqi people through with his bloody policing policy in Iraq. He used the maximum amount of fear, maybe more than any other in history. He controlled Iraqis for 35 years with fear of killing, torture, jailing and or sexual harassment; he was the lord of fear.

He didn’t only apply his policies to individuals for unlawful actions; he also punished large groups like the Kurds. I am going to give you an example for using fear in Iraq by Saddam.

Saddam used chemical weapons in Halabja on March the 16th 1988; he killed nearly 5000 Kurdish citizens in 5 minutes. In 1991 the Iraqis rose up against him and there was fighting between Saddam’s troops and the Kurds in the north and the Shi'a in the south. I am going to tell you a story about the Kurds in the north of Iraq.

The Kurds successfully controlled many cities in the north after the Kuwait war and the uprising. This didn’t last long as Saddam’s army started to fight back against the Kurds, who were very strong and tough, they were fighting the Iraqi army for decades before all this happened.. Saddam had just lost the war with the coalition forces in Kuwait and he only had control of three provinces instead of the 18 that Iraq comprised of.

So how is it possible that he won that fight, not only won the fight but, he pushed the Kurds out of Iraq completely. 2 Millions Kurds left fast, leaving everything behind them and then they headed to Turkey and Iran! Saddam was very weak at that time with only a small army so what was the secret of his victory?

I'll tell you now; the Kurds were ready to fight to the death to defend their families and homes. So Saddam didn't fight them directly, instead he used a very clever trick; quite simply he used his helicopters to spread wheat flour on the Kurds. Now we all know that Flour is white powder and the Kurds thought it was chemical weapons and so their resistance crumbled and they became terrified (Terror) and they left at great speed.

Technically flour is not able to kill anyone, but it brought the picture of Halabja to the Kurdish minds. So of course they were full of fear, these people knew too well what had happened in Halabja. They had families and would have fought to defend them, but not if they were being attacked with chemical weapons. No one waited in Kurdistan to see what material was being dropped from the sky; fear blocked their minds from thinking about it, fear terror!

So maybe Saddam was the first one in history to use flour to win a war! He used it in Kurdistan and in the south with the Shi’a, also against the Americans in the last war, (Liberating Iraq) at Baghdad airport. On the first day when the Americans took over the airport, Saddam used the same flour against the American troops, who thought it was chemicals and left the airport. They soon discovered that it was only flour however and returned to re-occupy the airport. I heard this from someone who was there and he said that Saddam was there also fighting with his army in the airport, which is for history to decide.

Saddam, the lord of fear and terror played the game well. His game was simple, to plant fear, then feed it to help it grow and then use it as he needed! Very simple isn’t it.