As a psychologist, I think we’re especially likely to find ourselves “trapped”—individually and collectively—over issues that engage one or more of the five core concerns that govern much of our lives: vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. The “war on terror” is certainly such an issue, and this country’s right-wing leaders have been especially aggressive and persistent in invoking these five concerns to promote their WOT agenda. Here I’ll offer one illustrative example of each.

Vulnerability: Vice President Cheney was especially brazen in appealing to fear at a town hall meeting in Des Moine, Iowa, two months before the 2004 election: "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."

Injustice: President Bush has repeatedly invoked a WOT refrain that wrongdoing must be redressed. Typical was his statement in Washington just a few weeks before invading Iraq (2/26/03): “The best way to secure the homeland is to find killers before they kill us and bring them to justice. And that's what we're going to do.”

Distrust: Appeals to distrust, to our need to be suspicious of those around us, have also been commonplace in the WOT context. A classic example was provided this past August by then incumbent (now defeated) Senator Conrad Burns of Montana. During a campaign event he explained to the assembled: “They’re faceless. They operate in the shadows. They drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night….That’s the enemy we face, and we must win this war on terror.”

Superiority: Appeals to superiority take a variety of forms, but in the WOT they often engage simplistic good-versus-evil frames with explicitly religious overtones. For example, in a televised CNN debate in 2004, televangelist Jerry Falwell offered his view of the WOT as an exalted pursuit: “You've got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops. And I'm for the president to chase them all over the world. If it takes 10 years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord."

Helplessness: In the WOT, a key appeal in this final domain typically calls upon us to resist resignation and defeatism. In June of this year, for instance, then House Speaker Dennis Hastert invoked the memory of 9/11 in the following way: “We in this Congress must show the same steely resolve as those men and women on United Flight 93; the same sense of duty as the first responders who headed up the stairs of the twin towers. We must stand firm in our commitment to fight terrorism and the evil it inflicts throughout the world.”

Many other specific examples could be offered, but I think my point is clear. We do indeed desperately need to get “untrapped” in the war on terror. But psychologically it will not be easy. Because our national leaders are telling us over and over again that an American who turns away from the WOT is someone who (1) doesn’t care enough to protect loved ones from danger, (2) doesn’t want to bring wrongdoers to justice, (3) doesn’t recognize his/her own foolish gullibility, (4) doesn’t embrace the greatness of our country’s cause, and (5) doesn’t persist in the face of adversity. Now who would want to be a person like that?