One of my personal habits is that I like to know how other people think. It’s not even the decision or idea itself that is necessarily interesting. What I’m constantly curious about is the chain of thought that led to a specific decision beginning from the person’s basic assumptions and observations to the step-by-step logic that they perform based on those assumptions. Most of the time, I end up being disappointed because people mostly do not make decisions through a conscious, deliberative process but act impulsively or instinctively instead.

Some of the most puzzling decisions on the world stage in recent history have been made by the late Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Why did he send contradictory signals over whether or not he actually possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)? Why was he so stubborn in not allowing weapons inspectors full access to Iraq when in fact he had no WMDs? Why did he even choose to invade Kuwait in the early 90s? This blog post answers some of these questions and illuminates some of the thought processes that were going on inside the dictator’s head.

For example, it turned out that he was so nonchalant about the prospect of being invaded by the U.S. because he believed that he had won against the U.S. and its allies in the First Gulf War. His reasoning was that the coalition of over 30 countries had tried to overthrow him in 1991 but he survived, therefore he had won and if the U.S. wanted to try again, history would just repeat itself. In reality, the U.S. deliberately left his regime in place because George Bush Sr. feared the chaos that deposing him would unleash.

Another example showing how out of sync with reality he was: he had WMDs in 1991 but was afraid to use them because he believed that if he did, the U.S. would unleash its own chemical weapons on Iraq. In 2003 he did not have WMDs but didn’t want to admit that because he was more afraid of an internal coup than of an invasion by foreign forces. The blog post is full of more examples of such convoluted thinking.

Once again, this shows that dictators, surrounded as they always are only by yes-men, quickly become delusional and lose all grasp of reality. But it’s also a reminder to everyone how important it is to constantly reassess your fundamental assumptions and beliefs to ensure that what you believe is indeed the truth.