"The Captain America complex is a bipolar form of civil religion that periodically blesses crusades against evil enemies, often adding the stamp of biblical authority, in the pursuit of peace. Since Captain America must always take the law into his own hands to rid the world of evil, this civil religion produces acute conflicts between the impulse for holy crusades and a commitment to the rule of law.

The Captain America complex was evident in our World War I experience, when President Wilson demonized Germany's Kaiser in "the fight to make the world safe for democracy" while working for the League of Nations that America refused to join. The complex was also apparent during the Cold War, when we worked to build treaty organizations like NATO and SEATO, at the same time that we were fighting secret wars that LBJ and Nixon hid from the American people. The signs of this bipolar disorder are manifest now in fervent U.S. appeals for other nations to build international institutions that will help us fight terrorists—at the very moment that we are withdrawing from treaties that would compel U.S. accountability to international rules.

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The Appeal of Superheroism for American Leaders

While we do not know about President Bush's viewing experience with these exciting films, we know something about his liking for superheroes from an incident this year in Germany. To accompany a very dismissive "Masters of the Universe" article on the Bush administration's crusade against evil, Germany's news magazine Der Spiegel created a satirical cover depicting each national security player in the role of a zealous destroyer from American popular culture. George W. Bush, surrounded by his advisers, received a muscular Rambo body holding an automatic weapon and ammunition belts.

Daniel Coats, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, visited Der Spiegel's editorial offices—not to protest the caricature or the article's viewpoint about reckless unilateralism—but to report that "the president was flattered," whereupon he ordered thirty-three poster-size renditions of the cover for the White House. Each policy maker on the cover reportedly wanted a copy."

Read the full article by Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence