A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

by Glenn Greenwald

  There are probably numerous reasons for this. Many claim that the senseless Vietnam disaster instilled in Americans an exaggerated resistance to war, a refusal to recognize it as necessary even when it really was. Whether that is true or not, the wars the United States fought in the 1980s and 1990s seem to have led Americans to the opposite extreme. The wars fought by the Reagan administration were covert (in Central America) or absurdly easy and bloodless (in Grenada). But, in all likelihood, the first Persian Gulf war—the war that has come to be seen as the all-Good, pure war—most fully explains the erosion of America’s resistance to war. It was the first fully managed, expertly staged televised war, and it made war seem like nothing more significant than killing bad people, the forces of Evil, by crisply zapping them from the sky with super high-tech, precision weaponry that risked nothing—war as video game, cheered on safely and clinically from a distance.

  Presented in this manner, war enables us to feel the power and strength that comes from triumph with none of the costs (the fact that war is the word we use for almost everything—on terrorism, drugs, even poverty—has certainly helped to desensitize us to its invocation; if we wage wars on everything, how bad can they be?). The things that make war tragic and horrific have been whitewashed away. The American media almost never show truly graphic photos of carnage in Iraq. The Bush administration bars the photographing of American war coffins. And that is why the few truly brutal though commonplace events that were captured partially on film or video—Abu Ghraib or the Saddam hanging—resonated so strongly. We are able to forget or pretend that those things are the consequences of the wars we cheer except when we are forced to confront them.

  In our political discourse, there is no longer a strong presumption against war. In fact, it is almost as though there is a reverse presumption—that we should proceed to wage wars on whatever countries we dislike or which are defying our orders in some way unless someone can find compelling reasons not to. The burden is now on those who would like not to engage in a series of endless wars to demonstrate why we should not. And much of the presumption stems from viewing the world through a Manichean lens—we are inherently Good; those who oppose us are, by definition, Evil; large numbers of civilian deaths in other countries are mere collateral damage that may be a regrettable though tolerable by-product; and there is therefore nothing that ought to constrain us from using our full strength to destroy the new Enemy of the moment. War now is merely another tool to achieve epic and glorious Manichean victory—selected not reluctantly but eagerly, at times even excitedly, and the choice to wage war—in many corners—seems to generate far less torment and sorrow than it does excitement and pulsating feelings of purpose and power.

  During the 2004 presidential campaign, meaningful debate over the terrorism threat remained repressed by tactics of mockery and the still potent and pervasive Manichean mind-set. Presidential campaigns are one of the few occasions when the nation collectively concentrates its energies on debating critical political questions. Yet George Bush’s 2004 victory was marked not by a triumph in political debate, but rather by the repeated invocation of Manichean slogans in order to preclude debate altogether.

  Though John Kerry voted back in 2002 to authorize an invasion of Iraq, his campaign was grounded in the argument that the key to preventing terrorism lay not in invading and occupying countries which have not attacked us, but instead, in improving our intelligence-gathering capabilities, strengthening law enforcement cooperation with other countries, increasing counterterrorism resources, and solidifying border security. Kerry told the New York Times Magazine that endless warfare could not ever end the Evil of terrorism because terrorism is a tactic used to advance a political and religious ideology, and thus cannot be eradicated solely through the use of military force.

  But Kerry’s advocacy of an alternative course to Bush’s failing militarism provoked wild controversy and great derision, from the Bush campaign as well as journalists and pundits across the ideological spectrum. Kerry’s approach lacked—indeed, it rejected—the fulfilling, reassuring simplicity of cheering on wars. The Bush campaign and the tough-guy media pundits wildly distorted, then caricatured, and then scornfully laughed away Kerry’s point; it provoked everything except a substantive response and meaningful debate about how best to handle terrorism: Oh, how hilarious—weak little John Kerry wants to treat terrorism like a law enforcement problem! He wants to protect against Al Qaeda attacks with police methods! He would “protect us” by serving subpoenas on Osama bin Laden! He wants to surrender to the terrorists and give them therapy! He only wants to defend America if he first gets a permission slip from the U.N. That is so so funny.

  By contrast, the president repeatedly invoked moralistic tales to defend his position on Iraq and to depict those who opposed it as suffering from an indifference to Evil. During his 2004 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Bush offered this “justification” for the invasion:

  The people we have freed won’t forget either. Not long ago, seven Iraqi men came to see me in the Oval Office. They had X’s branded into their foreheads, and their right hands had been cut off, by Saddam Hussein’s secret police, the sadistic punishment for imaginary crimes. During our emotional visit one of the Iraqi men used his new prosthetic hand to slowly write out, in Arabic, a prayer for God to bless America. (Applause.) I am proud that our country remains the hope of the oppressed, and the greatest force for good on this earth. (Applause.)

  And even as Iraq spiraled out of control, and the core pretext used to invade that country had been entirely discredited, the president continued to insist that the war was justified because we were Good and were waging war against the Evil Terrorists. From the same speech:

  Others understand the historic importance of our work. The terrorists know. They know that a vibrant, successful democracy at the heart of the Middle East will discredit their radical ideology of hate. (Applause.) They know that men and women with hope and purpose and dignity do not strap bombs on their bodies and kill the innocent. (Applause.) The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear—and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march. (Applause.)

  Manichean imperatives and rank fear-mongering similarly pervaded Dick Cheney’s RNC speech:

  Just as surely as the Nazis during World War II and the Soviets during the Cold War, the enemy we face today is bent on our destruction.

  As in other times, we are in a war we did not start, and have no choice but to win. (Applause.)

  Firm in our resolve, focused on our mission, and led by a superb commander-in-chief, we will prevail. (Applause.)

  The fanatics who killed some three thousand of our fellow Americans may have thought they could attack us with impunity, because terrorists had done so previously.

  But if the killers of September eleventh thought we had lost the will to defend our freedom, they did not know America, and they did not know George W. Bush…. (Applause.)

  In Iraq, we dealt with a gathering threat and removed the regime of

  Saddam Hussein. (Applause.)

  Seventeen months ago, he controlled the lives and fortunes of 25 million people. Tonight he sits in jail.

  And, most of all, Cheney mocked Kerry for his weak—and implicitly effeminate—unwillingness to fight the Terrorists:

  CHENEY: Even in this post-9/11 period, Senator Kerry doesn’t appear to understand how the world has changed. He talks about leading a “more sensitive war on terror”…(Laughter.)…as though Al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side. (Laughter and applause.) He declared at the Democratic convention that he will forcefully defend America after we have been attacked. My fellow Americans, we have already been attacked…(Applause.)

  AUDIENCE: U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A….

  CHENEY: George W. Bush will never seek a permission slip to defend the American people.

  That was, and still is, the essence of the Bush worldview—one
either recognizes the grave threat posed by Evil and thus supports maximum militarism and war-making, or one fails to recognize the threat (or even supported Evil) by opposing such measures. There is simply no other alternative to full-scale war ostensibly against the Evil enemies—no matter the complexities or risks involved, the constraints on resources, or the superiority of war-avoiding alternatives.

  Kerry’s attempt to expand beyond those two choices was not merely rejected; it was not comprehended. In the prevailing dualistic framework, an “alternative course” to war against the evildoers can only be understood, by definition, to constitute surrender and to declare oneself an ally of the Terrorist.

  In an extraordinary August 2006 column, longtime conservative George Will wrote that the Bush administration had “denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point.” In defending (two years after the fact) Kerry’s arguments about terrorism, Will specifically cited this:

  In a candidates’ debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be “occasionally military,” it is “primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world.”

  Will was specifically responding to a Bush official who was anonymously quoted that week in The Weekly Standard expressing the typical tough-guy derision that has long been used to preclude meaningful debate about terrorism:

  The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren’t for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It’s like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn’t work.

  In response to that quote, Will declared:

  This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike “the law enforcement approach,” does “work.”

  It is critical to note the circumstances in which Will argued that Kerry had been right about terrorism, and that the militaristic rhetoric of Bush followers with regard to terrorism consists of pure “caricature and non sequitur” which should “repel all but the delusional.”

  Two highly illustrative events were dominating the news that week: the intense, brutal (and ultimately unsuccessful) Israeli bombing campaign of Lebanon with the ostensible aim of eliminating the Hezbollah threat, and the announcement by the British government that it had disrupted a plot by Islamic extremists in England to blow up ten commercial jets over the Atlantic Ocean. Bush supporters were touting both events to underscore the necessity of waging war in the Middle East as a means for fighting terrorism, even though—as Will noted—they each proved exactly the opposite.

  The president himself, as he always does whenever it comes to news of alleged terrorist plots, was excitedly hyping the dramatic “U.K. airline” plot to claim that it vindicated his approach to terrorism. During a brief press conference that week, the president argued:

  The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.

  Manichean war cries of this type are, as one would expect, politically effective. Glorious crusades to crush Evil with violence will always be more intuitively exciting and emotionally satisfying than less flamboyant means for defeating it. But in the case of terrorism, this mind-set is incoherent, dangerous, and—worst of all—entirely counterproductive, because nothing fuels the anti-America resentment at the heart of terrorism more than invasions and bombing campaigns in Muslim countries.

  For that reason, such rhetoric ought to—as Will put it—“repel all but the delusional.” After all, as Will noted in his column, the U.K. terrorist plot was disrupted not by invading other countries or dropping bombs on Middle Eastern neighborhoods, but through diligent, legal, and patient law enforcement efforts, i.e., the measures advocated by Kerry that prompted such mockery in the press:

  The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.

  Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry’s belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that “many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror.”

  The Bush administration and/or its supporters unabashedly exploit terrorist threats for political gain every time a new plot is revealed—no matter how serious or frivolous, how advanced or preliminary, the particular plot might be. Bush followers squeeze such events for every last drop of political gain they can. As the president stated when the U.K. conspiracy was revealed, this was “a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom.” Put another way, the president’s use of terrorist plots such as this one is designed to convey this message: Those who oppose my policies forget that there are Evil people in the world and these plots therefore show that I have been right all along.

  But that argument is as incoherent as it is manipulative. Nobody doubts that there are Muslim extremists who would like to commit acts of violence against the United States and the West. No political disputes are premised, nor have they ever been premised, on a conflict over whether terrorism exists or whether it ought to be taken seriously. Nor does anyone of consequence doubt that terrorists are malicious and dangerous. Thus, events such as the U.K. plot reveal what everyone already knows, and do nothing to vindicate the Bush administration’s militaristic foreign policy or its radical lawlessness at home.

  Above all, the existence of Evil terrorists and the fact that some want to attack the United States certainly does nothing to vindicate the president’s invasion of Iraq. Opposition to the war in Iraq is not and never was based upon the premise that no terrorist threat exists. Among other arguments, it was based on the premise that the invasion of Iraq undermines, rather than strengthens, the American campaign to protect itself against terrorism.

  Most of the participants in the U.K. bomb conspiracy were British citizens, born in England. They had nothing to do with Iraq or Saddam Hussein or Iranian mullahs or the ruling Assad family in Syria. They were motivated by hatred for the United States, hatred which could not possibly be anything other than inflamed, and certainly not diffused, as a result of watching the U.S. attack a sovereign oil-rich country filled with Muslim holy sites. The ongoing occupation of Iraq spawns daily video of corpses of Muslim children, pictures of bombed marketplaces, and tales of American abuses against Muslims inside torture prisons formerly used by Saddam Hussein. All of that is continuously broadcast by Al Jazeera and other Middle East media outlets. That such conduct by the U.S. would heighten the risk of terrorism and spread Islamic radicalism is self-evident.

  The president and his supporters love to speak of Osama bin Laden and his terrorist allies as hiding in fear of the president’s militarism—or even hoping that Democrats win elections because terrorists so dislike George Bush’s war-making. Yet the exact opposite is true. Nothing has aided the cause of Islamic terrorism more than George Bush’s brutal and endless acts of aggression in the Middle East; nothing has ignited the fuel of terrorism—anti-American anger—more than that. And it is hard to imagine a more ar
dent fan of the president’s embrace of a Manichean worldview than Osama bin Laden, who shares that Manichean mentality and expressly sought, with the 9/11 attacks, to provoke exactly the split between the U.S. and the Muslim world that the Bush policies have wrought. As James Fallows reported in a 2006 article in The Atlantic Monthly:

  Documents captured after 9/11 showed that bin Laden hoped to provoke the United States into an invasion and occupation that would entail all the complications that have arisen in Iraq. His only error was to think that the place where Americans would get stuck would be Afghanistan.

  Bin Laden also hoped that such an entrapment would drain the United States financially. Many al-Qaeda documents refer to the importance of sapping American economic strength as a step toward reducing America’s ability to throw its weight around in the Middle East.