[NATIONALREVIEW] I never liked it when George W. Bush used the term "evildoers" to describe al-Qaeda and other terrorists. I never had the least problem with the description. I thought it accurate.
A lot of other people objected as well, but for different reasons. I didn't like the term because it always sounded to me like he was saying "evil Dewar's," as in the blended Scotch. (This always made some of Bush's statements chuckle-worthy -- "We will not rest until we find the evil Dewar's!") I prefer single malts, but "evil" always seemed unduly harsh.
I'm not a scotch drinker and -- never having heard the brand name spoken -- I'd have pronounced it "Di Wars." Just goes to show what I know. Taking exception to the term doesn't lessen the actual evil.
The more common objection to "evildoers" was that it was, variously, simplistic, Manichean, imperialistic, cartoonish, etc.
"Evildoers" has a Dudley Dooright air to it. That still never changed the fact that evil was being done.
"Perhaps without even realizing it," Peter Roff, then with UPI, wrote in October 2001, "the president is using language that recalls a simpler time when good and evil seemed more easy to identify -- a time when issues, television programs and movies were more black and white, not colored by subtle hues of meaning."
Peter sounds like a subtle sort of fellow, who could see 3000 dead Americans in other than a Manichean light. Yasss, yasss, the world is actually made up of shades of gray. It still remains that some shades are considerably darker than others. Those of us who see the world in Technicolor don't have that much trouble distinguishing among them.A few years later, as the memory of 9/11 faded and the animosity toward Bush grew, the criticism became more biting. But the substance was basically the same. Sophisticated people don't talk about "evil," save perhaps when it comes to America's legacy of racism, homophobia, capitalistic greed, and the other usual targets of American self-loathing.
Us Technicolored folks don't have any trouble distinguishing among "bad," "evil," "Evil," and "EVIL!"
For most of the Obama years, talk of evil was largely banished from mainstream discourse.
Diversity is good for you. I've never understood the way that statement has always been met with unthinking acceptance. Perhaps diversity can be overdone just like anything else. Wearing shoes with pom-poms on them and dancing in a circle with the guys down at the Greek center is a bit of diverting diversity. Refusing to speak anything but Greek is stupidly diverse. But you can't get too far into diversity without running into evil and sometimes into EVIL! Diverse human cultures sometimes slice the genitalia off young girls. I, personally, would characterize that as Evil (capital E). If your courtship doesn't work out in Pakistain you might douse the light of your life who's just rejected you with acid. I, personally, would call that EVIL. Just adding the exclamation point when thinking about the things the Islamic State and its cousin Boko Haram are doing seems inadequate. There should be some sort of word to describe "beyond evil."
An attitude of "goodbye to all that" prevailed, as the War on Terror was rhetorically and legally disassembled and the spare parts put toward building a law-enforcement operation.Well, you know. (That's a sentence in progressivespeak). Proper progressives are against war, even in the face of existential threats. They keep assuring each other that Violence Never Solves Anything, which any Gepid can tell you is bunk. A hyperarmed police force, on the other hand, is necessary to defeat domestic "terrorism" by those who would attempt to limit the government's writ.
War was euphemized into "overseas contingency operations" and "kinetic military action."
There's always been something kinetic about the falling of a bomb from a B52.
There was still bloodshed, but the language was often bloodless. Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a protege of al-Qaeda guru Anwar al-Awlaki, shouted "Allahu Akbar!" as he killed his colleagues at Fort Hood. The military called the incident "workplace violence."
He was in his workplace, sort of, and he was certainly violent. The fact that he's a religious lunatic was thought to be beside the point, though it did cheat the victims of their Purple Hearts. The language Shakespeare and Walter Raleigh and Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe spoke has been soaking for the past fifty years in warm milk. It has become cheesy.
But
"Whoa! Over there! Isn't that Kim Kardashian!"
That's why the Islamic State is so inconvenient to those who hate the word "evil." Last week, after the group released a video showing American journalist James Foley getting his head cut off, the administration's rhetoric changed dramatically. The president called the Islamic State a "cancer" that had to be eradicated. Secretary of State John Kerry referred to it as the "face of . . . evil."
That was after referring to it as the "Junior Varsity of Terrorism." But if you were paying attention back during the Bush years you realize this is nothing new. One poor guy (I think his name was Johnson but I'm too lazy to look it up) was murdered in Saudi Arabia and the murderer had his head in his refrigerator when he was nabbed. But that was years ago, maybe six or seven, and we were all so much younger then...Although most people across the ideological spectrum see no problem with calling the Islamic State evil, the change in rhetoric elicited a predictable knee-jerk response.
There's always room for tut-tuttery, also known as rhetorical Jell-o.
Political scientist Michael Boyle hears an "eerie echo" of Bush's "evildoers" talk. "Indeed," he wrote in the New York Times, "condemning the black-clad, masked militants as purely 'evil' is seductive, for it conveys a moral clarity and separates ourselves and our tactics from the enemy and theirs."
Or perhaps it merely illustrates the separation? No. No. That couldn't be it.
James Dawes, the director of the Program in Human Rights and Humanitarianism at Macalester College, agreed in a piece for CNN.com. Using the word "evil," he wrote, "stops us from thinking."'Tis my opinion that being able to recognize it requires you start thinking...
No, it doesn't. But perhaps a reflexive and dogmatic fear of the word "evil" hinders thinking?
Y'gotta be started to be hindered.
For instance, Boyle suggests that because the Islamic State controls lots of territory and is "administering social services," it "operates less like a revolutionary terrorist movement that wants to overturn the entire political order in the Middle East than a successful insurgent group that wants a seat at that table."
Tut tut, sir. It's just another approach to governance. Different cultures have different ways. Theirs includes chopping people's heads off and summarily executing prisoners and crucifying people. Who are we, who have our own faults, to judge? We used to have slavery in this country too. Diversity is good for you. Shuddup.
Behold the clarity of thought that comes with jettisoning moralistic language! Never mind that the Islamic State says it seeks a global caliphate with its flag over the White House. Who cares that it is administering social services? Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot did, too. That's what revolutionary groups do when they grab enough territory.
Mussolini made the trains run on time or else.There's a more fundamental question: Is it true? Is the Islamic State evil?
I'd characterize anyone who actually has to ask that question as not too firmly good him-, her-, or itself.
As a matter of objective moral fact, the answer seems obvious.
"Doh!" I shouted, whacking myself on the forehead...
But also under any more subjective version of multiculturalism, pluralism, or moral relativism shy of nihilism, "evil" seems a pretty accurate description for an organization that is not only intolerant toward gays, Christians, atheists, moderate Muslims, Jews, women, et al. but also stones, beheads, and enslaves them.
Tut tut, sir. You're not being at all multicultural.
Who are you saving the word for if "evil" is too harsh for the Islamic State?
If Lucifer himself stalked down the middle of Main Street there would a pretty big crowd following him. Dissent, y'understand, is the highest form of patriotism.
More to the point, since when is telling the truth evidence you've stopped thinking?
Well, yeah. So they crucify people. Isn't it up to us to try and understand their culture?