Glenn Greenwald has a new book coming out. It’s about George W. Bush’s Manichean moralism. Greenwald explains here and Salon is running an excerpt from the book here.
I have a quibble with this use of the term ‘Manichean’. Greenwald is using it to designate a dualistic world-view that breaks things down into ‘good’ and ‘evil’. There is no question that Bush has framed the Global War on Terror in this binary way. But a rudimentary look at Manichean theology will show you that the prophet Mani did not see things Bush’s way. The uniqueness of Mani’s teaching was that he solved the ‘problem of evil’ that plagues the Abrahamic religions. If God is good and God is omnipotent and God is omniscient, then why do horrible things happen? Why does evil exist? For Mani, the answer was that God is not omnipotent. He has an equally powerful rival.
Mani was considered a heretic by the early Christian church and it’s easy to see why. But I don’t want to get bogged down in a theological discussion. Suffice to say, George W. Bush is not a Manichean. He expresses belief in a version of the Christian God. This God is on America’s side and, if truth be told, must be considered a fairly solid Republican and a neo-conservative. But there is no equal power in the universe to Bush’s God. He doesn’t believe, for example, that Allah is real and is waging a cosmic battle against Yahweh. Whether he thinks Satan exists and has an equal footing with God, I don’t really know. The possibility that Satan might be deceiving Bush seems to have escaped his notice.
Greenwald is using ‘Manichean’ in a more conventional sense, to mean a simplistic black and white worldview. Conservatives like to think in these terms. In the post-war period, conservatives rallied around the flag of anti-communism, refusing to see any nuance or differences in communism as practiced by Stalin, Tito, Mao, Castro or anyone else. They refused to acknowledge rivalries and tensions between communist states. They were uninterested in doctrinal differences between communist thinkers. They broke down world affairs into a communist bloc and a free bloc and imagined that the communists were in league with each other and bent on world conquest.
Islamic terrorism has offered them a much needed replacement. You will notice a continual indifference to rivalries among Islamic states and doctrinal differences within Islam. You will hear them repeat things like this, from Fred Thompson:
We understand that the Western world is in an international struggle with jihadists who see this struggle as part of a conflict that has gone on for centuries, and who won’t give up until Western countries are brought to their knees.
Could it be any more transparent? Replace the word ‘jihadists’ with ‘godless communists’ and drop the part about ‘centuries’ and you have a phrase repeated a billion times during the Cold War.
In an all-out war for survival against an evil adversary, almost any act can be justified. And that is the subject of Greenwald’s book.
Greenwald thinks it is ultimately irrelevant whether or not George W. Bush actually believes his own rhetoric. Is Bush actually a evangelical Christian that is convinced he’s on a mission from God? For Greenwald, it doesn’t matter.
I think it does matter, but I understand his argument.
Ultimately, whether moralistic dualism is in fact what motivates the president or whether he manipulatively adopts its rhetoric to justify his actions has no bearing on the need to examine and, where necessary, refute the framework he (and his political allies) invoke in order to persuade America of the rightness of their actions.
Greenwald is frustrated that a large percentage of the early feedback on his book is negative. People are refuting the premise that the President and his neo-conservative allies are religious at all. And Greenwald well knows the Straussian cynicism that animates thinkers like William Kristol, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz. They are not religious people…they use religion to manufacture consent for their policies.
Greenwald sputters in response:
The commenters argue, in essence, that Bush’s behavior is exceedingly simple to explain. He is, they asset, simply Evil, and is only motivated by a one-dimension desire for profit and power. Hence, there is no need to say anything about Bush other than: “He is evil and wants money.” That simple, unifying “theory” explains everything.
No, that theory doesn’t explain everything. They want more than money. They want power as well. These are the exact same people that thought up Team B in the 1970’s to hype the threat of communism and justify increased defense spending. The pattern is so well established that there really shouldn’t be any dispute about the cynicism of their dualism.
Greenwald says that he can’t know what is in someone else’s mind so he can’t say whether Bush is an authentic evangelical Christian with a dualistic worldview. I suppose that’s true, but we can make an informed guess. I say he is a fraud. And if he is not a fraud, then he has certainly been duped by more clever advisers.
No matter how hard the neo-conservatives try, terrorism will never rise to the threat level of a nuclear armed Soviet Union. But they will continue to make the effort because they derive power from it and they make profits from it. Religion has nothing to do with it.
But this does not make Greenwald’s work worthless. The question that needs answering is how do we reduce the effectiveness of this dualism as a driver of foreign policy and as an electoral strategy? Greenwald has some ideas on that, and I look forward to reading them.
