If I had to define ‘evil’, I’d say it is anything that is hostile to life. Not indifferent. Hostile.
Hurricane Katrina didn’t care whom it drowned. Jeffrey Dahmer took pleasure in taking life. Katrina wasn’t evil. Jeffrey Dahmner was evil.
It seems like a constant refrain, but actually it is just a recurring theme: conservatives accusing progressives of an inability to recognize and confront evil. Today, it is Michael Goodwin’s turn:
Whew, that was a close one. We suffered a big attack and were in mortal danger for a while, but we are safe now. Thank God, the war on terror is over. There are no Islamic extremists. Homeland security is not an issue. The only problem in Iraq is how to get out.
Wait, this is news to you? Then you didn’t watch the Democratic debate Thursday.
Part of the problem is definitional…part of it is perspective. From my point of view, the decision to invade Iraq showed an indifference to the sanctity of life that reaches a level that can only be called ‘evil’. This would more generally acknowledged if the war had not been sold as an absolutely necessary measure needed to prevent even larger loss of life. We now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction and no operational cooperation between the government of Iraq and al-Qaeda. If we are honest, we’ll admit that Saddam Hussein kept religious radicals under surveillance and allowed them little freedom of movement…no training camps, no access to weapons, no access to loose nuclear materials. There is no sense in which it can be accurately argued that the invasion of Iraq saved lives. It has cost hundreds of thousands of lives. And honest intelligence officers predicted as much before the invasion.
Once the Pandora’s Box was opened, a whole lot of evil boiled to the surface in Iraq. It was easy to blame Saddam Hussein for his oppression. Few considered the types of evil that his oppression suppressed. It’s true that the situation in Iraq has left is vulnerable to retaliation. There are a lot of angry people that want revenge. Whether we stay or go, we now have a higher level of threat. Who’s fault is that? Well…it’s not our fault that there are bad people in the world, but who else are you going to blame for this situation?
Yet, even if our country has made some very bad mistakes, we don’t forfeit our right to defend ourselves. We just need to be clear-headed. We’ve invited attacks. Goodwin seems to miss this:
Consider that what was once called a generational war against an existential threat is now by unanimous consent of the candidates only a misguided Republican war in Iraq that must be ended immediately. What was once a bipartisan concern about the new phenomenon of lethal nonstate actors such as Al Qaeda has been reduced to denunciations of waterboarding and attacks on the Patriot Act.
Bush and Rummy and Cheney called it a ‘generational war against an existential threat’ but it wasn’t anything of the kind. They then went about doing everything they could to make sure that it was a ‘generational war against an existential threat’. Namely, they lied to the world about the intelligence and invaded a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, and which could have actually been counted on to be a passive ally in crushing jihadists. They then added to the problem by making the decision to dismantle the only organization that could keep law and order and then setting up shop as an occupation force. Even war architects like Richard Perle have expressed astonishment at those decisions.
