A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency (10 page)

One can debate endlessly (without much hope of a definitive resolution) the question of whether George Bush has followed this neoconservative stratagem of cynically wielding Manichean concepts in order to persuade Americans to support his international aggression or whether, instead, such techniques were first cynically wielded to persuade Bush himself of the wisdom and moral necessity of these policies. Either way, that George Bush has invoked Manichean moralism as the central justifying argument for his decisions is difficult to dispute, to put it mildly. The overriding theme in the president’s rhetorical arsenal, particularly with regard to his war and terrorism policies—but by no means only those—has been the purported need to fight against Evil and to defend the Good.

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 Americans of the rightness of their actions. Put another way, when assessing the Bush presidency (or any political movement or political leader), one can undertake two entirely separate and independent tasks: (1) examine the justifications and arguments
proffered
by the president to justify his policies (in the case of Bush, Manichean moralism) and engage and refute those arguments at face value, or (2) attempt to expose the
genuine, underlying, concealed motives
fueling those policies, motives clouded or outright concealed by the dualistic rhetoric.

To engage, analyze, and refute the president’s proffered justifications for his actions is neither to accept nor reject that they are sincerely held. In either case, those Manichean appeals have powerfully shaped the perceptions of many Americans and have been a potent tool in inducing Americans to support many of the president’s most radical policies. And other influential political figures, including several who wish to succeed Bush, invoke the same worldview to advocate their own extremist policies, both domestically and abroad. That alone compels the need to examine the president’s Manichean moralism and its underlying premises on their own merits, independent of the question of whether he really embraces it.

There is, of course, no shortage of theories as to the “true motives and objectives” of the Bush administration, particularly concerning matters of war and terrorism. And indeed, there is little doubt that the president is surrounded and heavily influenced by a constellation of aides, advisers, think tanks, supporters, and ideologues—many of whom have agendas and belief systems that are as far removed as can be from concerns of Good vs. Evil, to put it generously. (Chapter 4 critiques the Bush administration’s conduct and thinking concerning Iran, and the potent influences and agendas that are brought to bear on the president’s decision-making are examined and documented there.)

But independent of those matters, whether as a genuine belief system or cynical persuasive tool, Manichean theories play a vital role in American political discourse, and any meaningful assessment of the Bush presidency necessarily centers on those theories. Manichean moralism pervades our political dialogue.

ENDLESS NEED FOR ENEMIES

M
ore policies have been justified, more government power expanded, more mischief enabled, and more perceptions manipulated by the Bush administration’s invoking concepts of the enemy—the pure Evil enemy—than by any other tactic. Dualistic rhetoric has not been confined to the president. Indeed, at the heart of most political arguments and tactics of the Bush-led “conservative” movement is the identification of an Evil enemy, and a rage-driven perceived need to crush it. Bush followers are frequently most excited and enlivened by designating the enemy, followed by swarming, rabid attacks on it.

At its core, the Bush movement has defined itself by that which it is
not
rather than by identifiable, affirmative ideas. Its foreign policy objectives are identifiable by one overriding goal—destroy and/or kill the enemy, potential or suspected, often including everyone nearby. And it has come to view its domestic objectives through the same lens. It is a movement in a permanent state of war. All matters, foreign and domestic, are framed in terms of that war and ritualistic attacks on the enemy du jour—the terrorist, the Communist, the illegal immigrant, the secularist, and most of all, the “Liberal.”

In his best-selling 2006 book,
Conservatives Without Conscience
, John Dean compares the conservative movement he joined in the late 1960s to today’s Bush-led movement. Dean was attracted to the political conservatism of Barry Goldwater (whose 1960 book,
The Conscience of a Conservative
, inspired Dean’s title), and, at the age of thirty-two, Dean became Richard Nixon’s White House counsel.

Dean’s central premise is that the current Bush-led “conservative” movement shares none of the core principles that attracted him to Goldwater conservatism. And indeed, scores of the country’s most prominent voices on the right, such as Pat Buchanan, William Buckley, and George Will, also find that the Bush movement bears little resemblance to “traditional conservatism.”

In July 2006, the so-called father of modern conservatism,
National Review
founder William Buckley, pronounced that Bush’s “singular problem” is “the absence of effective conservative ideology.” At roughly the same time, George Will condemned the so-called neoconservatism that has guided the Bush foreign policy as a “spectacularly misnamed radicalism.” One of the president’s most influential neoconservative supporters, Robert Kagan, echoed Will’s view when he acknowledged, in his
Washington Post
column in January 2005, that although the vast majority of self-proclaimed “conservatives” have been loyally supportive of Bush’s so-called neoconservative foreign policy, the Bush foreign policy is actually the very “antithesis of conservatism”:

The goal of American foreign policy is now to spread democracy, for its own sake, for reasons that transcend specific threats. In short, Bush has unmoored his foreign policy from the war on terrorism.

This is where Bush may lose the support of most old-fashioned conservatives. His goals are now the antithesis of conservatism. They are revolutionary.

And before his death, Barry Goldwater himself frequently accused the “social conservative” wing of the party of assaulting core conservative principles.

Relatedly, Dean documents that the “conservative” movement Bush leads is composed of various factions that actually share very few political beliefs. With the exception of a handful of isolated examples (such as a fervent belief in tax-cutting), these groups could not come close to agreeing on a core set of political principles and specific policy goals that define their movement. In the absence of a unified policy agenda, what, then, binds them and maintains their allegiance to this political movement?

Dean’s answer is that these disparate enclaves hold in common the need to wage war against perceived Evil, and the shared (related) hatred of common enemies. Their collective attacks on those enemies have become the Bush movement’s defining attribute. That commonality is sufficient to maintain allegiance because, argues Dean, it provides a tonic to a morally ambiguous, uncertain, and complex world—a world they perceive to be filled with dangers in every facet of life. All of these factions, like the devotees of Manicheanism, are in thrall to promises of a comforting and liberating moral simplicity, a framework that provides refuge from a complex, confusing, and frightening world. A unified crusade against Evil enemies bestows purpose, excuses failure, alleviates confusion, and enables sensations of power.

Not only American political discourse but also American culture generally are suffused with an endless parade of fear-inducing images, of constant warnings of latent dangers—the terrorist “sleeper cells” lurking in every community, the sex predators living covertly on one’s own street, drug gangs and violent criminals and online pedophiles, radical tyrants seeking nuclear weapons. Basic human nature dictates that a world that seems frightening and hopelessly complex always engenders a need for both protection and clarity.

Religion—a belief in an all-powerful, protective deity and a clear, absolute, and eternal moral code—powerfully satisfies those cravings. True faith in an all-powerful, benevolent God alleviates both fear and anxiety and produces an otherwise unattainable tranquillity and feeling of safety. Identically, a political movement built on a strong, powerful, protective leader—one who claims that the world is morally unambiguous, who insists that it can be cleanly divided into Good and Evil, and who promises “protection” from the lurking dangers of Evil—fulfills the same needs. Those who lead the group—the Protectors—will inspire great personal loyalty, while those who oppose it will be viewed as mortal enemies.

The Bush administration’s political rhetoric and that of its supporters almost uniformly conforms to a binary framework that sustains allegiance and cohesion and justifies the actions of its leaders. As Dean writes:

Important conservative opinion journals, like the
National Review
and Human Events, see the world as bipolar: conservative versus liberal. Right-wing talk radio could not survive without its endless bloviating about the horrors of liberalism. Trashing liberals is nothing short of a cottage industry for conservative authors….

The exaggerated hostility also apparently satisfies a psychological need for antagonism toward the “out group,” reinforces the self-esteem of the conservative base, and increases solidarity within the ranks.

Many of these tactics, including the ongoing use of Manichean rhetoric, have been wielded by the American right wing for decades, but they became particularly effective as a result of the 9/11 attacks and the resulting political power bestowed on President Bush. The terrorist acts of 9/11
were
evil, and they
were
perpetrated by those who truly are enemies of the United States. For that reason, the uncompromising nature of the president’s condemnation of those attacks—and his vows of retribution against the Evil enemy—potently resonated among most Americans, including many who are typically unreceptive, even resistant, to Manichean appeals.

But the propriety and success of such rhetoric in the context of vowing vengeance against Al Qaeda led to its application in many morally ambiguous contexts increasingly removed from 9/11. Thus,
evil
and
enemy
became terms wielded not merely against the terrorists who sought to launch 9/11-like attacks on Americans but also against an ever-lengthening list of others—countries with no current or historical connection to Al Qaeda, groups that were vaguely opposed to U.S. interests but not guilty of anti-American terrorist acts, and finally, to those who, even by peaceful means, opposed the president—whether abroad or at home. As the
Los Angeles Times
editorialized in the beginning of 2007:

The 9/11 attacks reinforced the White House’s penchant for viewing the world in binary terms, and Bush’s “with us or against us” mantra fit the moment. On issue after issue, from tax cuts to Iraq to its tactics against suspected terrorists, this administration has portrayed opponents as beyond the pale, while its own positions are crucial to the defense of Western civilization.

Those who were not squarely behind the president’s crusade for Good were suspected, and frequently declared guilty, of siding with Evil. Attempting to impede the president’s policies or, worse, the president himself, subjected one to accusations of harboring sympathy for terrorists, or at least of a reckless indifference to the danger the enemy presented. The binary view of Good and Evil came not merely to define every significant political issue but to engulf all political debate. One was presented with a false choice—embrace and actively support the president’s policies to wage war on Evil or side with Evil, either deliberately or by default.

With these dualistic premises underlying virtually the entire national political discussion, Supreme Court justices who ruled against the president on national security matters were accused of being tyrants, traitors, and pro-terrorist. Journalists who uncovered legally dubious Bush administration conduct and policies—from illegal, warrantless eavesdropping to CIA “black sites”—were accused of being criminals who should be prosecuted. Virtually all significant political opponents of the president’s—Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Kerry, the Clintons—were relentlessly branded as liars, mentally unstable, corrupt, seditious, and/or sympathetic to the Enemy.

Indeed, even those who had devoted much of their adult lives to military service (often in ways far more courageous and impressive than most Bush supporters), or even those who have been longtime Republicans and conservatives, have seen their characters relentlessly smeared and their motives and integrity impugned as soon as they have criticized the administration in any way that could significantly embarrass the president—Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neill, the war-critic generals, Joe Wilson, Scott Ritter, Wesley Clark, John Murtha, Max Cleland, John Paul Stevens, and on and on and on.

The Bush movement has been devoted to the destruction of its enemies wherever they might be found. That movement took as its inspiration the resolute commitment to battle a genuine threat—the terrorist networks that perpetrated the 9/11 and similar attacks on the United States—and moved it further and further outward from that event, to the point where invocation of Evil and Enemies became reflexive, regardless of the targets or the circumstances.

The president and his supporters locate new “enemies” continuously, in every corner and seemingly on a daily basis, and vow heightened wars against them, because they must. Enemies are the essential sustenance of all Manichean movements.

BUSH’S DIVINELY INSPIRED STRENGTH