WHAT WORLD LEADERS HAVE MEANT BY "EVIL"
SINCE LAST TUESDAY
By Susannah Mandel, 09/17/2001
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On Sunday, President George Bush was quoted in national headlines as vowing to "rid the world of the evil-doers" behind the September 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. "We've been warned there are evil people in this world," Bush said. "The governors and mayors are alert that evil folks still lurk out there." The words echoed his statements on the evening of the 11th, when he announced, "Today our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature." The promise to fight evil has become a frequent one in America, repeated and reinforced nearly daily by President Bush and other members of the administration. It is echoed by friendly nations' leaders around the world - British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for instance, who said: "This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life... [We] will not rest until this evil is driven from our world." The use of the word "evil" seems a natural response to the events of September 11th, in which the apparent suicide attacks of teams of hijackers destroyed the World Trade Center towers and killed thousands of Americans. It is a difficult word to define, since it touches at the very foundation of the way each of us defines our value systems. Still, it seems both relevant and important to think about the way this word is being used in world discussions of the attacks. Although a source like a dictionary may not seem profound enough to encompass an idea as complex as "evil," it is nonetheless a useful starting point for helping us define how we think about words and their use in the media. If we turn to the American Heritage Dictionary, we find several definitions of "evil" that seem to be apt descriptions of Tuesday's events. Choosing the modern senses of the word, we see that things which are evil are defined as "Morally bad or wrong; wicked... Causing ruin, injury, or pain... Characterized by anger or spite; malicious." Tuesday's attacks unquestionably caused ruin and injury. Most people consider them morally wrong. And the angry, responsive reaction of Americans seems to suggest that many people believe the attacks were spurred, perhaps among other causes, by malice. The next question, then, would be: what definitions are world leaders using, and of what precisely, are they speaking, when they talk about "evil"? Are President Bush and others characterizing the September 11 acts of terrorism themselves? The individuals who piloted the planes? The hypothetical network of people who supported their attack? The acts themselves, heinous as they were, lasted only briefly in time; the hijackers died in the explosions. What, then, is the still-present force of "evil" against which Americans, and the citizens and military of other nations, are being rallied to fight? U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has asserted that Osama bin Laden, an anti-American militant living in a remote region of Afghanistan, is a "prime suspect" in the attacks; the American government currently appears to be preparing to launch attacks against Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, and other cities if bin Laden is not produced. Is Osama bin Laden himself the one person whom Bush and Blair characterize as "evil"? Or is the word also meant to include the suspected members of his anti-American organization? Does it include all Muslims? Does it refer to the entire nation of Afghanistan? Is "evil" a characteristic that can be ascribed to entire nations? To entire religions? The former rhetoric was most recently used in America to describe the Soviet Union during the "Cold War" of the 1950s and 1960s. The latter usage has not recently been in common parlance in the Western world; used in that sense, it would evoke nothing more recent than the widespread anti-Islam rhetoric of the Crusades. During those religion-based wars, according to one of many historical accounts, "moral rules governing war were abandoned" by Christian fighters, "and unlimited tactics were permitted. No one was immune from attack by Christian crusaders; whole cities were slaughtered." It seems most reasonable to assume that Bush and Blair, as well as other world leaders, intend to refer specifically to Osama bin Laden - named as the suspected engineer of the attacks - and his immediate associates when they talk about their campaign to rid the world of "evil." Muslims in the United States and across the world are suffering reprisals from neighbors who apparently identify them with the "evil, lurk[ing] folks" named by Bush. In Afghanistan itself, hundreds of thousands of civilians are attempting to flee the country in anticipation of American strikes. According to U.N. estimates, as many as 300,000 Afghans have fled the southeastern city of Kandahar, associated with Afghanistan's Taliban government, out of fear that the city will be destroyed. These are human lives, put potentially at risk by the rippling effects of proclaimed and imminent violence. That violence is directed, by an angry and grieving nation and the president who leads it, against the perceived source of the "evil" that destroyed thousands of lives last Tuesday. But when the target of the intended violence is not made clear, it may bleed over in dangerous ways to injure innocents. Rhetoric does not by itself kill, but when a label is placed upon those declared "the enemy," then anyone on whom it comes to rest may become vulnerable to violence. For these reasons, it seems clearly and vitally important that we think carefully through the implications and meaning of words as powerful as "evil," when they are used by the leaders of nations, of armies, and of the hearts of millions of grieving people. It is difficult to bomb an ill-defined target without hitting bystanders; it is, perhaps, impossible to direct anger against an ill-defined target without harming innocents. And the wanton destruction of innocents is precisely what makes so many Americans so angry, as they reflect on Tuesday's "evil, despicable" acts. By most commonly accepted definitions, the concept most nearly opposed to "evil" is that of "good." This is what President Bush invoked in his address to the nation on September 11, when he said: "None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world." "Goodness," if it is presented in opposition to evil, would, presumably, avoid all the characteristics of evil. Good acts, according to that way of thinking, would avoid being wicked. They would avoid causing ruin, injury, or pain. And they would avoid the last entry in the definition, as well - namely: "characterized by anger or spite." If the actions which world leaders launch in the coming days, in the name of "ridding the world of evil," do not seem to always remain compatible with the counter-definition, "good," then we might remember to keep asking ourselves who, and what, our leaders mean when they speak of the destruction of evil and of the defense of good. And some of us may find ourselves led back to a disturbing potential paradox in the last line of President Bush's speech: the fact that what we think of as "just" is not always compatible with what we consider to be "good." In that case, what factors should we weigh to determine the best - or the "right" - course of action? 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