Mistakes aren't evil but persisting in mistakes when the evidence tells you you are off course is evil
Evil is directionlessness
Martin Buber
Over the last 7 years George Bush has devolved from ordinary guy, lucky to be president, to bully and sadist, and now to evildoer. His policies of pre-emption, intimidation and non-negotiation with adversaries are destabilizing to the world order and they are best described as evil.
Phase I Bush as Ordinary Guy
Bush came into the presidency a rich kid whose goal, if he had one, was to outdo his father. On the domestic front, he had a few vague notions about compassionate conservatism. In foreign affairs he assured us he was not a nation builder, promising a humble foreign policy. Then 9/11 happened and he changed.
Phase II Bush as Bully
The orthodox view is that Bush turned into a bully after 9/11. Mr. Humble turned to swagger and snarl, taunting Osama with "bring em on" and reminding us that the Republicans were not the party of "cut and run." Fearmongering became the Bush administration's most effective tactic in implementing its agenda. Fear of WMD, of terrorists, of the mushroom cloud, of islamofacism, etc led to the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, torture, renditions, unauthorized eavesdropping, and the rest.
Over time the scare tactics lost resonance with the public; voters became turned off to fear mongering. Most politicians take a different tact when a policy is not working in order to win back public support,eg, as Schwarzenegger did in California when his initiatives failed. But not Bush. Defying public opinion, he has continued to ratchet up the fear dial. Last week he invoked the spectre of WWIII.
The explanation Bush's supporters give for Bush's "unpolitical" course is that he has evolved from "politician" to "statesmen," someone who is above poll driven politics. As a visionary leader, on the model of perhaps Truman, he has seen the gathering danger of islamo-fascism, the need for a generational war, and has chosen the lonely path of the moral hero, willing to sacrifice for the long term good of our nation. His stubborn refusal to change course on Iraq and a host of other policies, we are told, underscores that he will pay the price for what he says. In fact, the lower his poll numbers and the more merciless the criticism and personal abuse against him, the more over the top his rhetoric has become. It is as if low poll numbers and evisceration in the mainstream press feed into a perverse narcissism that confirms at least to himself his greatness as a leader: The hero does what's right, no matter what!
Phase III Bush as Evildoer
But Bush is no moral hero. Heroes contend with reality and the Bush psychodrama is untethered from reality, not connected to the real world out there (RWOT). It is mainly make believe. This fact is now becoming recognized. Increasingly we hear people refer to the Bush administration, including President Bush himself, his policies, and the policies of his ideological soulmates the Neocons, as "crazy" or "mad." A few days ago Putin described Bush as a madman running around with scissors. On Sunday Frank Rich of the Times referred to the neocons as madmen. Commentators, even neocon mouthpieces like the editorial page of the NY Times, express alarm about the perception around the world of the "crazy American government."
Madness and evil are rooted in disengagement with and denial of reality. Sanity, on the other hand, involves the full engagement with reality. To know reality one needs humility--to change and readjust as new information presents itself. Ideology constricts vision by insisting on a certain "correct" take on reality. The sane man who is open to change and new information is rarely as confident as the ideologue who knows the truth. What Bush and his administration have failed to do over the years is to adjust their policies to the changing facts on the ground. Instead, when facts collide with their policies, his administration denies the facts and becomes more entrenched in their misguided policies.
All evil leaders in history have also been labeled mad: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. We see in Bush's policies exactly these attributes. A case in point is torture. With the exception of Kiefer Sutherland and the crew of 24 no authority believes that torture works. Generals, intelligence experts, even right wingers like John McCain have said as much. Not only does torture not work, but it damages our nation's reputation in the world and may put our soldiers at risk. In spite of these widely acknowledged facts and the fact that they are alienating more and more of the electorate, the Bush administration insists on allowing torture. Why? Because they know the truth, a truth that no facts can belie.
Another example is the War on Islamofascist Terrorism. As Paul Krugman writes in the NYT this morning "there is no such thing as Islamofascism...it's a figment of the neocon imagination." The term was invented to provide a transition from Osama Bin Laden who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein who didn't." But Bush is the new Truman constructing a bulkwark against an enemy as dangerous as the Soviet Union of the time of Stalin. This self serving belief is necessary to forestall recognizing the simple fact invading Iraq was a tragic mistake.
A mad leader inevitably becomes an evildoer. Bush now has 1 million Iraqi lives on his conscience. He has 4 million displaced people on his conscience. He has tens of thousands of sick and dying children on his conscience. He has nearly 4 thousand dead American soldiers on his conscience. He has 30,000 wounded soldiers on his conscience. Martin Buber said that a feature of evil is that over time it congeals and becomes hardened as directionless becomes its direction. To my mind that is a good description of America's foreign policy.