Good versus Evil

George W. Bush, may his tribe decrease, is fond of seeing the world and its activities as a contest between good and evil. I suggest there is a classic example of this conflict going on at this very moment in Crawford, Texas, adjacent to Bush's pig farm.

Think of it. On the one side is Cindy Sheehan and her anti-war supporters. They believe that Bush/Cheney and the neocons lied to start a "war" in Iraq. A "war" that is illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, and was unnecessary. The reasons they gave for starting this immoral busines had to do with the existence of WMD's, biological and chemical weapons, planes or rockets that could attack the U.S., and relationships between Sadam and Osama bin Laden. All of these claims have now been exposed as totally false. Now they have claimed that the goal was really to promote democracy in the Middle East and to get rid of a nasty dictator. Both of these claims are also demonstrably false. The true reasons have never been disclosed although they pretty obviously have to do with invading a helpless country that happens to sit upon a huge reserve of oil which the U.S. desperately needs to control. To invade a sovereign nation which is no threat to you is a war crime. To do so to gain control of their natural resources is a war crime. To torture prisoners taken in such a situation is a war crime. To hide prisoners from the Red Cross is a war crime. War profiteering is also a war crime. Being an occupying power and failing to provide for the citizens of that occupied country is a war crime. There seems little doubt that all of these things are involved. Cindy Sheehan and her followers want to know if this is the "noble cause" their sons and daughters died for. A perfectly reasonable question it seems to me. They have received no answer.

On the opposite side of the good versus evil battle in Crawford is a caravan of pro-Bush supporters, probably financed by Republicans and conceived by Karl Rove. Their mantra seems to be simply that "Cindy does not speak for us." They provide no explanation whatsoever as to why the "war" should be supported. That is to say, they don't specify the "noble cause." They say things like "stay the course," "we can't just cut and run," "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here," and other slogans that do not speak to the question of why we are doing this. They don't specify the "course," we almost certainly should "cut and run," and fighting them there is completely a result of our own doing. "They" weren't even there until we started this miserable and unwinnable business. If the pro-war group gets their way we will be involved in an endless "war" that will simply kill more and more people, bankrupt the U.S., alienate us from the rest of the world for a very long time to come, and now probably result in the creation of an Islamic state where previously there was none. Iran will have won and women will surely have lost. Before this is over there will most likely be a civil war where even more lives will be lost.

Can there be any doubt in this contest where good and evil reside?

"We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if it were, stifling it would be an evil still."
John Stuart Mill