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April 12, 2002
John Chuckman
Tom
Friedman's Fabrications
April 11, 2002
Patrick Cockburn
Battle of St. Petersburg Zoo
Jeff Halper
After
the Invasion:
Now What?
Falk / Krieger
Taming the Nuclear Monster
Steve
Perry
The
Good Life of
Nellie Stone Johnson
Nick Ring
Efficiency and Occupation:
Terrorism vs. Taylorism
Alexander
Cockburn
From
the West Bank to BBQ
to Old Sparky, And Beyond
April 10, 2002
M. Junaid Alam
Blaming the Victims:
Hating the Palestinians
George
Monbiot
World
Bank to West Bank
Fran Schor
US-Sponsored State Terror
David
Vest
Political
Color Schemes
Jack McCarthy
Florida State Radicals:
The Berkeley of the South
Rises Again
Doreen
Miller
A
Tale of Two Warring Tribes
Michael Neumann
Israelis and Indians
April 9, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
Colin
Powell's Table Talk
Matt Vidal
Thomas Friedman,
Another Wasted Pulitzer
Ron Jacobs
Buyer
Beware
Robert Jensen
I Helped Kill a Palestinian
Vijay
Prashad
Memories
of Barbarity:
Sharonism and September
Wayne Madsen
Anthrax and the Agency:
Thinking the Unthinkable
April 8, 2002
David
Vest
From
Birmingham to Nashville:
The Making of Tammy Wynette
Rick Giombetti
Paxil, Suicide and Science
Dr. Neve
Gordon
Letter
to an IDF Colonel:
How Did You Become
a War Criminal?
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's Top 10 CDs
Jordy
Cummings
Not
in My Name Anymore
Gavin Keeney
Bush and the Middle East:
Mouth Wide Shut
Edward
Said
The
Future of Palestine
April 7, 2002
Beth Daoud
Accompanying Ambulances
in Bethlehem
Nancy
Stohlman
After
the Invasion:
The Search for Bread
Among the Ruins
Thomas Mountain
"Yellow Peril" In Hawai'i:
Judge Orders Chains and Shackles for Chinese Witnesses
Tariq
Ali
Who
Killed Daniel Pearl?
April 6, 2002
Philip Farruggio
War, Snake Oil and Circuses
Viktor
Litovkin
Russian
Generals Raise Questions About Pentagon Victories in Afghanistan
Patrick Cockburn
CIA Survey of Iraqi Airfields
May Herald Attack
Walt Brasch
Oil
Slick George:
Bush-whacking the Environment
Ralph Nader
Campaign Finance Sham
Sam Bahour
The
Blind Leading the Criminal
Bill Christison:
A Former CIA Official on
Oil and the Middle East
April 5, 2002
Charmaine
Seitz
In
Ramallah: The Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
Nancy Stohlman
The Invasion of Bethlehem
and Our Tax Dollars at Work
Beth Daoud
The
Siege of Bethlehem:
"What Do You Mean God Is Punishing Me?"
Fareed Marjaee:
Demonizing Iran
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Philip
Morris to Canada:
"Drop Dead"
Alex Lynch
Tampa Campus Mirrors
Middle East Strife
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon's
Wars: How the
News Gets Through
April 4, 2002
Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church
of the Nativity
Mike Leon
Rightwing
Assault on Madison Progressives Misfires
Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!
Nancy
Stohlman
An
American Under Siege in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?
M. Shahid
Alam
The
Lies of Thomas Friedman
April 3, 2002
Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks
Bernard
Weiner
An
American Jew Talks
About His Shame
David Vest
Sting of Stings
Gabriel Ash
America's Bravest
John Chuckman
Of
War, Islam and Israel
Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Sins of the Church
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
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Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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This Explosive
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Reviews of Gore:
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April 11, 2002
Defeating "Evil"
By Brian J. Foley
Evil is back.
Perhaps it never really left, and we
simply grew too sophisticated to talk about it. Before September
11, using the word "evil" made people think you were
crazy, exaggerating, or a religious fundamentalist.
Not now. President Bush called Osama
bin Laden and Al Qaeda "evil." He slammed North Korea,
Iraq and Iran as the "Axis of Evil." On September 11
Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon trumpeted, "Together
we can defeat these forces of evil." Even Pope John Paul
II used the word, denouncing pedophilia as "a most grievous
form of the mystery of evil at work in the world."
Once we label something evil, the lines
are drawn, the goal clear: Destroy it. There is nothing to figure
out. Why did terrorists hijack jets and ram them into buildings?
Because terrorists are evil. Evil is a mystery that cannot be
explained.
Try a thought exercise: What if we decided
there were no such thing as Evil?
We could no longer simply explain away
terrorists as "evil" but instead would seek other explanations.
Nothing, of course, justifies terrorism. But finding what causes
it can help us destroy it.
Experts remind us that terrorism is rooted
in politics, that it is "asymmetrical warfare," a way
for the militarily weak to fight more powerful foes. Most Americans
accepted this view back in the 1970s, when terrorists were Europeans
who had names such as Ulrike Meinhof instead of Mohamed Atta.
When we can't simply blame evil for our
problems, we become practical. For example, Great Britain tackled
IRA terrorism as a political issue and negotiated with the IRA
through its de facto political arm, Sinn Fein. The result: a
massive decrease in IRA violence.
Politics and diplomacy take work, and
they lack the glamour of "battling evil." But believing
we can destroy every terrorist with military might is pure fantasy.
Even if we could, how many innocents would be killed and maimed
in the process? How many new terrorists would step up? Anyone
willing to die can wreak havoc with a box cutter and a flight
manual, or a homemade bomb.
Here are two examples of how "battling
evil" is causing unintended -- and untold -- harm:
- OSAMA BIN LADEN: To bring this man
and his network to justice, U.S. forces have (unintentionally)
killed thousands of Afghani civilians. Millions have fled to
refugee camps. At home our government has watered down our civil
rights and secretly detained hundreds of people. But after six
months of war, Osama bin Laden and many of his associates remain
at large. Al Qaeda cells still infect dozens of nations. The
Taliban offered to hand over bin Laden in September, but President
Bush refused. The U.S. could have inserted commandos in the first
days of the war to draw out, engage, and defeat Al Qaeda. Instead,
it sought another war with not a single U.S. casualty, and weeks
of high altitude bombing sent terrorists running to hole up in
civilian enclaves and hospitals, which our leaders then said
they felt forced to bomb.
- SADDAM HUSSEIN: Trying to oust this
former ally, the U.S. has pummeled Iraq with bombs and sanctions
for more than a decade. Reportedly, Saddam Hussein is fine. But
more than 600,000 children have starved to death, a "price"
former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called "worth
it" on CBS's 60 Minutes in 1996. The Bush Administration
is now plotting a massive military assault that will undoubtedly
produce severe "collateral damage."
That's the seduction of evil: Battling
it blinds us to less destructive -- and possibly more effective
-- alternatives. The unintended, yet no-less-deadly results are
explained away as "necessary evils," or as the fault
of the enemy, who is blamed for creating the "evil"
in the first place (enemies who often likewise -- and irresponsibly
-- disparage the U.S. as "The Great Satan"). Yet it
is disingenuous for leaders to claim "we had no choice"
when they never really looked for any.
One way to start looking is to stop letting
leaders get away with simplistic rhetoric that is more medieval
than modern, dangerous rhetoric that shuts down the search for
solutions. It's time to force our leaders to get realistic, roll
up their sleeves and engage in hard-nosed problem-solving. Only
fools think they can beat the Devil at his own game, using violence
against violence, anger against anger, hate against hate. But
we can beat him at ours -- inquiry, reason, and persistence.
The most effective strategy in defeating
evil may well be to resist the temptation to use the word in
the first place.
BRIAN J. FOLEY
is a professor at Widener University School of Law in Wilmington,
Delaware. He can be reached at Brian.J.Foley@law.widener.edu
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