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The lines most cited in Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech were those about evil: “Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince Al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism--it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”
These lines won approbation from both liberals and conservatives. Former Clinton aide Bill Galston praised them as an example of Obama’s “moral realism.” According to neoconservative Bob Kagan, Obama didn’t “shy away from the Manichaean distinctions that drive self-described realists (and Europeans) crazy.” Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said the lines marked the speech as “very American.” “He didn’t speak as kind of the citizen of the world, as sometimes he has in the past,” Gerson added approvingly.
I am not a self-described realist, and I am a Chicagoan by birth, yet I don’t care for these lines. While I don’t object to the idea of just war, and have supported the various wars that Obama cited in his speech, and wouldn’t balk at calling Al Qaeda or Hitler evil, I think Obama ventured onto dangerous terrain by invoking the existence of evil as a justification for war. That kind of argument suggests neither moral realism nor prudent idealism, but the crusade-like, messianic foreign policy--pitting good against evil--that got the country into so much trouble during the last administration.
At the risk of appearing pedantic, I want to say something about the use of the term “evil,” which has a different linguistic status than terms like “bad,” “naughty,” “mean,” or “nasty.” Unlike these other terms, the term “evil” has a religious connotation suggesting that people are possessed by it. Moreover, when one says there is “evil in the world,” one seems to be referring to a something and not merely a passing quality or affliction--such as, say, unhappiness. As a result, saying there is evil carries a certain weight of argument.
At the same time, there is no fixed meaning for the term “evil.” Like the term “beautiful”--which expresses high praise for how someone looks but doesn’t imply whether they are a blond or a brunette--the term “evil” expresses condemnation of an individual or institution without implying clearly what they have done wrong. Within a community, or nation, there can be agreement at the very extremes about the term’s use--for instance, most Americans believe Hitler was evil--but little agreement on most examples. For instance, a considerable number of liberals, but very few, if any, conservatives, would describe Dick Cheney as evil. Some wacky conservatives think Obama himself is “the epitome of evil in every sense of the word.”
The proper question to ask about this term is not what it means--as if there were a distinct substance that it referred to--but the kind of activities or individuals that it is used to condemn. Instead of a defining list, there is a set of rotating attributes. These would include, for instance, the willful disregard of other people’s lives and treating a race, ethnic group, or sex as less than human. Evil is also often associated with the notion that a particular individual or regime is unredeemable--not subject to change by persuasion or conventional inducement. But none of these attributes is defining. One can always find counter-examples. For instance, some people might believe that the financier Bernie Madoff is evil without thinking that he is beyond rehabilitation. Or one can think Stalin was evil without thinking that he wasn’t amenable to negotiation.
In conversation, calling someone evil usually indicates that an argument has gotten out of hand. It’s the verbal equivalent of hitting someone. In foreign policy discussions, it often indicates an attempt to cut short rather than to advance an argument. Like a comparison to Hitler, the attribution of evil to a leader or regime doesn’t add a new detail to a discussion, but usually stops it in its place. Implicitly, a speaker is saying, “He’s evil--what more needs to be said?” In this sense, the term possesses weight, but not substance.
Outside the context of a particular argument, calling a nation or regime evil doesn’t entail any particular action in relationship to it. It’s not like saying someone has pneumonia or swine flu. A variety of people in the United States and Europe could agree that a regime (say, that of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov) is evil without agreeing on any action that should be take in relation to it. But the term’s iconic status means is that if someone does try to justify a course of action by invoking evil, it becomes more difficult than usual to reject that course of action. It appears to justify, say, military intervention, without the person advocating intervention having to go into the details of why, for instance, the U.S. needs to overthrow Saddam or defeat the Taliban.
COMMENTS (8)
Thanks for taking on this subject in a thoughtful way. I've been uncomfortable with the use of the word by Presidents since Reagan's (in my view) asinine "Evil Empire" reference to the Soviet Union. Accusing a country, political group, and/or it's leaders of being evil can't help if we need to negotiate with them at some point in the future. If you call someone evil, they are unlikely to reflect on it and think to themselves "You know, he's right - I really am evil." Instead the response is likely to be anger and defensiveness. The only thing one accomplishes with the word is to rouse the support of a simple-minded, angry mob.
Thanks for taking on this subject in a thoughtful way. I've been uncomfortable with the use of the word by Presidents since Reagan's (in my view) asinine "Evil Empire" reference to the Soviet Union. Accusing a country, political group, and/or it's leaders of being evil can't help if we need to negotiate with them at some point in the future. If you call someone evil, they are unlikely to reflect on it and think to themselves "You know, he's right - I really am evil." Instead the response is likely to be anger and defensiveness. The only thing one accomplishes with the word is to rouse the support of a simple-minded, angry mob.
But benbo, the Soviet Empire REALLY WAS evil, by any reasonable definition. And Reagan's calling a spade a spade didn't seem to inhibit either him or Gorbachev when the time came to negotiate.
Judis is basically correct here, but it's a quibble rather than a significant point. There's no doubt in my mind that Obama chose "evil" precisely to echo Bush, and underline the fact that any competent American president is going to define overt enemies as such. That doesn't necessarily, or even very often, mean "going to war" (see Cambodia, Ruwanda, Zimbabwe, Darfur, etc, etc). It does likely mean you're going to be serious about the wars you are already involved in.
But benbo, the Soviet Empire REALLY WAS evil, by any reasonable definition. And Reagan's calling a spade a spade didn't seem to inhibit either him or Gorbachev when the time came to negotiate.
Judis is basically correct here, but it's a quibble rather than a significant point. There's no doubt in my mind that Obama chose "evil" precisely to echo Bush, and underline the fact that any competent American president is going to define overt enemies as such. That doesn't necessarily, or even very often, mean "going to war" (see Cambodia, Ruwanda, Zimbabwe, Darfur, etc, etc). It does likely mean you're going to be serious about the wars you are already involved in.
It was a political speech, not a dissertation. For once he gives a speech that stakes a position in terms that anyone with a high school diploma can understand, and some writer on the rag that's supposed to be his friend sticks a shiv in his back. Do you think Harry Truman would have won in 1948 if he spent '45-'47 explaining Niebuhr or whomever to the public? I want to know where a guy stands before I care how he thinks. Evil people need to be called out by the President sometimes. It doesn't mean we're going to war, or that we have to, but Iran, North Korea, and people who detonate suicide vests and those who pay for their ordinance are evil. Case closed. Niebuhr, Shmieburh.
On Afghanistan, ... view full comment
It was a political speech, not a dissertation. For once he gives a speech that stakes a position in terms that anyone with a high school diploma can understand, and some writer on the rag that's supposed to be his friend sticks a shiv in his back. Do you think Harry Truman would have won in 1948 if he spent '45-'47 explaining Niebuhr or whomever to the public? I want to know where a guy stands before I care how he thinks. Evil people need to be called out by the President sometimes. It doesn't mean we're going to war, or that we have to, but Iran, North Korea, and people who detonate suicide vests and those who pay for their ordinance are evil. Case closed. Niebuhr, Shmieburh.
On Afghanistan, on health care, on the environment, and every other important issue the electorate cares about the President seems to have a finger in the wind and an eye on the overnight polling. He tried to stay in the middle of the herd, thinking that when a Democrat tries to lead it he loses. His use of plain language in Oslo was refreshing, his sticking in the eye of our feckless allies inspiring, his challenge, (such as it was) to Islamic and other regimes and their European supporters who kill and torture their own while rallying English thin waists to oppose anything recognizable to Hobbes or Locke as a democracy does inspiring.
Jeez, John. Chill, or go teach a Philosophy 102 class if you must pratter on so.
ridding the world of an evil was really a small part of Obama Nobel Acceptance speech. Most of the underlying rationale for the speech was a defense of his recent decision/choice to escalate (rather than rapidly decrease) the US presence in Afghanistan as just and necessary war for the defense of the US that would produce a just peace that nonviolence could not produce. That is a multipart argument, all parts of which must be valid.
Although its a straw-man argument by Obama, let's agree that non-violence as a tactic in Afghanistan would not produce a just peace and that the war as begun 8 years ago was initially just in that we responded to an attack on our soil that originated in Afghanista ... view full comment
ridding the world of an evil was really a small part of Obama Nobel Acceptance speech. Most of the underlying rationale for the speech was a defense of his recent decision/choice to escalate (rather than rapidly decrease) the US presence in Afghanistan as just and necessary war for the defense of the US that would produce a just peace that nonviolence could not produce. That is a multipart argument, all parts of which must be valid.
Although its a straw-man argument by Obama, let's agree that non-violence as a tactic in Afghanistan would not produce a just peace and that the war as begun 8 years ago was initially just in that we responded to an attack on our soil that originated in Afghanistan. However, those stipulations still leave open the question of the necessity of this war for our national defense and a resulting just peace in Obama's rationale
As one rationale, Obama in the speech repeatedly cites the need to eliminate al Qaeda in Afghanistan as the necessary reason. He makes no mention of the Taliban [and, in fact, they threaten citizens in Afghanistan, not US citizens on our soil]. Take him at his word(s).
To defend the US against al Qaeda, Obama requires 100,000 troops to fight 100-200 al Qaeda on behalf of a corrupt regime that just stole an election and that has little support of the Afghan populace. That's a definition, in Obama's own words in a previous speech, of a dumb war. There are more al Qaeda (and members of similar terrorist groups) in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia.... you fill in the blanks. They are almost certainly planning more "evil "with more resources than those al Qaeda in caves in Afghanistan.
Perhaps even further from reality is the rationale that combat troops from the US (or Christian Europe) are appropriately required to fight terrorist "evil Muslim gangs" wherever?? That's another definition of a dumb war whether applied to Afghanistan --- or whatever other country you wish to use that strategy to fight terrorism. [Has no one read and understood Clausewitz or Santayana?]
And to what end in Afghanistan?? A just peace?? After how many decades of occupation? At what cost to the citizens of Afghanistan and America. Does anyone seriously believe we will build an Afghan nation in several years. Karzai recently suggested 15 years.
I can easily grant that there are just wars followed by a just peace. WWII and Korea are two of them. Afghanistan will not be one of them.. and the costs to the Afghani's and Americans and Obama will be high. The situation has many disturbing parallels to Vietnam and a distressingly similar end game for Obama as for LBJ who was a man of action and of little eloquence.
LBJ's personal and political legacy was ruined by the devastating costs of Vietnam. A costly, un-winable, non-necessary, dumb war escalated in far better economic times than now and then continued by Nixon for 5-6 additional years. What just end for what high costs? Obama's legacy is may well be heavily determined by an un-necessary, un-winable, costly war in Afghaninistan that had little chance to ever produce a just peace.
Judis's first sentence is absolutely correct: Obama's Nobel Prize acceptance speech was intended to "justify" his escalation. A justification does not explain the true motives of an action. It gives an acceptable gloss of respectability to a decision which, in this case, was motivated neither by a misreading of Niebuhr nor a belief that 200 terrorists hiding in caves are a real threat to our national security. The escalation in Afghanistan has much more to do with securing oil for the United States and denying it to China and Russia than any reason adduced in the Nobel speech. I'm also sure that Pentagon strategists are less concerned with al Qaeda than they are with the possibility of P ... view full comment
Judis's first sentence is absolutely correct: Obama's Nobel Prize acceptance speech was intended to "justify" his escalation. A justification does not explain the true motives of an action. It gives an acceptable gloss of respectability to a decision which, in this case, was motivated neither by a misreading of Niebuhr nor a belief that 200 terrorists hiding in caves are a real threat to our national security. The escalation in Afghanistan has much more to do with securing oil for the United States and denying it to China and Russia than any reason adduced in the Nobel speech. I'm also sure that Pentagon strategists are less concerned with al Qaeda than they are with the possibility of Pakistan, with its dozens of nuclear warheads, falling into the ranks of failed states. In other words, it's the British/Russian "Great Game" given a shiny new coat of whitewash. So you see, Stuart Wild, it's not much use knowing "where a guy stands" unless you also know "how he thinks." Obama has made his stand, for now, in Afghanistan. But his thinking goes far beyond the punishment of evil.
Bin Laden is evil. He is obsessed and possessed of an undying hatred of the United States and will not hesitate to do harm to any of its citizens.
Dick Cheney is evil. His driving us into a war with Iraq without any justification that has led to the deaths of our soldiers and massacres of Iraq's civilians qualifies him as being obsessed and possessed.
We should have become suspect of Cheney when during the 9/11 disaster he ordered our armed forces to shoot down everything in the sky even though he didn't know what to shoot at and didn't even have the authority to do so.
Bin Laden is evil. He is obsessed and possessed of an undying hatred of the United States and will not hesitate to do harm to any of its citizens.
Dick Cheney is evil. His driving us into a war with Iraq without any justification that has led to the deaths of our soldiers and massacres of Iraq's civilians qualifies him as being obsessed and possessed.
We should have become suspect of Cheney when during the 9/11 disaster he ordered our armed forces to shoot down everything in the sky even though he didn't know what to shoot at and didn't even have the authority to do so.
There are lots of bad and naughty people in the world. Some rob others, rape them, murder them. The motives can vary. Then there are people who commit or advocate putting a belt of explosives around themselves with the intent of killing or inflicting great physical pain on others. Evil is the only word that seems to fit
There are lots of bad and naughty people in the world. Some rob others, rape them, murder them. The motives can vary. Then there are people who commit or advocate putting a belt of explosives around themselves with the intent of killing or inflicting great physical pain on others. Evil is the only word that seems to fit
It's my impression that his speech was meant to address criticism from the left over his escalation of the Afghanistan War (and the implicit tension between that and getting a Nobel Peace Prize), not to rally domestic support or deal with right wingers who range from indifferent to zealously hating the NPP.
The question "what does Afghanistan do for America's national interest" is a fine one, and absolutely one that needs to be addressed. It also has nothing whatsoever to do with the Peace Prize. What *is* relevant is "how can someone leading an international war be called an agent of peace?" and the answer is that NATO is fighting for a world that's more peaceful and more just. [I h ... view full comment
It's my impression that his speech was meant to address criticism from the left over his escalation of the Afghanistan War (and the implicit tension between that and getting a Nobel Peace Prize), not to rally domestic support or deal with right wingers who range from indifferent to zealously hating the NPP.
The question "what does Afghanistan do for America's national interest" is a fine one, and absolutely one that needs to be addressed. It also has nothing whatsoever to do with the Peace Prize. What *is* relevant is "how can someone leading an international war be called an agent of peace?" and the answer is that NATO is fighting for a world that's more peaceful and more just. [I had to add that "more just" there because a world ruled by a repressive caliph would be really peaceful in the no-army-vs-army-fighting sense, but not the kind of peace that the NPP celebrates. I'd be like giving a Peace Prize to AQ Kahn because a world obliterated by nukes is at complete peace.]