Call the Islamic State What It Is: Evil

Jonah Goldberg / National Review

I never liked it when George W. Bush used the term “evildoers” to describe al-Qaeda and other terrorists. A lot of other people objected as well, but for different reasons. I didn’t like the term because it always sounded to me like he was saying “evil Dewar’s,” as in the blended Scotch. (This always made some of Bush’s statements chuckle-worthy — “We will not rest until we find the evil Dewar’s!”) I prefer single malts, but “evil” always seemed unduly harsh.

The more common objection to “evildoers” was that it was, variously, simplistic, Manichean, imperialistic, cartoonish, etc.

“Perhaps without even realizing it,” Peter Roff, then with UPI, wrote in October 2001, “the president is using language that recalls a simpler time when good and evil seemed more easy to identify — a time when issues, television programs and movies were more black and white, not colored by subtle hues of meaning.”

A few years later, as the memory of 9/11 faded and the animosity toward Bush grew, the criticism became more biting. But the substance was basically the same. Sophisticated people don’t talk about “evil,” save perhaps when it comes to America’s legacy of racism, homophobia, capitalistic greed, and the other usual targets of American self-loathing.

read more at National Review:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/386363/call-islamic-state-what-it-evil-jonah-goldberg