Glenn Greenwald, a Salon contributor and author of How Would a Patriot Act (Working Assets Publishing, $12.00), has penned a new book, A Tragic Legacy: How A Good Vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency (Crown Books $24.95) which lays out the ‘philosophical’ underpinnings of our Dear Leader’s grasp of the world.
Greenwald ascribes the Bush world-view as Manichean. Basically W. posits that the world is a battleground between the forces of Good and those of Evil. The United States is on the side of the good. Islamofascists, and those who abet them, are evil. There is no middle –ground. There are many implications to this outlook. One, of course, is that if you don’t serve the side of good, well, then, you’re with them. Another is that any tactic in the service of the good, is in and of itself legitimate. Or “moral certitude trumps moral constraint”. If we must imprison our enemies without due process, or use some rather radical means of extracting information from them, then so be it.
Then go out and buy a copy.