Before entering into the topic at hand a word of explanation is required. This is the fourth anniversary for this website and just like everything else in life it has evolved beyond its original conception. Not only have the essays gotten longer but there are now three books instead of one which I hope to bring to the attention of the readership. The purpose of the books is to present a view of the forces shaping our society which differs from what is generally available and hopefully makes the reader question conventional wisdom. This is, however, not popular in our day and age and there is little incentive to read, let alone buy, this type of material especially in the United States. I have, therefore, decided to make The Moses Legacy and its companion piece Whither Zionism? available in .pdf format so that they can be readily viewed by anyone with computer access. They will, however, also remain on the market and can be ordered through this site.

            Now to the problem of evil, which will not be discussed in a metaphysical-philosophical context but in a very practical one. Furthermore, I shall limit myself only to those evils that are wrought by man rather than unreasoning nature over which we have no control. Like Socrates I don’t believe that most people who create evil desire to do so for the sake of evil but it is the outcome of the desire for some good that is expected to result from their action. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions and some examples from recent as well as past history will illustrate this principle.  

            Among man-made evils war can surely be regarded as the greatest. Yet American politicians seem to be fond of “War”, not necessarily in its general military sense where it is a disaster to individuals, but as a cause to engage in. Europeans are sick and tired of war and don’t even want to hear the word but since America has never suffered the serious consequences of it, and on the contrary experienced prosperity and increasing stature on the world scene, the word War is popular. Since the 1960s we had a War on Poverty, a War on Cancer, a Cold War, and now a War on Terrorism, apart from those that are fought by the military. It may be time to ask ourselves what these wars have accomplished and how useful these metaphors really are.

When Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty and announced as his goal the creation of a Great Society he surely intended to do good. As he said early on in his Presidency, “I want to be the President who is loved by all the people!” When I heard this I said to myself: good luck and Machiavelli immediately sprang to mind, “It is better for a prince to be feared than loved!” One of the aspects of the Great Society was that children from the suburbs needed to be bussed to the inner cities and vice versa in order to achieve racial balance. The idea was that every child would learn more and better in integrated schools and the public good would be enhanced. The old proverb, “birds of a feather flock together” was, and still is, disregarded by social planners. The result of bussing was exactly the opposite of its intentions. People are mobile and when laws are forced upon them with which they disagree they move to areas where their children get the best possible education rather than what is provided in inner cities. “White flight” began, the inner cities were abandoned in the 1960s, their tax base was eroded, and they decayed. I happened to work in Detroit at that time and we saw first hand the fruits of government idealism. Forty years later we still have a public school system which is a disgrace and American children tend to score poorer on objective tests than their counterparts in, what are called, the developed nations. President Bush’s “No child left behind” act is also in the process of creating more problems than it will solve because it does not address the causes of poor schooling. These are: inadequate preparation of the teachers for the subject matter they are supposed to transmit to their pupils, wrong teaching methods, and lack of discipline in the classrooms. No amount of money that is thrown at schools for smaller class sizes, computers, teachers’ salaries or whatever, will succeed unless the three R’s are properly taught in elementary school and the foundations are laid there for future intellectual growth.

            Let us stay with Lyndon Johnson a moment longer because he provides an excellent example of a failed presidency and of good intentions gone awry.  His foreign policy, admirable in its goal to prevent the spread of communism in South East Asia, turned into the disaster of the Vietnam War. Why did America lose that war? The reason is rather simple: the ideas of the locals conflicted with ours. We saw the war as preventing enslavement of the South by the Communist North while a substantial portion of the Viet Cong did not fight for communism but for an end to colonial domination. We were seen simply as the successors of the French and had to be dealt with accordingly.

When South Vietnam’s President Diem imposed his own totalitarian rule on his portion of the country Buddhist monks took their master’s parting words, “Make of yourself a light,” literally and started immolating themselves in public places. Under those circumstances our government thought that a “regime change” in Saigon was necessary. Our ambassador colluded with some generals who first arrested and then murdered Diem. By the way all this happened already on Kennedy’s watch rather than Johnson’s who merely continued with the mistakes. Madame Diem, the President’s widow, told the U.S. government in no uncertain terms that no good would flow from this murder and she was right. Kennedy was killed about three weeks later and religious people might wonder about divine justice, which differs considerably from the human version. The rest is, of course, as the popular phrase goes “history.” We tried to prop up a series of unpopular generals to rule a country that just wanted to be left alone and in the end had to abandon our embassy via helicopters among scenes of appalling confusion and outright horror.

            We had the best intentions but the highest ideals when pursued with wrong means are bound to come to grief. Our current President seems to ignore these nasty facts of history and believes that he can accomplish in Iraq what the Brits failed to do about three quarters of a century earlier. When one reads his second Inaugural Address it becomes apparent that he seems to be afflicted with what one might call the “Wilson complex.” He does not seem to realize that Wilson’s presidency was an even greater disaster for the world than Johnson’s was. If the President follows through on his promise to end tyranny all over the world he will not only suffer profound personal disappointment but leave the country and the world even worse off than it is now.

Although historians know it, the general public is not aware of the forces that propelled America into the First World War, which in turn created all the difficulties we find ourselves in today. There are two recent books dealing with the subject which are very worth while reading. One is The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson and the other The Illusion of Victory by Thomas Fleming. Students of the history of WWI can also profit from www.firstworldwar.com, which provides primary documents. These sources present a considerably more objective picture than what we are treated to by the media about what Ferguson has called, “nothing less than the greatest error of modern history.”         Ostensibly Wilson entered WWI to end all wars and to “make the world safe for democracy.” Yet, he unleashed even greater evils than those committed up to

April 1917.  Had the U.S. remained on the sidelines it is likely that the Western Allies and the Central Powers would have fought themselves to a stalemate and a compromise peace might have been achieved. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was certainly eager to drop out in 1916 already when it had become obvious that the ill fated decision to punish the Serbs militarily had gone sadly awry. When Franz Josef died in November of 1916 Karl, the 29 year old nephew of the murdered crown prince Franz Ferdinand, inherited the crown. In his Ascension Proclamation he said, “As I implore Heaven’s grace and blessing for Myself, My House as well as My beloved Peoples I vow before the Almighty, to faithfully administer the realm my ancestors have bequeathed to Me. I shall do everything to banish the horrors and sacrifices of war at the earliest opportunity in order to return the sorely missed blessings of peace to My Peoples, as soon as the honor of our arms, the living conditions of My nations and their faithful allies, as well as the defiance of our enemies allow it.” As Shakespeare said in other context, “Ay there’s the rub.” It takes only one to start a war but at least two to end it. Karl also promised the nations which comprised the monarchy that, “I shall be a just and loving Sovereign to my peoples. I shall carefully preserve their constitutional freedoms and other laws including equality before the law for all. . . . Permeated by the faith in Austria-Hungary’s indestructible vitality, animated by the deep love towards My peoples I shall devote my Life and all My strength to this noble task. [Reichspost November 22, 1916].”

              Karl meant every word he said, but events had spun out of control. Although he tried his level best and sent out peace feelers to the Entente they came to naught. Italy became the stumbling block. She had been bribed by London with secret promises during  the previous year to join in the war. These consisted of considerable territorial acquisitions, the most important of which could only be gained by a complete defeat of Austria. Although Austria had given her no offense in 1915, there was the promise of hay to be made and why not, “strike when the iron is hot?” The government of Italy was not evil just greedy.

But Italy’s entry into the war in 1915 had another consequence no one had thought of at that time. The Italian army didn’t win any battles and in November of 1917 it suffered a massive defeat at the hands of combined German and Austro-Hungarian troops. The government was in disarray and there was fear that if Italy lost the war she would be dismembered. In the context of November 1917 this fear was quite realistic. As a result of Russia dropping out of the war German divisions could be removed from the East and thrown to the West as well as South where they could help the Austrians who weren’t good at winning any battles either. There was universal war weariness among the people of Europe and with Russia out of the picture the West was in danger of losing the war. America had to come to the rescue.

While America’s declaration of war against Germany on April 2^nd, 1917 was in part due to German submarines sinking American merchant vessels, Wilson’s request to Congress in his State of Union speech of December 4, 1917 to declare war against Austria-Hungary had nothing to do with any misdeeds the Austro-Hungarian government might have committed. On the contrary Emperor Karl had assiduously courted the American ambassador in Vienna in the hope of keeping America at least semi-neutral. He had warned the German government against the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and desperately wanted to separate his monarchy from that of Wilhelm’s. Instead of recognizing Karl’s desire for a separate peace, Wilson acceded to incessant Italian demands during November of 1917 to enter the war against the Danube monarchy. First greed by the government of Italy then fear became co-responsible for prolonging the war with its accompanying miseries for the peoples of Europe.

The average American obviously had no quarrel with the Habsburg monarchy and probably hardly knew of its existence so the question how to sell the extension of the war, rather than making peace, became acute. To tell Americans that they should die for Italian ineptness would not have worked. Wilson, therefore, produced a rhetorical masterpiece in his address to Congress that deserves to be carefully studied because it became a model for how to successfully camouflage the real reasons for going to war. I shall, therefore quote the relevant portions as they refer to Austria-Hungary from A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. First he placed the blame for the war clearly at the feet of the “sinister masters of Germany.” They had been greedy, not content with the rightful powers they had enjoyed before August 1914, and the world was now confronted with “this intolerable thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force which we now see so clearly as the German power, a thing without conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed.” Then there would be the permanent peace of, “No annexations, no contributions, no punitive indemnities.” This peace,

“must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and Northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must deliver also the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and Asia, from the impudent and alien domination of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.

We owe it, however, to ourselves, to say that we do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially or politically. We do not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own hands, in all matters great or small. . . .

What shall we do, then, to push this great war of freedom and justice to its righteous conclusion? We must clear away with a thorough hand all impediments to success, and we must make every adjustment of law that will facilitate the full and free use of our whole capacity and force as a fighting unit.

 One very embarrassing obstacle that stands in our way is that we are at war with Germany but not with her allies. I, therefore, very earnestly recommend that the Congress immediately declare the United States in a war with Austria-Hungary. Does it seem strange to you that this should be the conclusion of the argument I have just addressed to you? It is not. It is in fact the inevitable logic of what I have said. Austria-Hungary is for the time being not her own mistress but simply the vassal of the German Government.

We must state the facts as they are and act upon them without sentiment in this stern business. The government of Austria-Hungary is not acting upon its own initiative or in response to the wishes and feelings of its own peoples, but as the instrument of another nation. We must meet its force with our own and regard the Central Powers as but one. The war can be successfully conducted in no other way.

The same logic would lead also to a declaration of war against Turkey and Bulgaria. They also are tools of Germany, but they are mere tools and do not yet stand in the direct path of our necessary action. We shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry us. But it seems to me that we should go only where immediate and practical considerations lead us, and not heed any others.”

Let us examine these words in some detail because the relevance to our own time ought to be apparent to anyone. The adversary who is portrayed as totally evil and depraved must be crushed. But the enemy is only the government and not the governed. The people yearn to be free and they will receive this freedom from a gracious America which is unselfishly shedding her blood towards that goal. This establishes the moral high ground. The fact that you can’t crush a government without killing its citizens and destroying its economy, did not enter into the equation.

Only the German government was greedy and Italy, which had entered the war strictly for territorial gains and had become the cause for the declaration, was never mentioned. Neither were the efforts of Emperor Karl to get out from under the wings of the German eagle. It is a perfect example of what results from the “good versus evil stance.” It precludes consideration of the concerns the other side might have. If Wilson had made the effort to talk to Emperor Karl personally he might have learned how unrealistic his ideas were. He would have found out that not interfering in the internal affairs of Austria-Hungary in one sentence and yet championing the principle of “self-determination of nations” were incompatible with the continued existence of the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire. Needless to say this wonderful phrase also flew in the face of all colonial powers including Britain. What would the British government have done had Wilson insisted on free elections in India for instance? Even more close to home the Irish certainly wanted to be free from their domination by the Brits and for their aspirations Wilson showed not a shred of concern. Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare, which was designed to starve England into submission, was a crime against humanity in Wilson’s eyes but the fact that a British blockade of Germany existed for the same purpose ever since 1914 was never mentioned.

There was an additional sleight of hand in Wilson’s distinction between Austria-Hungary, upon whom war must be declared immediately, and the rest of the Central Powers where this necessity did not exist. The rhetorical device of  talking about an ”instrument” of German power on the one hand and “mere tools” on the other strikes one as a distinction without a difference. Nevertheless, it served its purpose to camouflage the real reason. Congress approved and on December 7 Wilson issued the Proclamation wherein he announced the war against Austria-Hungary. In it he simply stated that “Whereas the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States . . .” None of them were detailed because, to the best of my knowledge, none had occurred. Thus, the declaration was issued not because of a high moral reason but out of fear that Italy might drop out of the war enabling Germany to win.

With the fall of Russia in December 1917 there was a brief moment for achieving a negotiated peace but it was missed. The evils of war had to continue because a misguided idealist had fallen victim to the propaganda of the press and a messianic vision of himself. A wiser person, who had no ulterior motives, but had only the well being of all at heart, might have seized the opportunity by throwing his considerable weight on the scales of peace rather than those of war. Wilson won the war but lost the peace and the world has not yet overcome his fateful legacy. Even the current war in Iraq has its roots in the colonial ambitions of the British Empire.

There was a corollary to Wilson’s fear that Germany might win the war. A similar fear by Roosevelt led him to announce the “unconditional surrender” demand during the January 1943 conference with Churchill in Casablanca. Roosevelt was deeply concerned that Hitler might once again come to some arrangement with Stalin and the Western allies would be left holding the bag. He knew that Stalin was deeply unhappy with Churchill’s opposition to an immediate second front in France and he regarded the Mediterranean campaign, justifiably so, as a side show. Stalin had to be kept on board and Roosevelt would do whatever it took to reach that goal. The side-effect of the unconditional surrender formula was to stiffen German resistance and thereby prolong the war.

It may now be argued that there was a profound difference between what Hitler represented and what Wilhelm II had stood for. Wilhelm was just a fool while Hitler was thoroughly evil.  But this difference evaporates when one reads how the West including America had described “the Kaiser” during the war years. The same epithets were hurled at him, with considerably less cause, as were against Hitler thirty years later. When one reads the old newspapers one is impressed that there is not a shred of difference in the language used to describe the enemy. Since Hitler, apart from the “Butcher of Baghdad,” is nowadays regarded as the personification of evil he provides us with an example how evil evolves and there can be no doubt that the concentration camp system with its systematic industrialized killing of “undesirable” human beings represented an evil of the first magnitude.

Hitler surely did not see himself as evil and neither did those around him. He was a man on a mission who had to restore the German greatness she had been robbed of by the evil democracies – plutocracies who in turn were run not by their people but by Jewish capitalists. Jews were not a religion but a race and a nation. As such they were aliens in Germany (regardless of how long they had lived there) and had to conform to German laws for aliens. Germany was for Germans and there was to be no room for aliens, i.e. Jews, in leading positions. That was the Nazi faith and as any other faith it was to be accepted and not to be reasoned with. By the spring of 1939 Hitler’s image in the world differed considerably from that of his followers for whom he had provided tangible benefits. Yet, he felt he could safely disregard world opinion because he was put into his job by Providence who guided his steps. The high point of his career was not after the fall of France in 1940 because there was still recalcitrant England, but at 4 a.m. on March 15, 1939. After having bullied President Hacha of Czechoslovakia into placing his country “under the protection of the German Reich” Hitler met his two secretaries in private and asked them to give him a peck on each of his cheeks with the statement, “Children, this is the greatest day of my life. I shall enter history as the greatest German.”

He had indeed accomplished, without shedding one drop of blood, a unification of most of the Hohenzollern and Habsburg Empires. Germany was now the strongest power in Central Europe. That he had set himself on a collision course with England which had never tolerated one dominant continental power regardless, whether it was France under Napoleon, Germany under Wilhelm II, or now under Hitler did not occur to him. While Hitler saw himself as the crusader for German rights the West saw him as a menace and robber baron who had to be, in Wilson’s words, “crushed.” Hate escalated on both sides with the outcome of the total destruction of German cities on the one hand and Auschwitz on the other.

Last week saw commemoration services at that death camp and Elie Wiesel, the most prominent survivor, wrote in an article for the Los Angeles Times, “What made Auschwitz possible? How could a nation known for its culture and education have dreamed up such a place? . . . Most of the questions that I had 60 years ago . . .  remain unanswered. Even if there is an answer I refuse to accept it.” Auschwitz has indeed become a defining symbol but I believe that the proper lessons have not been drawn as long as one sees evil only in “the other.” I have discussed this aspect in War&Mayhem but I doubt that the explanations provided will satisfy those who have made the Holocaust their profession. The key aspects how this tragedy could have happened were: the dehumanization of the adversary, the desire for revenge, the capability to extract it, and perhaps most importantly: secrecy.

Secrecy is the key word where the past, present and the future merge. Can anyone conceive that Hitler could have done in public what he ordered to be done in secret? This is the heart of the problem. The desire for gain resides in every human being. When it is accompanied by fear that the means to obtain it might conflict with commonly accepted mores, it is carried out in secret and camouflaged under a variety of excuses. These excuses become outright lies when they are challenged by others. This process is part of our human nature and, unfortunately, we find it at work even in our own government at the present time.

Democracies are not immune from government secrecy and “oversight by Congress” or the media are profoundly deficient. The country was led into the Iraq invasion under false pretenses and one would sorely wish that Nixon like tapes came to the surface that presented us with the conversations between our President and his Vice-President starting with February 2001. The American people now, just like the German people during the first part of the twentieth century have no idea what is being perpetrated in their name. When the Abu-Ghraib photos first emerged, which showed the degradations Iraqi men were subjected to, an attempt was made to hide them, when that failed their importance was minimized and the blame is still being laid on a few sadistic soldiers. This is wrong because it ignores the culture under which these abuses occurred.

This is the evil that should be addressed but it is not and continues to flourish. Seymour Hersh wrote in “The Coming Wars” (The New Yorker January 29, 2005) that the war on terrorism will be placed under the Defense Department. “The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.” These can be “run off the books – free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A.  Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.” In other words Congress has no business knowing how the administration conducts its war on terrorism, which is likely to include its extension into Iran, and its duty is simply to put up the money for the costs. What we can now expect is that all questions will be stonewalled with the mantra of “national security” or “executive privilege.” Since our “interrogators” in the war on terrorism overseas and at Guantanamo can do whatever they want to get “information” we should not be surprised at all when practices will come to light that are clearly beyond the standards of decent behavior. Yet we are paying for it and by our silence become co-responsible.

Hersh’s article has profound implications but has, of course, been called unreliable and is quietly hushed up. Condoleeza Rice was confirmed as Secretary of State and she has told Congress that now is the time for diplomacy rather than military actions. Theoretically it is, but is she capable of carrying out the wishes of the more rational State Department or those of a President who is clearly on a mission just as were some of the other people mentioned above? She was appointed because Bush likes her, respects her and appreciates her loyalty. But the country demands loyalty not only to a given President but to the principles it was founded upon and these do not include the excesses that are currently being perpetrated. Dr. Rice is well educated, she knows history but does she have the stamina to become what Thomas Becket was to Henry II? The King thought he’d get a toady and wound up with a moral force he could not control. For the good of the country we can hope that this will be so because unchecked our President is likely to continue to follow in Wilson’s footsteps with potentially even more disastrous results. The same statements apply to our newly confirmed Attorney General who, in his capacity as counsel to the President, had labeled provisions of the Geneva Conventions as “quaint.”

So what are the roots of evil? They are: 1) To desire more than what you have or is freely given; 2) To conduct your actions designed to fulfill your desires in secret; 3) To ignore the legitimate aspirations of others and pursue a course of “My will be Done.” Ultimately it boils down to a relationship to “the other” regardless who “the other” is. If we show respect and understanding all is well and cooperation will ensue. If we feel that we can force our will upon others nothing but grief will ensue. Whatever high moral phrases our President and his followers may continue to utter they will ring just as hollow as those of his fore-runner about whom the French President Clemenceau said in 1919, “He thinks he is another Jesus Christ come upon earth to reform men.”