...all bad hombres.

I heard George Bush described last night as a Manichean warrior. On Bill Moyers Journal. On PBS television. Moyers' guest was Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer.

Anyway. Greenwald said the idea of being a Manichean comes from a third century BC philosophy, or religion, that basically understood the world as a never-ending battle betwen the forces of pure good and the forces of pure evil. A simplistic idea. Early Christianity rejected it. Pointing to the complexities of many moral ambiguities.

Bush and many of his close advisors view the world through the lens of pure good and pure evil. Yes, black and white.

"It means, " Greenwald said, "that anything you (the Bushies) do, no matter how limitless, no matter how brutal and immoral, is inherently justifiable because it's being enlisted for service of the good." Thus the mentality that lies at Bush's decision to start the war in Iraq and to establish torture camps and secret prisons.

Interesting, isn't it? The extremist Muslim terrorists claim the Bushies and supporters of the Bushie policies are the evil ones. Maybe we should put the Bushies and the Muslim terrorists into an arena and let 'em fight it out, and the side that remains standing -- well, they can claim to be the good guys. But I suspect they're really all bad hombres. Might be best if they wipe each other out. That would eliminate lots of evil. --Jim Broede