Homework for today's class is an article on Slate.com by Michael Kinsley [link]. In it, Kinsley makes the cogent observation that calling Osama Bin Laden and his band of thugs "evil" is a great soundbite, but doesn't really advance the public discourse on what we should do about it. And, he observes, neo-conservatives wish that we would all just agree on the label, support the war and move on.

The problem, of course, is that many moderates and those oh-so-pesky liberals aren't content with just labeling terrorists as "evil" and moving on. They insist on understanding the nuances -- did we provoke this, how are we ourselves complicit, and the like.

Kinsley speculates that the neo-con intolerance to the question "why do they hate us" stems from the fact that neo-cons won't like the inevitable answer: either the first world/third world divide made them that way, or it's because something we've done pissed them off. Either way, we would have to examine and modify our foreign policy, which is anathema to the neo-con way of thinking. As a result, neo-cons have tended to demonize the dissenters. Bush himself set the tone ("Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists"), John Ashcroft all but accused the ACLU of being a terrorist cell ("To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists") and neo-con pundits have howled with rage at the supposed "fifth column" in academia that dares ask whether we might take this opportunity to rethink our relationship with the developing world.

I agree with Kinsley that neo-cons have made it their business to demonize those who ask why. But I'm not so quick to conclude therefore that if the neo-cons wish we wouldn't question, the right thing to do must be to ask "why do they hate us". Kinley's argument on this point is, in essence, this: that to achieve the neo-con goal of eradicating terrorism, we must first examine the "why do they hate us" question; it is imperative that we know our enemies. As Kinsley sees it, branding terrorists as "evil" and pitching the fight as "us vs. them" glosses the real issues and ultimately, impedes our ability to first, understand the terrorists and second, to fight terrorism.

But do we really have to "understand" the terrorists, as Kinsley suggests? Isn't it possible that there are certain actions, certain modes of political engagement that are simply beyond the pale? I don't have to understand what motivated Hitler to know that genocide is evil. Must I rationalize attacking that evil, or may I simply act on the knowledge that it's wrong? Put another way, is there really any question that it's evil and needs to be eradicated?

This is not to say that I agree with the likes of Ashcroft and Bill Bennett. I don't. But my beef with the "axis of evil" mentality is not whether "evil" exists and should be eradicated, but rather, that we're inconsistent both about who is labeled "evil" and why. Why is Osama Bin Laden evil, but Yasser Arafat is not? Why is Saddam Hussein evil but Pervez Musharaf is not? Why is Al Qaeda evil, but Hamas is not? I suspect that, being unable to answer this much harder question, neo-cons have redirected the conversation to the safer ground of "good vs. evil" in the hopes that no one will notice the difference.

I do agree with Kinsley that "why do they hate us so much" is certainly a valid question, and one that we should be thinking about. I would posit, however, that that inquiry is in some ways premature. We initiated the Marshall Plan in response to the question "how do we keep from losing the peace", but that question came after "how do we win the war". So yes, at some point, it will be necessary to ask "why do they hate us so much" and the companion question, "how to do we keep them from hating us so much", but maybe not just now.