The Politics of Evil: At UN Speech, Barack Obama Channels His Inner George W. Bush Barack Obama

Every year, heads of state from around the world
descend on New York City for a United Nations summit. Over the
course of several days, presidents and prime ministers take to the
podium to address their colleagues and, they like to think, the
globe. Since 9/11, the U.S. president has generally used the late
September speech to make the case for a war on terror. Although the
Obama Administration prominently dropped the usage of the term “war
on terror,” it continued the strategies and actions that that term
defined.

Earlier this week the U.S. began to bomb ISIS targets in Syria,
an extension of an anti-ISIS campaign launched in Iraq. So the
president’s speech at the UN today focused on the airstrikes in
Syria and the wider campaign against ISIS, a self-styled Islamic
State.

President Obama
called ISIS a “network of death,” arguing that “there can be no
reasoning,  no negotiation, with this brand of evil.” In
making the case for the anti-ISIS campaign President Obama has
adopted the language George W. Bush deployed when first formulating
the war on terror. “We face a brand of evil, the likes of which we
haven’t seen in a long time in the world,” President Bush told
airline employees on September 27, 2001. Later, he would place
Iraq, Iran, and North Korea in an “axis of evil,” a term that
coud’ve been ripped from a comic book.

Bush was a fan of using the word “evil” to describe
Islamist terrorists, and it shouldn’t be surprising that President
Obama has found the strong, unequivocal, and emotional word useful
in defending the anti-ISIS campaign. ISIS has played into the
characterization too, embracing it. It’s hard to argue a bunch of
nuts trying to start a government in the desert through a
religiously-motivated campaign of mass murder aren’t evil. They fit
the definition pretty well. But U.S. foreign policy shouldn’t, and
can’t, be about extinguishing evil the world over. Liberals seemed
to understand that, or pretended they did, when George W. Bush was
president. This week they’re not protesting yet another
unconstitutional war launched by an imperial executive. No.
Instead, they’re
protesting climate
change capitalism.