Good vs. Evil Redux

Share this

The New York Times' David E. Sanger notes [5] a change in how George W. Bush [6] discusses future U.S. military activities. Bush "has begun warning that the insurgency is already metastasizing into a far broader struggle to 'establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia,'" Sanger writes. TheRevealer.org [7]'s Jeff Sharlet comments, "[T]his is reductive rhetoric that equates the complexities of Indonesia, where 'radical Islamists' struggle against a dictatorship-disguised-as-a-democracy - and one directly descended from a genocidal regime just a decade past - and Spain, now a fully democratic country. Not to mention the stretch in between Spain and Indonesia. The question is, Will the media buy it?" Given "the allure of such a powerful dichotomy to a press that has so long peddled stories dependent on 'us' and 'them,'" Sharlet writes, "it's legitimate to ask, now, what's driving this latest variation on the age-old 'battle between good and evil' story - Bush's politics, or the demands of the press?"