In today's bizarre political climate, a relativist is someone who argues for moral consistency.

Date published: 6/16/2002

AUSTIN, Texas--A history
professor of mine once
returned essay exams with the comment that some students' attitude seemed to be, "Don't bother me with the facts--I'm going for the bigger picture."

George W. Bush wasn't in that class, but I thought of the professor's sardonic comment as I read the commencement address the president delivered at West Point earlier this month.

In addition to restating the Bush Doctrine (the United States has the right to destroy any society anywhere for whatever reason it chooses regardless of international opinion, law, or basic morality), Bush at West Point used one of the popular contemporary buzz phrases, "moral clarity."

Given that no one really argues for moral unclarity, claiming moral clarity is really just a cheap way to dismiss other points of view without providing a compelling argument or dealing with the messy world of facts. The West Point speech shows just how morally murky the president is.

In that speech, for example, Bush endorsed John F. Kennedy's and Ronald Reagan's refusal "to gloss over the brutality of tyrants" during the Cold War. That's accurate, if Bush meant the brutality of tyrants on the other side. American leaders have always been quick to condemn the crimes of enemies, which is perfectly appropriate.

But the United States has not only glossed over the brutality of tyrants on our side; it has often actively supported and funded such brutality. Where was the moral clarity when Kennedy backed an authoritarian regime in South Vietnam that had almost no support among its people? Where was it when Reagan supported vicious military dictatorships in Central America that killed tens of thousands of innocent people? In both cases, some moral clarity on the part of U.S. leaders would have saved lives.

"Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong," Bush continued. No disagreement there, but what about the U.S. military's direct attack on the civilian population of Vietnam through massive bombing and chemical warfare, or Reagan's support for the Contra army in Nicaragua that focused on what were called "soft targets" (undefended civilian targets)?

Or, what about the record of Bush's father, our commander in chief during the Gulf War? The U.S. military deliberately destroyed much of the civilian infrastructure of Iraq, including sewage- and water-treatment plants and electrical-generation facilities far from the supposed battle theater in Kuwait. The military itself predicted such attacks would kill civilians, as they were designed to do and did. The resulting civilian deaths continued long after the war, exacerbated by the cruel economic sanctions the United States demanded.

The point is simple: Calls for moral clarity, if they are to be more than empty rhetoric, require that we bother ourselves with the facts and pay attention to history.

Date published: 6/16/2002