The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush.

by Binoy Kampmark The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush, Peter Singer (New York: Plume, 2004), 302 pages, $24.95 cloth; $14 paper. The literature on President George W. Bush's purported deceptions has reached a point where an anthology would not seem inappropriate. Such has been the nature of his administration's impact on U.S. domestic and international politics that the assembly line of criticism often resembles polemical pamphleteering rather than solid academic argument. This is not to suggest that such work is not valuable--Watergate was unraveled by committed journalists and morally concerned civil servants. But a piece that sets out to examine the Bush administration on its own terms, within the language of its own rhetorical framework, is to be commended. Has this aim been realized with Peter Singer's new work? The author's venture into this field is a change from previous projects. An Australian philosopher who pioneered animal ethics and has been touted as the "John Stuart Mill of the twenty-first century," Singer writes in the preface of the difficulty he faced in convincing colleagues of the merits of his task in "taking Bush seriously." But one is initially optimistic about this aim. Where the domestic and foreign policy of an administration rhetorically deploys the language of ethics, an assessment of the coherence of its claims is a sound project. In the first place, Bush campaigned in 2000 on a platform of "honesty." Many of his voters rated this requirement as essential to their preference; they were "disgusted" by the philandering and subsequent "Monica-gate" that marked Clinton's years in office (p. 218). As Bush's speechwriter David Frum had claimed, "The country could trust the Bush administration not to cheat and not to lie" (p. 214) and to conduct itself on the basis of fixed moral rules. Singer's overall verdict is damning, showing a general moral incoherence in Bush's positions on such issues as the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto treaty, helping AIDS victims in Africa, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the treatment of prisoners held as terrorist suspects and enemy combatants. Singer writes, "Whether he believes in the fine phrases and lofty rhetoric that he uses, or is consciously using it to win public support, it is clear that Bush has no real interest in the policy details needed to achieve the aspirations he has voiced" (p. 224). Even more troubling for Singer's purposes is that Bush's worldview does not have the moral fixity to which it appears to lay claim. In the final chapter of the book, Singer shows how Bush appeals to many different ethical systems--utilitarian, Christian, intuitive, and libertarian--depending on the issue at hand. This juggling and even instrumentalization of moral rhetoric has led, Singer shows, to some highly contradictory positions. As an example, take the various arguments used to justify the invasion of Iraq. (Let us set aside, for the moment, Singer's view that the Bush administration's misuse of CIA intelligence on the matter of Saddam's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction in particular provided "the clearest demonstration of its gross misunderstanding of the moral requirements of honesty" [p. 217]). According to Singer, "Bush seemed to use a utilitarian argument in justifying the war in Iraq. Along with his argument about America's right to take preemptive action in its own defense, he suggested that the great good of liberating millions of Iraqis from Saddam's brutal tyranny justified the harm inflicted on a smaller number of Iraqis, even though many of them were innocent of wrongdoing" (p. 204). If, however, Bush were really a utilitarian, then wouldn't that view require him to do much more to help people dying of AIDS in Africa? Singer asks. Bush may be headed in the right direction, Singer admits, in directing a limited amount of resources to this suffering, but it is nowhere near enough. The case of Iraq points up another instance of moral disarray. Bush professes, according to a Christian ethic, to hold all human life to be sacred. This is the basis for his policies on abortion and stem-cell research. Yet the decision to invade Iraq--with the foreseeable consequence that innocent human life would be lost--would seem to contradict this ethic. Citing the teachings of Jesus and Paul as well as the Pope's condemnation of the war, Singer asserts, "On any reasonable interpretation of the Christian message, there was nothing especially Christian about his decision to go to war, and there is a strong case for saying it was distinctly un-Christian" (p. 207). As an assessment of whether Bush's performance as a president lives up to his own moral themes, Singer's book succeeds. One wonders, however, whether any president could be as morally rigorous as Singer seems to desire him to be. There is a complex range of factors motivating U.S. foreign policy; here, greater attention to the context of the decision-making process is important. Without contextualization, this ethics-conduct approach has limitations that narrow our understanding of why the president has actually undertaken particular courses of conduct. The simple characterization of moral inconsistency in a moral president may give us reason to worry, but it does not explain the deviances that govern such actions. Those deviances lie, in fact, in the realm of politics. Singer's own views help to illustrate this. There are some interesting moments in the book in which Singer steps away from the position of detached analyst to that of public intellectual, in particular in his advocacy of Security Council authorization for almost all interventions into sovereign states. Singer's own political vision comes into play. Even if we grant that Singer's position here adheres rigidly to his own moral views, we may be skeptical that an optimism in a Kantian federation of states as an alternative to Pax Americana is compelling or satisfying in the aftermath of Bosnia and Rwanda. The calculus of state interests and conflicts in the international system tends to be overlooked as a result. Singer himself admits that, on this score, legality and ethics are not one--there may be egregious cases in which states should act regardless of the law. In one sense, such reasoning brings us back to the fundamental intellectual dilemma facing advocates of humanitarian intervention, which requires a more coherent explanation beyond law and should seek, as Singer seems to suggest, a solution framed as an ethical exception. --BINOY KAMPMARK Cambridge University -1-

Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Article Title: The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush. Contributors: Binoy Kampmark - author. Journal Title: Ethics & International Affairs. Volume: 18. Issue: 3. Publication Year: 2004. Page Number: 115+. COPYRIGHT 2004 Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs; COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group