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The War on Evil

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Evil and International Relations

Abstract

On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists commandeered four commercial airliners and, in a coordinated attack, crashed them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and, following the courageous intervention of the passengers on board American Airlines Flight 93, a field in Pennsylvania. Killing more than 2600 people, the September 11 attacks remain the most shocking event of the, as yet, short twenty-first century. In the five and a half years that have followed, terrorists have struck a range of targets around the world. Most notably, on October 12, 2002, a series of bombs in the Indonesian beach resort of Bali killed 202 people; in March 2004, ten train bombs in the Spanish capital of Madrid, left 191 people dead; and in London, on July 7, 2005, three bombs detonated on the Underground and one on a bus at Tavistock Square killed fifty-six people. As we saw in Chapter 1, in the aftermath of each of these incidents, both the attacks and their perpetrators were roundly condemned as “evil.” Indeed, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, evil has been indelibly, though not exclusively, associated with what has become known as “mass casualty terrorism.”3

This will be a momentous struggle of good versus evil, but good will prevail.1

This is a new kind of—a new kind of evil. And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.2

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Notes

  1. George W. Bush, September 12, 2001, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010912–4.html (accessed December 15, 2006).

  2. George W. Bush, remarks by the President on Arrival, The South Lawn, September 16, 2001, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/print/20010916 (accessed December 15, 2006). 3. Bush has also used the term to refer to the massacre at Srebrenica, domestic violence, segregation and human trafficking in recent years. George W. Bush, Presidential Message: 10th Anniversary of the Massacre in Srebrenica, July 11, 2005, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/07/print/20050711 (accessed December 8, 2006); National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, September 30, 2005; President Signs H.R. 4145 to Place Statute of Rosa Parks in U.S. Capitol, Room 350, Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building, December 1, 2005, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/print/20051201 (accessed December 8, 2006); President signs H.R. 972, Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, Eisenhower Executive Office Building, January 10, 2006, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060110–3.html (accessed December 8, 2006).

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  1. Renée Jeffery
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© 2008 Renée Jeffery

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Jeffery, R. (2008). The War on Evil. In: Evil and International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230610354_7

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