letter of the week: The centrality of evil?
Casey Ydenberg

Something has been bothering me lately: evil. I don't mean that it exists, or that we've seen plenty of it lately, but the use of the word. In the light of last Tuesday's events, news anchors using it, ad nauseam, and telling me what it means. Does it apply to the terrorists, does it apply to Osama bin Laden, Hitler, Stalin or the Marquis de Sade?

Personally I think these people are better suited to discussing the weather and traffic ("So in conclusion Tuesday's attacks were perpetrated by The Prince of Darkness. And now back to you, Bob.").

I am not a theologian; I am not a philosopher. I have not read the Bible and I have not read the Qu'ran and I have no right to say what I think, either. But I'm going to say it anyway. Actions are either good or evil; but people are both.

President Bush has divided the world into good and evil. America and its allies on one side and terrorists and those who support them on the other. What he doesn't say is that Tuesday's attacks were a response. Radical, yes, extremist, yes (evil, definitely yes) but they were a response to evil acts by Americans. John Kennedy (On the "surprise", Opinions, September 17), provided a list of where these acts have taken place. There are a lot of them.

Measures must be taken to bring down bin Laden, but it is not an emergency. We have time, and a war will most certainly be a mistake - motivated by domestic politics and a nation that wants results.

Americans (and Canadians) have forgotten that violence, while sometimes necessary, is a double-edged sword. Safe on a distant continent, we don't even send people to fight anymore, we do it from the air. Finally we have the realisation that throwing our weight around in other countries might come back to haunt us.

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