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From Evil.'
most of them are moral relativists. They reject absolute standards of right
and wrong. In their worldview, man is perfectible, human nature is on a
linear path toward enlightenment, and the concept of sin is primitively
biblical.”
Thus writes Sean Hannity in the opening pages of “Deliver Us From Evil,”
his book written shortly before the 2004 election. He may know little about
liberals or their views but he is right on three things. Sin is biblical. Man is
not perfectible and if the culmination of thousands of years of deep
political philosophizing is the shelf-bought, dimestore, crackerjack
ideology that oozes from every page of “Deliver Us From Evil,” then that
whole linear path to enlightenment thing really strains credulity.
Purportedly, Hannity’s work is an essay on evil, which, for Hannity, is not
so much an unknowable concept whose shadowy nature is fodder for
debate by great minds than it is a dark, malevolent plane of existence
conveniently populated by those who inexplicably oppose his viewpoint.
Don’t expect a searching treatise looking for the roots of wrongdoing
here. Browse elsewhere for a dissertation on the troubling blurry areas
between right and wrong. Hannity and his gifted readers have already
been granted such sacred knowledge. A trial is not necessary. We can
move straight to the witch burning. Thus, in “Deliver,” we find a perfect
candidate for the annals of modern literature. Self-important, simplistic,
anti-intellectual. It is the penultimate achievement of the ubiquitous book
series that defined the last decade. Hannity has written “Evil for
Dummies.”
As with most conservative works though, the star is not conservatism
itself but rather liberalism. Not that liberals themselves are evil per say. In
Hannity’s view, they are simply Satan’s handmaidens, people who refuse
to see bad behavior as an inherent quality of life on Earth and hence are
helpless in the teeth of evildoers who operate freely in a world stripped of
unchanging moral standards.
Hannity is of course deeply concerned with liberals’ many outrageous
allegations especially as regards America’s first foray into the Gulf which
was “impelled by humanitarian motives.” After a rich description of the
many atrocities committed in Kuwait, he launches into an attack on those
who would dare suggest that our actions were in any way connected with
the black gold beneath the sand.
“A nation that had been a friend to the United States was being devoured
right before our eyes,” he writes about a country that most Americans had
never heard of at the time. “And yet because Kuwait was also a nation of
substantial strategic value, many American liberals decided that Bush
must have had ulterior motives in defending Kuwait. Soon their
appreciation of the situation was lost in cries of ‘No Blood for Oil.’”
Gee, wherever would they have gotten the ridiculous idea that America
was acting in its own interests? Maybe they paid closer attention to
Hannity‘s book than he apparently did.
“What our enemies haven’t seemed to figure out,” Hannity writes two
pages earlier, in a discussion of Iraq and Kuwait’s massive oil reserves,
“is that aggressive action against American interests is more dangerous
when the American president is a Republican.”
Besides oil, exactly what “American interests” may be imperiled in a tiny,
arid nation where 95% of the export revenue comes from the stuff that
runs the family SUV, one can only imagine. Perhaps America’s vital
supply of camel hair was in danger. But thankfully, in regard to the
present administration’s motives, Hannity is less circumspect.
“An unchecked Saddam Hussein,” Hannity writes justifying George W.
Bush’s military misadventures on page 147, “in control of nearly two-
thirds of the world’s oil supply, protected by an arsenal of weapons no
one dared provoke him to use: that is what we avoided by going to war
when we did.”
On Page 101, he again dispenses with charming euphemisms about
“strategic values” and “American interests” and frankly attributes
petroleum-soaked motives to Bush the Younger’s actions.
“Remember, Iraq is positioned right next to three of the world’s richest oil
states: once Saddam managed to obtain a nuclear device, how could he
have been stopped from dominating Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia?” Hannity
writes. “What could we have done if he had seized access to some 60
percent of the world’s oil supply?”
Fortunately, with Hannity in our corner, 60 percent of the world’s
contradictory rhetoric supply will remain safely in domestic hands.
But while Hannity may seem conflicted on whether to be offended by
liberal “blood for oil” allegations or confirm them, he is more certain on
other historical points.
What the conservative view of history lacks in accuracy it makes up for in
enthusiasm. “Deliver Us From Evil” is certainly no exception in its
substitution of dramatic license for historical fact. It has all the old cast of
characters. President Bill Clinton is reviled as a craven appeasement
monkey on whom blame for every foreign policy quagmire can
conveniently be laid. President George W. Bush is the much-maligned,
but steadfast leader for our times.
But it’s President Carter who is singled out for special treatment in
Hannity’s Hall of Evil Liberals. Hannity starts with a history lesson
appropriate for people who’s sole knowledge of the Middle East comes
from falling asleep during the first hour of “Lawrence of Arabia.”
“For the last quarter century, of course, Iran and Iraq have been vicious
anti-American tyrannies,” Hannity writes. “The two nations spent much of
the 1980s at war with each other, and as liberal Democrats can’t stop
reminding us today, during that period America supplied Iraq with arms.”
Yeah, liberals are like that, always reminding you of every little “vicious
anti-American tyranny” you ever sold arms to. (We also sold arms to Iran,
of course, but I digress.) At any rate, liberals who expose Reagan-era
foreign affairs idiocy aren’t Hannity’s main target. That would be Carter
who, according to Hannity, is responsible for abandoning the Shah and
allowing the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
According to Hannity, the Shah’s downfall, “facilitated by the reckless
policies of Jimmy Carter, cleared the path for an extremely anti-American,
authoritarian regime whose crimes far outstripped anything the Shah had
done…”
But outside the right-wing’s funhouse mirror view of history, it becomes
obvious that the path to anti-Americanism in Iran wasn‘t in need of much
clearing. For those of you who don’t know, the story of the Shah of Iran’s
leadership dates back to 1952 when the British, worried over their
strategic interests - camel hair has always been a vital commody - asked
for U.S. assistance to stage a coup and install the Shah as absolute ruler
while ousting the democratically-elected prime minister. The U.S. was
then run by President Harry Truman who, being a sensible Democrat, told
the Brits to piss up a rope. Unfortunately, a less-sensible Republican
administration had taken the reins in 1953 and the CIA cheerfully
assisted in putting the Iranian people under the yoke of an iron-fisted
monarch who spent the next 26 years suppressing opposition and jailing
dissidents while living in luxury as his people suffered. In the late 1950s
the ever-helpful CIA even assisted in training a secret police force, SAVAK
for the Shah. According to Wikipedia, “The service had virtually unlimited
powers of arrest and detention. It operated its own detention centres, like
the notorious Evin Prison. It is universally accepted that SAVAK routinely
subjected detainees to physical torture.”
Oddly, the Iranians were not grateful for all our hard work on their behalf.
As the New York Times, put it:
“The operation, code-named TP-Ajax, was the blueprint for a succession
of C.I.A. plots to foment coups and destabilize governments during the
Cold War — including the agency’s successful coup in Guatemala in
1954 and the disastrous Cuban intervention known as the Bay of Pigs in
1961. In more than one instance, such operations led to the same kind of
long-term animosity toward the United States that occurred in Iran.”
Madeline Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State had a similarly correct if
stupifyingly obvious assessment.
“It is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this
intervention by America in their internal affairs,” she said.
Even Hannity, for whom stupefying obviousness is often alien territory,
subtly admits that the Shah “wasn’t a perfect ruler.”
“In his attempts to rush his ancient Persian society into the modern world,
he led an often oppressive regime,” he noted, glossily making excuses
for a petty tyrant’s excesses.
In short, it was a Republican administration that sowed the seeds of the
rabid anti-Americanism that eventually flowered into the demented super-
theocracy that now runs Iran. But don’t try telling this to Hannity. For him, it
was Carter. And what, precisely, was Carter’s unforgivable sin?
“In his sanctimonious way, Jimmy Carter began pressuring the Iranian
leader to stop holding military tribunals, and to release certain political
prisoners - some of whom were known terrorists - and try them in civilian
courts,” Hannity writes. “Carter also strongly urged the Shah to permit
‘free assembly’ - though under the circumstances that meant declaring
open season for potential insurgents to meet and plot revolution.”
Strip away the shamlessly slanted posturing and the blathering
apologism and read those sentences again. Carter openly advocated that
an autocratic dictator release political prisoners, institute civilian courts,
permit free assembly, and just generally adhere to something vaguely
resembling the rule of law. In other words, Hannity is finding fault with a U.
S. leader for trying to impose the values of freedom and democracy on a
tyrannical regime in the Middle East. To paraphrase Gene Kelly in “Inherit
the Wind,” we’re breeding a strange crop of moral absolutists this year.
But worry not. Hannity doesn’t spend all his time attacking American
presidents while defending the brutality of unelected, two-bit Middle
Eastern despots. “Deliver Us From Evil” would not be a true right-wing
screed without the obligatory, cult-like paean to President Ronald
Reagan. Indeed turn at random to a page in the middle of any
conservative tome and chances are you’ll run across the Gipper‘s larger-
than-life visage, bringer of hope, healer by touch, a shining demigod, as
always backlit by a soft golden glow and ethereally bathed in a mythical
cloud of warm, rhetorical generalities. In “Deliver” Hannity wastes no time
shifting his stirring, patriotic cliché generator into overdrive.
“We were in such a state of despair that it demanded a person with
Reagan’s extraordinary optimism about America to lead us back onto the
path to greatness - from rebuilding the military and the economy, to
restoring a sense of hope and national pride. Reagan believed in
America’s greatness because of his innate faith that any people would
flourish when unshackled by…” Etc. Etc. You get the idea.
It’s on the subject of Reagan that Hannity proves himself not just adept at
the art of moral relativism but the meatier area of policy relativism as well.
In much the same way that President Bush’s denunciations of tyranny are
lauded, while Carter’s twenty-five years ago are reviled, its not unusual for
Hannity to lionize Reagan and savage President Clinton for doing the
same thing.
For instance, on pages 121-122, Hannity exalts Reagan for ordering a
1986 air strike on Tripoli in response to a Libyan-sponsored terrorist
attack at a Berlin nightclub.
“The Tripoli attack became a famous model for aggressive action against
state-sponsored terrorism,” he writes. “Reagan’s willingness to confront
Libya offers an important historical lesson: That the only language
terrorists understand is that of strength and force.”
Alas fame is fleeting and they just don’t make important historical
lessons like they used to. This one doesn’t even survive through the next
page, quickly falling victim to one of those strange memory lapses that
seem so essential to a conservative understanding of history. When
discussing a similar “model for aggressive action” employed by
President Clinton in retaliation against Baghdad for an assassination plot
against ex-President Bush, Hannity suddenly finds air strikes to be a
weak-kneed idea, terming them a “tepid attack” and a “halfhearted swipe.”
“When Clinton did respond to real assaults against Americans or our
strategic interests he would do so with the proverbial flyswatter,” Hannity
writes derisively.
Wow, I hadn’t been aware that the military employs less effective
munitions during air strikes ordered by Democratic administrations. At
least I assume they must, since, failing that, Hannity never touches on the
elusive difference between Reagan’s bombing an enemy capital and
Clinton’s doing it. Such a distinction was certainly lost on the bipartisan
9/11 commission, which ironically went out of its way to note that Clinton
borrowed his “flyswatter” from Reagan.
“The lesson taken from Libya was that terrorism could be stopped by the
use of U.S. air power that inflicted pain on the authors or sponsors of
terrorist acts,” the commission’s exhaustive report notes. “This lesson
was applied using Tomahawk missles, early in the Clinton
administration.”
Not only that but the commission’s report actually showed that Clinton’s
response may have been more effective than Reagan’s.
“Other than one civilian casualty, the operation seemed completely
successful,” the commission said of the 1993 strike. “The intelligence
headquarters was demolished. No further intelligence came in about
terrorist acts planned by Iraq.”
Reagan’s results, for whatever reason, were less decisive.
“Evidence accumulated later, including the 1988 bombing of Pam Am
103, clearly showed that the operation did not curb Qadhafi’s interest in
terrorism,” said the report. “However, it was seen at the time as a
success.”
The report notes later: “The 1986 attack on Libya and the 1993 attack on
Iraq symbolized for the military establishment effective use of military
power for counter terrorism - limited retaliation with air power, aimed at
deterrence.”
Though one can question whether the military’s conclusion was correct -
and the report, to some degree, does - Hannity’s sharp delination
between Reagan’s air strike in 1986 and Clinton’s doing the same thing
in 1993 is mystifying to say the least.
But it’s not just on this issue that Clinton is condemned for strategies that
came out of the Gipper’s playbook.
Hannity castigates Clinton for the so-called “Black Hawk down” episode
in which 18 Americans were killed by rampaging Somalis who dragged a
charred solider’s corpse through the streets in a grisly victory celebration.
He quotes columnist Paul Greenberg, “The Clinton administration
reacted to the disaster by pulling out, turning tail and giving up, thus
sending the wrong signal to every would-be Osama bin Laden in the
terrorist netherworld: The United States will run at the first sign of blood.”
Greenberg and Hannity have a point. In fact, I agree. So did the 9/11
commission which compared the incident to the botched “Desert One”
rescue mission in 1980 which killed eight Americans along with whatever
was left the Carter administration’s credibility.
But here another Hannity memory lapse. The commission also noted
something not found in Hannity’s book - the similarities between cutting
and running after “Black Hawk down” and Reagan’s actions ten years
earlier after more than 200 American Marines were slaughtered in a
Hezbollah bombing in Lebanon.
“President Reagan quickly withdrew U.S. forces from Lebanon - a
reversal later routinely cited by jihadists as evidence of U.S. weakness,”
the report said.
Funny, I must have missed the part of Hannity’s book where Reagan
made us look weak in front of jihadists.
But what about Reagan’s arms sales to Iraq? Surely, this at least
represents a minor miscalculation in the Gipper’s otherwise chink-proof
armor. Ah, but no, silly liberal, you have yet to master the discipline of
Hannity-think. Conservative historical analysis permits only unblemished
heroes for worshipping purposes, not actual human beings. While
Hannity admits that Reagan “did business” with the Iraqis, that is sold
them arms, he is unwilling to credit Reagan for this master stroke of
foreign policy acumen.
“Yet the truth is that during that period the United States was forced to play
the hand the Carter administration had dealt,” Hannity writes. “It was
Carter who left us without an ally in the newly unstable Persian Gulf, and it
is his administration, not Reagan’s, that should be blamed for leaving
America no choice but to align itself with Iran’s neighboring enemy…”
Wow! Imagine that. Carter was so incompetent he was even responsible
for Reagan’s bad decisions! Indeed, in the Plaza of Conservative Martyrs,
the Great Communicator’s statue must be free of bird droppings - even
he is the one who put Ex-Lax in the pigeon feed.
But in the same way that Hannity’s bias precludes any understanding of a
military action’s effectiveness beyond the party affiliation of the person
ordering it, even well-known facts are twisted to suit partisan agenda
mongering. On page 159, while Hannity allows enough reality to peek in
to acknowledge a “lack of immediate hard evidence” of WMD in Iraq (as
opposed to delayed soft evidence, I guess) he still cannot quite bring
himself to accept the obvious, noting that the absence of WMD could be
because it was smuggled to other countries before the war. “To my mind,
the fact that no weapons have yet been found in Iraq only gives me
greater cause for concern,” he writes.
What an interesting mind that must be; a strange world of circular logic
where a murder weapon proves you guilty and the lack thereof proves that
you got rid of it.
“Deliver,” however does not limit itself to only one or two forms of
fallacious reasoning. Indeed, the book is a regular Olympic tour-de-force
for all manner of irrational silliness. Hannity quotes faux-Democratic Sen.
Zell Miller, a gold medalist in the Vast Moronic Oversimplification Event,
writing to justify his vote for the Iraq War resolution with an odd,
meandering tale about stumbling across a nest of copperhead snakes in
his backyard.
“I just took a hoe and knocked them in the head and killed them - dead as
a doorknob,” Miller writes on why he supported the resolution. “I guess
you could call it a unilateral action. Or preemptive. Perhaps if you had
been watching you could have even called it bellicose and reactive. I took
their poisonous heads off because they were a threat to me. And they
were a threat to my home and my family. They were a threat to all I hold
dear. And isn’t that what this is all about?”
Well, maybe. Certainly the image of the elderly Miller flailing wildly at an
accidently-discovered nest of vipers with a gardening implement calls to
mind the Bush postwar strategy but in light of the senator’s thoughts
being on his backyard pest control problems rather than the evidence
against Iraq, his vote for the war resolution makes little sense. Okay,
come to think of it, maybe it makes more sense.
But the senator’s rantings aside, the fact is we went into Iraq and things
have not looked good since. We are there for the long haul. Troops are
dying. Families are hurting. Terrorism is up, the budget’s collapsing and
if the military’s recruitment numbers don’t rise, the entire domestic
defense of the world’s last remaining superpower may soon consist
entirely of Senator Miller and his trusty hoe. Conservatives have to admit
Iraq was a dumb move. Liberals have to admit that a complete,
immediate pullout would be equally dumb. Hence, this is a uniquely
practical moment in American history. It is a time to be united in our own
stupidity. It is a time to work together and fix things, a time to see past our
illusions to craft a future that we must make for ourselves or our enemies
will make one for us.
Why then at this hopeful moment in history is Sean Hannity a best-selling
author and Michael Moore, a best-selling director? Maybe we like our
illusions better.
There has long been a historical debate pitting practicality against
ideological purity. Is flexibility better than firmness? Is pragmatism more
desirable than steadfastness? In the logical absurdities of “Deliver,”
Hannity aims us on a path to the worst of both worlds: ideology in the
service of practicality. Do not win because you are right. Winning makes
you right. I do not fight because I am correct. I am correct, because I fight.
Thus, rather than being a denunciation of moral relativism, Hannity’s
book is in fact one long, preening, 296-page example of it. Air strikes are
powerful when I order them, weak when you do. It is moral courage when
I fight repression, sanctimonious stupidity when you do. Its okay for me to
go to war for oil, but bad for you to tell anyone. It’s wrong for you to coddle
brutal dictators, but okay for me to sell them arms and anyway its your
fault that I did it. In the guise of a defense of absolute standards of right
and wrong, “Deliver” is in fact a corruption of them. Hannity inhabits an
odd Orwellian universe where policy is judged by its author, not its
content, where moral quicksand is the firmest of terra firma, where black
is white - until I say it’s black again. The nature of evil requires no debate.
It is what I say it is - until I say it is something else.
And here lies the darker side of Hannity’s laughable partisan hackery. He
can be seen as both cause and effect. Hannity doesn’t run 1984’s
Ministry of Love. He just cleans the bathrooms. He is the product of a
Rush Lobotimized, don’t-confuse-me-with-the-facts world, spawned by
an unholy coupling of liberal and conservative extremism, the nasty
progeny of an increasingly divisive and soulless political environment in
which reasoned debate is a weakness to be shoved aside by a cold,
poisonous culture of content-neutral utilitarianism. Everything - facts,
opinions, scandal, morality, truth, consistency - is a malleable asset to be
molded, a useful raw material ready for fashioning, a dispensable soldier
whose fruitless charge into the cannon shot is justified only by his service
in the larger ideological war in which he plays a small but ultimately
unimportant role. Perhaps we deserve Hannity. After all, liberals and
conservatives alike, we inhabit a political swamp of our own making.
And in that, some would argue that we do not visit new territory here. In
politics, winning has always been more important than being right. But in
Hannity’s work we see the ultimate expression of such a dark truism. It is
not simply that a viewpoint’s moral coherence is no longer seen as a
political virtue. In the dizzying ethical kaleidoscope of “Deliver Us From
Evil,” such coherence is no longer seen at all.