As 'evil axis' turns, Bush sees no blur of right, wrong

As a born-again Christian, George W. Bush is the most overtly religious president since Jimmy Carter. For him, that includes a very clear, very sturdy, almost joyful certainty about what's right and what's wrong.

National leaders - most notably Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt during World War II - have always painted a black-and-white picture of the values, cultures, and civilizations pitted against one another in times of mass conflict involving great effort and great loss. The war against terrorism has followed this pattern, with Bush's constant references to "evil," "evil doers," "the evil ones," and "axis of evil."

There were five such references in his State of the Union address last week. More followed, including speeches outside of Washington and letters to grade-school pupils.

"I don't see any shades of gray in the war against terror," he said in Atlanta.

For many people, the president's steely-eyed view of the nation's "enemies" - four references in the State of the Union speech - is also a wel- come relief from the moral relativism of the "if it feels good, do it" outlook (as Bush puts it) that seems to have pervaded popular culture and tarred many politicians from Democrat Bill Clinton to Republican Henry Hyde.

This sense of moral certainty also parallels the great popularity of things like the current hit film "The Fellowship of the Ring" in which the evil Dark Lord Sauron must be stood up to by the good Hobbits.

Some find such presidential language unsettling.

"The implication of this language is a sort of insight and ultimate judgment that most Christians are a little uncomfortable with," says James Dunn, a professor of Christianity and public policy at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. "When that sort of ultimate certainty comes along, you have the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Puritan hangings."

But if public opinion polls are any gauge, Americans are responding very positively to this rhetoric.

TWO-THIRDS of Americans say the US is winning the war, and only 6 percent say it was a mistake to get involved in sending the military to Afghanistan - the lowest "mistake" for a war in the past 50 years, says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Polls.

Humans have always pondered the nature of evil. At its most fundamental, it leads many to a theological conundrum: "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

But for Bush, there seems to be no such existential angst. For him, "evil is real," and "the evil ones" must be fought."

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