by Alice Atkinson-Bonasio

Created on: October 13, 2008

The use of such sweeping terms such as good' and evil' as policy-defining pillars in a secular society such as the United States of America might seem difficult to justify and understand. I will argue, however, that the notion of absolute evil has always been present in the American psyche, barely covered by secular mentality and contemporary conventions, and that the attacks on America that happened in 2001 have served to revive in their society and politics the image of Satan. By Satan' I mean not so much the fallen angel of Christian mythology, but the personification of evil, whose most marked characteristic is precisely its changeable nature. In the next few paragraphs I will draw upon the work of Richard Kearney, Andrew Delbanco, Peter Singer, and Jean Baudrillard, amongst others, in order to analyze the ethical, practical and political reasons and consequences of the policies adopted after those fateful attacks. I will also attempt to shed some light onto why the policies adopted by the Bush White House which have continued to prove extremely unpopular amongst the international community have been accepted in a seemingly unquestioning manner by a large proportion of the American population.

In Death of Satan, Andrew Delbanco argues that America started its colonized history with a system of beliefs in which its inhabitants had a clearly defined conception of evil - materialized in the figure of Satan and has then proceeded in a relentless advance towards secular rationality. Since Delbanco's book was published in 1995, however, the direction of this change has been effectively reversed. The current situation in the United States following the change in presidential administration from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush and most significantly - the attacks of September 11th 2001, have reinforced the psychological need in Americans for clear boundaries between good' and evil', and that is exactly what their current president and his administration are providing them with a working concept of absolute evil, materialized and concentrated in the now almost iconic figure of Osama Bin Laden.

President Bush's initial reaction to those attacks, Richard Kearney comments, was to divide the world into good and evil. In the days immediately following the terror, he declared a crusade' against the evil scourge of terrorism' (2003: 111). This move towards a dyadic philosophy where all issues are starkly contrasted in black and white and all moral choices and consequently

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