Equating war with individual evil has become ubiquitous — if not universal — in contemporary international politics. Wars are fights against evil tyrants and the illegitimate governments they control. Such rhetoric makes wars easier to justify, easier to wage and easier to support, especially for elected leaders who must respond directly to swings in public opinion. Such language works equally well for any society in today’s media-obsessed age.
Little wonder, then, that political leaders consistently personalize international conflicts. Alas, such commonplace language also makes wars harder to avoid, harder to end and arguably more deadly.
The rhetoric of personified evil is easily seen through US examples, but is hardly a uniquely US phenomenon. Chinese leaders blame Taiwanese leaders for cross-strait tensions and blame the Dalai Lama for all that ails Tibet. So, too, have protestors around the world made former US president George W. Bush resemble Adolf Hitler, and mullahs throughout the Islamic world ritualistically harangue US presidents as earthly Satans, simultaneously noting their basic affection for the American people.
Recent US leaders, for their part, find it nearly impossible to deploy military force without first employing such rhetoric as both mantra and crutch. The most famous example came in 1917. Then US president Woodrow Wilson, asking for a declaration of war against Germany, said, “We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war.” Only the Kaiser and his evil henchmen were to blame.
In 1990, former US president George H.W. Bush made the same plea: “We have no quarrel with the Iraqi people.” His son, Former US president George W. Bush, said the same thing in 2003, adding, “they are the daily victims of Saddam Hussein’s oppression.” The younger Bush had earlier noted that Americans “had no quarrel with the people of Afghanistan,” only with al-Qaeda and their Taliban supporters. He even employed this phrase in his final State of the Union address last year, saying that “Our message to the people of Iran is clear: We have no quarrel with you … Our message to the leaders of Iran is also clear: Verifiably suspend your nuclear enrichment, so negotiations can begin.”
NO QUARRELS?
Every US president since Wilson has, at least once while in office, uttered the phrase “have no quarrel with” a foreign enemy. Such statements are typically made only days, sometimes hours, before the first US bombs fall. Former US president Bill Clinton promised on the eve of the bombing of Serbia that “I cannot emphasize too strongly that the United States has no quarrel with the Serbian people.”
US President Barack Obama promised from the campaign trail that “We have no quarrel with the Iranian people. They know that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is reckless, irresponsible and inattentive to their day-to-day needs.”
Presidents employ such language for good reason. They know their public, a self-styled melting pot of peoples, would rather fight dictators than brothers and cousins abroad.
Indeed, Wilson’s initial formulation grew from a demographic and political quandary. More than one-third of Americans in 1917 could trace their heritage back to Germany and its allies. Wilson could not implore his people to “kill the Krauts,” as British or French leaders frequently did, because so many of Wilson’s soldiers were, by ethnicity at least, Krauts themselves.
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