American famous publicist Dennis Prager strongly criticized the Barak Obama administration, which does not properly assess Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s struggle against “evil”. To the point, saying “evil” he confuses the wet with the dry, including both the “Islamic state” and Iran, which are obviously different things. As it is known, Netanyahu had left for the United States to persuade the country leadership not to enter into agreement with Iran on its nuclear program.
Prager thinks that there is a pattern. Those who are reluctant to call evil an evil and do not actively fight against it, defame and consider the fighters to be wrong. To prove it, he brings two examples. When Reagan called the Soviet Union an “empire of evil”, the commentators of leading American newspapers accused the then President in simplistic and black-and-white thinking. When 20 years later, George W. Bush called Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil”, the interaction of the American liberals (by the description of the author, the “leftists”) was the same.
The author’s sympathy toward his country’s Republican Party is obvious, and, to the point, it is very likely that one and a half years later, America will elect a president with this very views. But the matter in this case is about the examples illustrated by Prager. I do not have any warm feeling to the “Soviet”, but whether quick and thoughtless demolition of this country brought only benefit to the world, including the United States. Not to speak about us. Or, whether specifically, the present situation in Iraq and the activities of the same “Islamic state” in this region does not constitute a greater danger for the US and the world than Saddam’s regime. Accordingly, the examples illustrated by Prager are undisputed.
Recently I interviewed Ukrainian publicist Vitaly Portnikov. My impression was that I was talking with Dmitry Kiselyov, only with a sign of “minus”. Every second word by Putin’s preacher is the curse addressed to the West, while Putin is the “the main hero” of my interlocutor. The two publicists have a clear and unambiguous notion about the “empire of evil”, simply they see this empire in “different locations” purely geographically. Both are true in somewhere, these “empires” can compete with each other by aggressiveness and cynicism.
Read also
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?” asked Mahatma Gandhi.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
