Good, Evil, and Madeleine Albright

Aljazeera likes Madeleine Albright.

I don't think it's her ability to leg-press 400 pounds that makes her appealing. I think it's the way she bashes President Bush that makes her a hero to extremists.

George Bush's religious absolutism is alienating Muslims worldwide and making US foreign policy difficult for many countries to accept, according to a former secretary of state.

Madeleine Albright said the president's use of Christian rhetoric and belief in the "absolute truth" was worrying.

"Some of his language is really quite over the top," she told Reuters on Sunday during a trip to London to promote her book, The Mighty and Almighty, which examines religion and world affairs.

On her book tour, Albright is actively campaigning to alienate Muslims by insisting that President Bush is trying to undermine their religious beliefs. He's not. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Actually, Albright's attack on Bush's faith is what's over the top.

"I worked for two presidents who were men of faith, and they did not make their religious views part of American policy," she said, referring to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both Democrats.

This is just plain screwy.

Bush hasn't made his religious views part of American policy, certainly no more than any prior president.

Maybe an argument could be made that Carter's religious views weren't part of American policy; but that would be because under the disastrous Carter presidency, there basically was no policy.

And let's not get into Clinton's exploitation of faith when it suited him.

Is Clinton parading before the cameras while carrying a huge Bible Albright's idea of what it means to be a man of faith?

Bush, a Republican, has said that his faith informs his decisions as president. He says, for example, that he prayed to God for guidance before invading Iraq.

"President Bush's certitude about what he believes in, and the division between good and evil, is, I think, different. The absolute truth is what makes Bush so worrying to some of us," Albright said.

I'm glad that Bush prays and is guided by a moral framework that is universal.

I prefer that to a president that is morally-challenged.

What worries me is that Albright and those of her deranged ilk don't understand the division between good and evil.

Everything is relative with them.

For example, the 9/11 hijackers weren't evil. They just had a different world view. Understand?

Some Muslims have accused Bush of waging a crusade against Islam.

The White House says it has nothing against Islam, but against those who commit terrorist atrocities in its name.

Albright is playing right into the hands of militant Islam. Her new book could be used as a recruiting tool for terrorists.

In her book, Albright recalls how Bush, while he was governor of Texas, told Christians he believed God wanted him to be president.

Let's get the entire statement in context, please.

She quotes from his speech to his party convention of 2004, when he told Republicans: "We have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom."

Oooh. How scary!

Bush says that people have a right to live free of tyranny. What a wacko idea!
(By the way, I think the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights espouses the exact same thing.)

Albright is being so disingenuous.

Let's quote some of Bill Clinton's speeches. How many times did he invoke God?

Albright, 69, who was secretary of state under Clinton from 1997 to 2001, says the war in Iraq "may eventually rank among the worst foreign policy disasters in US history".

She describes it as arguably worse than the Vietnam War, not in terms of the number of people killed but because of the volatility of the Middle East.

It wasn't enough for her to say that Iraq is Vietnam. Albright thinks it's worse than Vietnam.

The woman wants attention.

She wants to sell her new book so she shamelessly attacks President Bush and U.S. policy, without any regard for the ramifications of having a former U.S. secretary of state slam the administration.

Asked about her own beliefs, Albright said she had "a very confused religious background".

Born and raised a Roman Catholic in Czechoslovakia, Britain and then the United States, she converted to Anglicanism when she married and only later in life discovered she had Jewish roots.

It is this legacy which makes her wary of any religion which claims a monopoly on truth, she said.

Albright is very confused. I'll grant her that.

I wonder if she's seen The Da Vinci Code yet.

As Madeleine Albright tries to drum up sales for her book, she is undermining more than President Bush and his administration.

She is attacking America by aiding our enemies.

That's definitely not good.

One might even consider it evil.