SIMPLISTIC HUNT FOR EVIL IN A COMPLEX WORLD

Doomed by the incoherence of a foreign policy defined largely by biblical
notions of the struggle between good and evil, the Bush Administration
thrashes about in its hunt for the devil. Sadly, all that has produced are
shopworn enemies that were once our surrogates in battles we would rather
forget.

That is the case with Saddam Hussein, whose war against Iran in the 1980s
was decisively aided by a United States eager to protect pro-Western Arab
oil sheikdoms from the contamination of Iran's virulently anti-American
Islamic revolution. Hussein's use of chemical weapons, now cited with
horror in the Bush Administration's daily demonization of Hussein, occurred
early in that war and was well known to US officials, who at least
implicitly condoned his war crimes.

The most recent evidence of this complicity was reported Sunday in the New
York Times: "A covert American program during the Reagan Administration
provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance at a time when
American intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ
chemical weapons."

Iran, which also used chemical weapons, still is ruled by the same type of
religious zealots who once seized the US Embassy and kept Americans
captive.But while President Bush early this year placed it in his "axis of
evil," along with North Korea and Iraq, Iran is now viewed more ambiguously
because Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, is dependent on Tehran
for his life.

The Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance--our ally in fighting the Taliban and
which now controls the Afghan military--was long backed by Iran. A brutal
bunch, it stands accused by the United Nations of having suffocated
hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban prisoners whom the United States
entrusted to Northern Alliance care.

Karzai, the token representative of the country's Pashtun majority and
hand-selected by the United States, is no match forthe Northern Alliance
thugs and will be gone the day their Iranian sponsors give the word. Thus
the warm greeting extended by Karzai to Iranian President Mohammad Khatami
on his visit to Kabul last week.

The Afghan nightmare, as the Russians learned, never ends. Our current
allies will be tomorrow's enemies, as it has always been. Recall that the
Taliban's members and its Arab supporters in Al Qaeda are veterans of the
moujahedeen, who were once hailed by the Reagan Administration as
anti-Soviet "freedom fighters." And that the Taliban government was
congratulated by US officials only weeks before September 11 for having
dramatically eliminated Afghanistan's huge opium harvest and was rewarded
with increased US economic aid through the UN.

In the area controlled by the Northern Alliance, however, the opium trade
was still king. And, not surprisingly, with the Taliban gone, Afghanistan
is again the major supplier to the world heroin market.

Conveniently, the drug war that obsessed this Administration before
September 11 is now ignored. Our new enemy is not dope growers but Iraq,
even though Bush has produced no convincing evidence that Baghdad has
anything to do with the Al Qaeda network.

The country that clearly does, of course, is that hotbed of hypocrisy,
Saudi Arabia, homeland of Osama bin Laden and fifteen of the September 11
hijackers. The sheikdom is now being sued for $1 trillion by families of
the September 11 victims. But President Bush would never move against the
Saudis because American corporations, some led by close Bush family friends
and associates, do too much business there.

So who else can Bush invade to take our minds off the dismal economy that
his much-ballyhooed tax cut failed to save and may have helped wreck? Not
North Korea, the third member of Bush's evil axis, which is proving a major
disappointment by giving strong signals of embracing Chinese-style
capitalism while courting its rich neighbors.

How depressing for Bush Administration militarists that the world is such a
complex place. For a few months, it seemed that the invasion of Iraq was
the ticket to ride into another four-year term, but then the most respected
of GOP elders, Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger, rose up to remind
Junior that just such hubris had destroyed his father's presidency.

Time to forgo the biblical allegories of good and evil and recognize that
in the twenty-first century, smiting one's enemies is an elusive goal
requiring patience and subtlety, as well as timely heroics. The enemy,
whether it be global warming, addictive drugs, endemic poverty, religious
fanaticism, terrorism or weapons of mass destruction, is best thought of as
a dangerous disease succored by ignorance, pride and avarice--sins of which
the United States too is sometimes guilty. That is why we will continue to
be tormented by monsters of our own creation.

Robert Scheer, a Nation contributing editor, is also a contributing editor
and columnist for the Los Angeles Times.