“All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.”

-Herman Melville, “Moby-Dick”

“We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name.”

-President Bush, West Point commencement speech

Call me an unabashed pessimist. A doomsday prophet. A blow-things-out of-proportionist. One who fears the radical and embraces the cautious. A compassionate conservative of sorts.

You can also call me a believer in timeless, universal themes of human existence that merely repeat themselves. On personality tests, I choose Shakespeare over Einstein on the question of genius. Both exposed underlying, eternal truths. But Einstein’s could be proven; Shakespeare had to convince us to take them on faith, based upon their existence in our everyday lives.

Some might argue that literature lies separate from reality, that there is some kind of wall between art and daily living, the daily news or global politics — especially in a time of crisis. “We must deal in facts — this is not the time for fiction and rhetoric,” some argue. Yet what are these facts without an imaginative background to give them life?

Could Bush call Saddam Hussein “evil” without a religious upbringing that defines it? And how clear is this definition? Satan is the antagonist of Milton’s religious epic “Paradise Lost,” but he is also ultimately subservient to God’s master plan for mankind. If evil serves good, then can we destroy evil without at the same time destroying good? In the words of Melville, nothing exists without contrast.

I do not mean to engage in postmodernist mind-bending; I merely seek to show the relevance of literary themes to the realm of global politics. And the case of President Bush’s push to topple Saddam Hussein seems eerily familiar. We have heard this story before.

In the tale of “Moby-Dick,” Captain Ahab passionately pursues the white whale that took his leg. This whale, Moby Dick, becomes the epitome of all that is evil and terrible in the world for Ahab, “the sum of all the general rage and hate.” In spite of great dangers, the advice of other captains, the neglect of his mission as a commercial whaler, and the lack of any concrete plans for after the death of Moby Dick, Ahab’s tunnel vision pushes him onward into the sea, to the point of no return.

In the narrative of Saddam Hussein, President Bush passionately pursues the man who attempted to kill his father. This man, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, becomes the epitome of all that is terrible in an uncertain world of threats and terrorism. “If this is not evil,” Bush says of his actions, “then evil has no meaning.” Upon Hussein is heaped the rage of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the fear of terrorism and the uncertainty of America’s place in the world after the Cold War.

In spite of great danger to American troops abroad, the advice and anger of foreign leaders, and the lack of serious concrete plans for after the downfall of Hussein, Bush’s tunnel vision pushes him onward into the desert, to the point of no return.

Ahab, like Bush, knows no compromise, no pragmatism, no hesitancy in claiming to know good and evil when it comes to the White Whale. Bush has alienated several NATO allies, made the world fearful of the United States and galvanized global anti-American sentiment that had grown separately since the end of the Cold War in particular. He has thrown sacred civil liberties out the window because they stood as small hurdles slowing his pursuit of evildoers.

Moby Dick survived Ahab’s hunt. One man cannot destroy the symbol of evil. But Ahab and his ship were destroyed in the final pursuit.

Bush has not yet started this final pursuit of the Arab Whale, and there is still time to let better judgment prevail — to save foreign relations, human lives and the peace of mind of future Americans terrorized more because of a U.S.-occupied Iraq. But first he must take the universal themes and warnings of literature a little more seriously: the maniacal pursuit of symbolic evil leads only to disaster.

Matt Lynch ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English and political science.