During my first year of teaching I met a student &045; I’ll call him Bob &045; who was very set in his beliefs. Reality had no ambiguity for Bob; everything was clearly marked as good or evil. At the time, our government was bankrolling terrorists (we called them &uot;freedom fighters&uot;) in Nicaragua and Angola. Since Bob believed that the United States was always right, it didn’ t bother him that our terrorist allies had sabotaged or destroyed power stations, medical clinics, and water treatment facilities, killing doctors, nurses and engineers in the process.

I challenged Bob to justify our policies, especially when so many other countries were condemning our actions. But Bob saw us in a battle with evil, and he was unwilling to allow any foreign government the right to actively oppose our policies, whatever the reason. The only legitimate governments anywhere were those that agreed with and supported us, he insisted.

I was appalled at what seemed like madness to me, but not because just one student had such ideas. I was appalled because his views seemed to be dominant at the time &045; Bob simply didn’t sugarcoat it the way others did. Over the past couple of years I have found myself thinking back to my conversations with Bob, because it seems that those ideas are back in favor.

George W. Bush has, according to the articles I’ve read, an absolute faith in America’s role in the world. He believes that there is a reason that we are the world’s only superpower: We have been &uot;called and ordained&uot; to lead the world in a crusade against evil, whether the rest of the world agrees with that or not.

As I go about my life here in Freeborn County, I have to wonder if my neighbors are paying attention to what the rest of the world sees in George W. Bush. When poll after poll in nation after nation puts our President at the top of the list of the world’s most dangerous people, is that an image we can just ignore as if it were meaningless? How can Bush expect our allies to jump into battle when he tells them to after the arrogant way he rejected international agreements and unilaterally abrogated arms control treaties?

Our leaders insinuate that cowards, who aren’t listening to us and are ignoring Saddam Hussein’s capacity for evil, govern the rest of the world. Bush and company imply a lack of support for war means giving in to terrorists. But going to war is not the only way to protect the world from terrorism. Our leaders have also been refusing to listen to the rest of the world.

Millions of people around the world think our President is a religious fanatic bent on some holy crusade. Almost against my will I wonder if that might be true. If he isn’t a religious fanatic, he seems to be going out of his way to act like one, with his constant invocations of God in his speeches and his portrayal of his enemies as instruments of ultimate evil. He acts like someone who made up his mind about Iraq a long time ago, and is now merely going through the motions of debate and discussion.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon changed Bush, or else revealed things in him that we hadn’t noticed before. Like a fanatic, he’s willing to do anything to crush our enemies &045; whether it means weakening the United Nations on the road to invading Iraq or undermining democracy at home through the harsh provisions of the Patriot Act. It’s good versus evil in his eyes, not America versus the world or the Bush administration versus the Bill of Rights.

Every morning I wake up expecting to hear that we’ve invaded Iraq. Trying to stop that from happening seems futile. So with every prayer for peace that I say, I also pray for a quick, decisive victory and a safe return for our men and women in uniform. I also pray that victory in Iraq doesn’t provide Bush and his supporters with carte blanche to do the same thing to other countries. If overthrowing governments we don’t like becomes our official policy, who’s next? Pyongyang? Tehran? Paris? Berlin?

David Rask Behling is a rural Albert Lea resident. His column appears Tuesdays.