Some of my colleagues at The Globe see evil as a concept essential to understanding Osama bin Laden and what he has wrought. According to Marcus Gee, "we have to recognize him for what he is: evil, pure and simple." For John Ibbitson, to say "good is at war with evil" is as effective a way as any of explaining what's happened since Sept. 11, and perhaps better than most.

They take their cue from U.S. President George W. Bush. He has deliberately set out to use words such as evil and evildoers repeatedly, in order to demonize not only Mr. bin Laden but the amorphous enemy, terrorism. Other commentators have noted what Lance Morrow in Time calls the revival of belief in evil. For him, there were echoes of Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" formulation in the recently released bin Laden videotape.

It's all good propaganda. But as analysis, it's distracting at best, dangerous at worst.

Evidence of humans' capacity to commit frightful deeds is everywhere. Start close to home, with the likes of Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olson. Reach back into history to the days when humans were ritually sacrificed, when millions of Africans were shackled and shipped into slavery, when indigenous peoples were exterminated.

Consider the past century: the Holocaust, the genocide of Armenians, apartheid, ideology-driven slaughter in Cambodia. Consider the past decade: 800,000 massacred in Rwanda by their neighbors, spurred on by radio announcers. Limbs hacked off hapless civilians in Sierra Leone by teenaged guerrillas. Timothy McVeigh, who slaughtered 168 people with a bomb in Oklahoma City. Solar Temple cultists leading their followers in mass suicides.

Does the concept of evil help us understand these events? Psychiatrists cite emotional emptiness and the narcissistic personality in explaining individual motivations. But the worst atrocities, as Sharon Begley of Newsweek noted in a lucid essay, require the complicity of many. Millions may be capable of barbaric acts given the right conditions -- leadership, context, resources and the absence of constraints such as social taboos and enforceable laws. Is their evil on a par with Sept. 11? In history's gallery of horrors, does Mr. Bin Laden stand out?

I think not. He must be pursued and punished, and his terror network must be smashed. But the reason for this is simply that they have done terrible things and might be capable of doing so again, not because they fit into some metaphysical category or because they have crossed some arbitrary threshold of malevolence.

To look at the problem another way, the presence of evil was not enough to persuade foreign powers to act to stop Rwanda's genocide. It was far outweighed by fear of the consequences of involvement. Are we not rather selective about which principles we invoke, and when?

Here's the danger: Having largely neutralized al-Qaeda, Mr. Bush may now embark on a global fishing expedition for further terrorist suspects. If we accept his characterization of evil as the enemy, we'll give him more cover than he deserves. To be effective, any extension of the war must be based not on moral theology but on clear evidence of heinous crimes or conspiracies.

Mr. Bin Laden would love the world to believe he is participating in an epic struggle between good and evil. What he is really doing is conducting a sordid campaign of mass murder. There is nothing to be gained by fighting any part of the battle on his turf.

Copyright © 2001 Globe Interactive

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