George W. Bush: ethical?

All of the work time I have been spending on religious fundamentalism seems not to be enough, as I recently started reading The End of Faith by Sam Harris, a book my aunt sent me, on of the recent crop of stridently atheist books being published in the US and UK these days. I don’t agree with many of its arguments, but it makes for interesting reading. Over breakfast this morning, I read the following:

We need only to image how any of our recent conflicts would have looked if we had possessed perfect weapons-weapons that would have allowed us either to temporarily impair or to kill a particular person, or group, at any distance, without harming others or their property…most of us would elect to use weapons of this sort. A moment’s thought reveals that a person’s use of such a weapon would offer a perfect window onto the soul of his ethics.

Consider the all too facile comparisons that have been made between George Bush and Saddam Hussein (or Osama bin Laden, or Hitler, etc.)… How would George Bush have prosecuted the recent war in Iraq with perfect weapons? Would he have targeted the thousands of Iraqi civilians who were maimed or killed by our bombs? Would he have put out the eyes of little girls or torn the arms from their mothers? Whether or not you admire the man’s politics—or the man—there is no reason to think that he would have sanctioned the injury or death of even a single innocent person. What would Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden do with perfect weapons? What would Hitler have done? They would have used them rather differently.

I have never been part of the ‘Bush and Hitler are the same/only difference is the name’ crowd, but neither am I a member of his fan club. After reading this passage, I had to concede, (and it feels like quite a concession) that George Bush, while I don’t agree with him on many things (anything?), is an ethical human being, at least as far as not actively desiring the destruction of innocent individuals makes one ethical.