Remember what was really said about the “Axis of Evil?” You don’t? Come on, now. Surely you remember which countries constituted President Bush’s Axis of Evil? That’s right. It’s Iraq, Iran and North Korea. What did the president say about them, in his first State of the Union address, long, long ago, way back in that year of yore, year of Fresh Wounds, 2002?
Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.
Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom.
Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens -- leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections -- then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.
States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.Remember all the howls of outrage about the phrase “Axis of Evil?” It was almost as annoying as the furor over the Great Turkey Scandal of Thanksgiving 2003.
Looking back, other than the question of whether Iraq still possessed Weapon of Mass Destruction--or NBC weapons as they called them back in my day; thanks for reminding me, Ith—can anyone tell me where the president was mistaken? (Whether he lied or not isn’t even a serious question except for partisan Bush-haters who want to re-define the verb “ to lie” to mean whatever it is that will make the object of their hatred look bad.) Where’s the beef?
Should this administration be punished for its inability to accurately predict that Saddam was too stupid, prideful and short-sighted to tell the truth from the beginning? He could have said, “Hey, dudes, I was just funnin’ , I got rid of all those nasty nuclear, biological and chemical precursors. Come check it out.” But nooo, he had to front as the big man for his boys in the ME. Is that the administration’s fault? (Libya’s Kaddafy, 4989th spelling, turns out to be far more teachable. Who knew?)
So we go in, take care of his monstrous sons, stop the filling of mass graves and eventually capture him. Are there WMDs? I say no. But is what we did right? I say yes. One prong of the Axis in the chrysalis stage, transforming, hopefully into a democracy.
Now we have the next one, Iran. Nuke program far more advanced, mullahs hating on the West. However, its population is much more free and better informed than that of Iraq. And, many may have had it with the mullahs, as bloggers are reporting:
Conversely, “the professionals” are reporting the riot-like conditions in Iran’s capital, Tehran, as well as other cities, as the “celebration of a fire festival.” Who’s right? We’ll see. Is another prong of the Axis falling by the wayside? And if it is, will the “amateurs” have the scoop?
If Iran falls out of the hands of the mullahcracy and starts making inroads into democracy, what of the third prong of the Axis? That place headed by the craziest of dictators, the one about which horrific rumors are spread; of kidnappings and concentration camps and cannibalism. What of that place in which guns don’t just come before butter, but in which there’s no such thing as butter? (And somebody ought to smack this guy and run for posting this early April Fool’s joke.)
We can only watch, wait, hope and bloviate.
