What Happened to the Axis of Evil?

February 5, 2006

Four years and a week ago Bush give his “Axis of Evil” State of the Union Address. He declared that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea represent an “axis of evil”. IMO he got two out of three right.

There’s little doubt in my mind that the governments of Iran and North Korea are irresponsible, totalitarian, repressive, and dangerous governments that the world would be much better off for in their absence. Iraq has been internally totalitarian and repressive, but despite their invasion of Kuwait they have been containable. If dealt with properly they could have been of little danger to the outside world.

Tom Friedman of the NYT, on the eve of the US’s second invasion of Iraq, said this in a discussion comparing the dangers of Iraq to the dangers of Bin Laden: “Hussein likes life more than he hates us, and Bin Laden hates us more than he likes life”.

This gave Hussein a degree of responsibility. He liked being in power. He liked life, and he would have appeased the outside world to keep it. He’d tweak us, yes, but I don’t think he ever would have crossed the line if properly handled (US signals regarding Kuwait before Iraq I is a whole different discussion, though in short while I don’t think it was our fault I do think we could have handled it better).

Iran and N Korea are not Bin Laden, but one point of the quote is: how dangerous was Hussein. My opinion rests with where I think the rest of the world was at the time. Sure Hussein was not a nice guy, but he posed little danger to the world. IMO Iran and N Korea, on the other hand, are the most dangerous regimes on the planet. They have the greatest capabilities of causing regional or world crisis of any nation on the planet.

Are they suicidal like Bin Laden? No, I don’t think so. But today’s news of Iran terminating the UN’s inspections sends a chill down my spine. On one hand I think that Iran is doing what any nation secretly wants. They want control over their own fate. They want nuclear weapons so they can’t be pushed around. But on the other hand they think the Holocaust did not happen, and they would love to see Israel destroyed.

What was Bush thinking when he invaded Iraq? They weren’t the ones to be worried about.

Here’s the news I’ve seen:

MS-NBC

Al Jazeera