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Jewish World Review Jan. 27, 2003 / 24 Shevat, 5763
Michael Ledeen
The Axis of Evil Redux: Same place, a year later
Most
commentators ridiculed the very idea of the Axis of Evil, just as they
laughed at Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire.
The deep thinkers laughed at Reagan, and then somberly warned that such
language was not only misguided, but provocative, as if the Kremlin would
be more aggressive as a result of the president's speech. In fact, Reagan's
words had the opposite effect. We subsequently learned that the Evil Empire
speech galvanized the internal opposition to Soviet Communism by giving
heart to the dissidents. The greatest of the Soviet freedom fighters,
from Bukovsky to Sharansky, have since written about the surge of hope
they felt when they saw that the American president understood why they
were fighting.
The same critique was leveled against President Bush when he spoke of
the Axis of Evil, and his attackers both ridicule him and say that the
world would be a safer place if only he would stop making outrageous statements.
Yet, if we prevail in the war against terrorism, we will eventually discover
that the president's words gave hope to those fighting against tyranny
from Baghdad to Pyongyang. The only legitimate criticism of the Axis of Evil speech is that it was
too limited, not that it was fanciful. There is indeed a working alliance
involving Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, and it embraces other countries
as well, including Syria, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. It is a political and
strategic alliance that unites this generation's tyrants in common cause
against the democratic West whose very existence threatens their grip
on power by inspiring their peoples to fight for freedom. The Axis countries
share military technology and help one another to develop the most lethal
weapons available to them. North Korea promised to stop testing missiles,
so, for several years, Iran has done it for them. Once proven, the technology
moves from Pyongyang to the other terror sponsors, including Saudi Arabia.
Iranian ships transport weapons to Palestinian terrorists, as in the celebrated
case of the Karine A last winter, and in the more recent Italian
seizure of an Iranian ship loaded with chemical precursors headed for
Libya. Hardly a week goes by without another story documenting the flow
of chemicals and finished weapons between Iraq, Iran and Syria, often
ending in the murderous hands of the terror network, from al Qaeda and
the Islamic Jihad to Hezbollah and Hamas. Like the countries that compose
the Axis, the terror groups are now working intimately with one another,
to the point where it hardly makes sense to separate them, either in our
analysis of the threat they pose, or in our strategic planning. As he was right to call the world's attention to the true nature of the
terror threat, so President Bush was right to insist that we are not engaged
in a war with Islam as such. To be sure, even such secular socialists
as Saddam Hussein and the Assad family in Syria are now quoting Mohammed
to justify their murderous activities, but their words are the ones the
critics should be ridiculing. If anyone insists on believing that all
of Islam is mobilized against us, they should read the recent articles
in The Economist and the New York Times that detailed the
increasingly open revolt of Iran's ayatollahs in the holy city of Qom
against the fusion of mosque and state in the Islamic Republic. They know
that President Bush is right, and that the best hope for Islam lies in
the defeat of the jihadists and a return of religion to a separate domain. The Evil Empire was just that, and President Reagan's insistence that
it be so recognized was crucial to our ability to vanquish it. President
Bush should insist on the truth of his own words. The Axis of Evil is
not a rhetorical device. It is in fact the enemy we face, and must defeat,
if we are to avoid attacks far more deadly than those we endured on September
11.
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01/27/03: The Return of the Ayatollah: Washington could afford a little more attention on Iran
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