This weekend the Axis of Evil scored another point as North Korea appears to have successfully conducted its first nuclear bomb test. While this is bad news for the Bush administration, it is worse news for all us here regular folk. One of the "freezing" factors of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union was the fact that neither the US nor the Soviet Union really wanted to destroy the other one. We were locked into a stalemate that neither country had any real reason to break through the delivery of a nuclear weapon to the other one. It was far better to use the perceived threat of an enemy to maintain local power than it was to actually get involved in a nuclear show-down that would result in the total annihilation of both parties (resulting in no power).
This is the same kind of stalemate we see currently with Pakistan and India. Neither country trusts the other one to have the technology they don't have. But since both countries have the same technology, the countries' needs for self-preservation will prevent either one from using the technology on each other.
North Korea, though, is a different animal all together. This backward country has little use of logic. Kim Jong Il, like most egotistical, maniacal dictators, fancies himself as indestructible. He cares not about protecting his people and his adolescent view of his own immortality (i.e., "I can do whatever I want and not get hurt) has short-circuited the self-preservation, internal governor that prevents most leaders with nuclear weapons from using them. In other words, we are talking about a crazy dude who doesn't care that if he uses a nuclear weapon that he will be retaliated against with like force.
Of course, maybe he is far smarter than I am giving him credit for and he understands that he could indeed use a nuclear weapon with impunity knowing that if the US did retaliate with "like force," we would be painted as the bad guy in the world community. After all, under the new rules of 21st century warfare, the killing of innocents (especially women and children) by the US is completely verboten. In other words, if even one child would be accidently harmed in a military maneuver, then we must be forbidden from using that tactic. By holding ourselves to this exceptionally high standard of preventing all civilian casualties, we would be unable to use our own nuclear weapons against North Korea even if she uses them against us first. Obviously, that is a foolish position, but it is the realistic one.
We already know that North Korea has tried to get a long-range cruise missile to Hawaii and failed. If they do happen to succeed, we now know they can attach a nuclear warhead to that missile. Instead of the WTC attacks of 9/11 being our Pearl Harbor, we could actually see another Pearl Harbor.
The pundits are out in full force today talking "shoulda, woulda, coulda." However, an intelligent overview shows that we have only wasted our time and money in the past "bribing" North Korea not to build a weapon, only to have them defy their part of the agreement and continue working unabated on the product. The only thing we could have done that would have truly prevented this moment would have been to pre-emptively removed Kim Jong Il from power or to have used force to destroy his laboratories...neither of which we had the internal fortitude to do, especially after our "problems" in Iraq.
Which brings me to my title, the score. In his January 2002 State of the Union Address when President Bush named Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the Axis of Evil, America applauded. We were willing to deal boldly and decisively with these countries in the aftermath of a humilitating attack on our own lands against our own civilians. Bush was able to use the legal authority of the UN resolutions from Desert Storm to invade Iraq and remove it from Axis of Evil and America scored the first point. Sure you can debate the finer points of the war such as did weapons of mass destruction exist or was faulty intelligence used. I've discussed it before and have seen no evidence to change my mind that indeed the best intelligence from the best sources was accurate. We have found weapons of mass destruction (just not nuclear...but those bio-weapons are still WoMD and just not "stockpiles"...whatever that word means...I guess being able to only kill 20,000 people instead of 200,000 people means its not a stockpile).
Now, Iran scored the first point for the Axis of Evil by using her influence to fight us in Iraq instead of in Iran. That is something most people do not understand. Our current "quagmire" in Iraq is more influenced by Iran than any other source. Iran wants us to cut and run so that they can move into Iraq and re-establish a Persian empire financed by the oil-fields of Iraq. Iran used Hezbollah to attack Israel and they are using Iraq to attack us.
Meanwhile, Iran has scored their second point by blantantly continuing its own research toward the development of a nuclear device. By using our own media and "world opinion" against us, Iran has effectively distracted us from acting against them. Basically because Iran is using their influence to produced a mess in Iraq they can boldly move forward acquiring the technology necessary to keep us from doing to Iran what we have done in Iraq.
Finally, North Korea scores a point for the Axis of Evil by acquiring nuclear weapons. What a miserable state of affairs for this great nation.
This puts us in a precarious situation. Because we care more about image than security, we have failed to take the hardline stances necessary to prevent this mess. Because we appease the appeasers we appease our enemies allowing them to grow stronger. Because we dare not polarize our already divided nation, we have now paralyzed ourselves from being able to deal with these situations.
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