Hitchens on the Axis of Evil

["Ken Hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From the Mirror (UK)


WHERE IS THIS EVIL AXIS BUSH SPEAKS OF? CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS On the peril of
America's muddled, ignorant hawks




TWO four-letter words - "axis" and "evil" - have rightly become the symbolic
phrase for everything that has become risky and dubious and opportunistic
about the new Bush foreign policy.

They represent an attempt to capitalise on the honest and necessary
indignation aroused by the atrocity and aggression of September 11. They
fail, both as terms and as descriptions, to live up to the high moral tone
that was properly set by those events.

Why not start by considering the word "evil"?

Obviously, the use of civilian airliners as fuel bombs, in order to inflict
civilian casualties, meets any definition of depraved. So does the announced
objective of the murderers, which is to establish a totalitarian system
based on the use of a holy book as a penal code.

The wickedness of the means is a glaring revelation of the wickedness of the
ends.

But long before September 11 this President had announced his belief in a
"faith-based" system of government, derived from certain religious
simplicities, and he should have had the sense to avoid a word that reminded
everybody of this.

His other rhetorical flourishes - "either with us or against us" and "dead
or alive" - display the same one-dimensional righteousness. In a long
cultural war with fundamentalism, we shall require more subtlety than that.

Then there is "axis". By any definition, this means a line that connects
certain fixed points. By any common usage, it denotes an alliance.

The relationship between Iran, Iraq and North Korea meets neither
qualification.

North Korea is so remote and isolated that it is practically insular. The
political systems of the trio are enormously different, ranging from one
fanatical 1984-type system to one quasi-democracy.

Their alliance or "axis" is virtually non-existent.

Iran and Iraq are populated by different tendencies of Islam, and have
fought their most bitter wars with each other. Neither spends much time
worrying about friendship with the demented and bankrupt government in North
Korea.

Most important of all, neither of the three has any notable connection to
the al-Qaeda crime family - which is the ostensible excuse for this whole
new initiative.

AS IT happens, I have reported from North Korea and from Iraq, and from the
Iran-Iraq border in Kurdistan.

And I also know David Frum, the bright young man who contributed the phrase
to the President's State of the Union speech.

Before he was hired onto the speech-writing staff, he was a distinguished
writer for the neo-conservative Weekly Standard which takes the view that
Israel has nothing to apologise for in its treatment of the Palestinians,
and that the Soviet empire collapsed as a result of some trenchant speeches
by Ronald Reagan. (I exaggerate only slightly.)

So at first, I thought that the adoption of his phrase by Bush was a
symbolic victory for the hawkish faction in the Pentagon, made up of men
like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, who wanted to invade Iraq last
September, who blamed Saddam Hussein for the anthrax outbreak in America,
and who think that General Sharon should be given the tools to finish the
job.

However, I was premature in thinking this. Almost at once came the sound of
collapsing scenery.

Iran - which is poised on a knife-edge between its discredited mullahs and
an increasingly restive and democratic population - did not take kindly to
being yah-booed as "evil".

Never happy with moral lectures from the former fans of the Shah the mullahs
seized the chance to deck themselves in nationalist colours and enjoy a
whiff of the good old days. If the Bush speech was intended to hearten the
secular democratic opposition it backfired.

Meanwhile, the North Koreans cancelled an impending visit from the past five
American ambassadors to South Korea - a group of men which included some
very prominent conservatives - and in other ways retreated back into the
hysterical sulk from which they had very slowly been emerging.

So that makes two regrettable consequences. Meanwhile, the vile regime of
Saddam Hussein has been officially called "Hitler-like" by Washington for a
dozen years now, so an axis either way makes no difference to the
fluctuating currency of insult.

But was it wise for Washington to put Baghdad on such generous notice of an
imminent invasion? Perhaps about as wise as the extraordinary announcement
last week that, from now on, it will be the Pentagon's job to plant false
news in the world's media. Difficult to think of anything more
credibility-enhancing than that...

And one wonders why Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were left off the "axis" list
as well. After all, they armed, financed and encouraged the Taliban and
al-Qaeda, and have helped so many of the wanted members of both outfits
escape justice.

But the Bush administration, for diplomatic reasons, doesn't want to offend
either nation. Such obviously cynical realpolitik should make the President
much more modest about talking in moral absolutes, and on suggesting that
those who harbour doubts are soft on crime.

I have sat on an unexploded Iraqi chemical bomb in the Kurdish town of
Halabja, which was ethnically cleansed by fire and poison, and hope more
than most that Hussein doesn't die in his bed.

I have also recently had dinner with Dr Khidir Hamza, who defected from
Iraq's nuclear programme, and I don't disbelieve him when he says that
Saddam is only a year or so away from acquiring the real thing.

But almost all the Iraqi dissidents have become very wary of American
policy, which is forever promising action and forever failing to deliver on
it.

Are we to be asked to support a direct invasion of Iraq? Or a revolution led
by the internal opposition? Or a military coup instigated by the CIA? Can
any of this be done while simultaneously alienating neighbouring Iran? Given
the choose-your-side-and-don't -be-wet attitude of Washington, one is at
least entitled to ask. And the "axis of evil" babble has made the dilemma no
clearer.

I have also sat in a terrifying stadium in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang
and watched a "mass games" ceremony culminating in a simulated launch of a
missile.

But all around me were signs that the Kim Jong Il regime is on the verge of
imploding from its own sheer incompetence. On his visit to Korea last week,
President Bush assured everyone that the United States has no plan for a war
with the North. His spokesmen agree that North Korea has given up on
exporting terrorism, and is abiding by the test-ban treaties that it has
signed.

In other words, the recent speech-making added precisely nothing to, and may
have subtracted something from, the careful attempt to provide a transition
from Stalinism. And the grandstanding looks frivolous when set against the
real and complex dangers.

Meanwhile China, a favoured friend of the Bush administration and a major
trading partner, openly does on a massive scale what North Korea is accused
of doing - selling missile technology to Iran and Pakistan.

Beijing still uses force to threaten Taiwan and Vietnam but is too large and
rich to fit on any known axis.

Only two years ago, Washington prevented Iran from invading Afghanistan
after the murder of several of its diplomatic envoys and the disgusting
persecution and slaughter of its Shi'a Muslim co-religionists, the Hazara.

At that time, the Taliban was a client of a United States' client in
Islamabad, and hardly counted as "evil" at all. Neither Iran nor Iraq was
among the handful of countries (led by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) which gave
diplomatic recognition to the Taliban.

North Korea was so far out of this circuit as to be invisible. One makes
these observations not merely to score points but to remind people that the
present policy has been hastily improvised by highly fallible politicians at
that.

The selective and arbitrary definition of the "axis" serve to obscure urgent
US responsibilities.

The situation in Israel and Palestine is crumbling into unstoppable mayhem.

HERE is a case, unlike North Korea or Iran, where Washington possesses the
means of leverage. It is the chief supplier of military and economic aid. It
has also appointed itself the mediator.

Yet it seems that General Sharon has been told that he may consider the
whole business as an "internal affair", and treat it as a law and order
problem. This is a fantastic abdication of responsibility, and a betrayal of
promises made to Israeli doves as well as to the Palestinians.

If America wants to claim the right to make and unmake governments in Iraq,
it can scarcely hope to do so while acting as the patron of Israel's
collective punishment of an Arab people.

Yet recent statements by Vice President Dick Cheney, attempting to justify
the "axis" list, did no more than cite Arab and Muslim outside support for
Palestinian extremists.

Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad are ugly enough but they are not in
the same class as al-Qaeda and they do spring from a bitter, unresolved
clash of nationalisms.

Meanwhile, Sharon has invited into his cabinet the leaders of a party which
openly calls for the mass expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank;
a racist demand which if implemented would lead to a thousand-year war in
the region.

The Bush administration has never expressed any opinion on this disgraceful
concession.

The world, they keep telling us, is a dangerous place. Well, so it is.
Indeed, I almost feel that I knew this before Bush told me. But not every
conclusion to be drawn from the obvious is necessarily true.

On the home front, I am told by Ari Fleischer, the semi-articulate White
House spokesman, to "watch what you say" when criticising, for example, the
Attorney General's inroads into habeas corpus.

On the overseas front, I am asked to endorse in advance any move that might
be made by an overconfident superpower whose leaders appear to be making up
foreign policy as they go along.

For some reason, this doesn't make me feel any safer.

-Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair