Nothing but the Truth

Nothing but the Truth
Bush lands a blow for freedom with three words.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Thursday, February 14, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST

After President Bush dared to describe Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil," there came a brief, stunned pause from a world still half-attuned to years of the Clinton foreign policy game of trivial pursuit. Now the world has begun to react to Mr. Bush.

If you go by the decibels, you might think a ferocious rebuttal is underway. But if you actually listen to what's getting said and who's saying it, what comes across is that Mr. Bush has done something brilliant. With those three plain words, he has redefined the parameters of modern world politics--on his terms. We may all be safer as a result.

Critiques of Mr. Bush's pronouncement fall basically into two parts--with the lesser quibbles focused on the word "axis," and the more interesting foment centered on the word "evil." And the critics fall basically into two categories. One group consists of assorted American and European intellectuals and politicians, plus former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Democratic Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle. The other group consists of the evil-doers themselves. What they all have in common is that they are racing around in circles, for the simple reason that Mr. Bush did something hard to dismiss. He spoke the truth.

Let's start with the lesser protest, which involves the wondrous spectacle of select, topologically inclined sticklers working themselves into a fizz over what the meaning of the word "axis" is. Early into the breach on this one was Ms. Albright, who rushed to point out that it was a "big mistake" to lump all three nations together, because--and here she brought to bear the full expertise of the former Clinton administration--"they are very different from each other."

This complaint has since been refined along the lines of reminders that while Iran and Iraq belong to the Islamic world, North Korea is run by a Stalinist from outer space. If you're in the mood, the distinctions can be further broken down: Iraq's regime falls into the Hitlerian mode, while Iran today is a terrorism-sponsoring tyranny of a more internally diverse and volatile kind. To all this is sometimes added the objection that the word "axis" evokes echoes of the Axis powers of World War II, and this new grouping is a different trio, all thuggish to their own people, trafficking in terrible weapons, and threatening to world peace--to be sure--but without an explicit alliance.

What the anti-axis crowd seems to be suggesting is basically that Mr. Bush should have had enough sensitivity to use a phrase more historically neutral and diversity-friendly. Maybe something like: a "polyhedron" of evil.

Yeah, well. Even apart from lacking rhetorical flourish, such concern with rectilinear correctness misses the main point. Which was that the organizing principle here--the axis--is not religion, or location, or the precise internal structure of repression. It is, quite simply, that all three regimes are evil and threatening to the free world. Mr. Bush warned that they are "seeking weapons of mass destruction," with which they could supply terrorists, or "attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States." In language that ought to be reassuring to anyone who thinks the free world deserves as much defending today as it did in the era of World War II, Mr. Bush added, "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

Apparently the axis nations see any such straightforward defense of the free world as a serious impediment to their plans--or so their objections imply. North Korea's leadership took time out from starving its own people and selling missiles to places such as Iran, Libya and Syria, in order to accuse the U.S. of "political immaturity and moral leprosy." Pyongyang also withdrew an invitation to four former U.S. diplomats to come visit--a heavy blow, perhaps, but one from which the world may yet recover.

Saddam Hussein accused Washington of being "power dizzy," and, with no apparent regard for those Westerners who have been protesting that there is no "axis," he also announced he was ready to cozy up to Iran, with which he fought a war from 1980-88 that killed more than a million people on both sides. This move has been underway in any case; it comes not as a result of Mr. Bush's words, but as a confirmation of them. In a sort of backhanded compliment, Saddam even stole Mr. Bush's phrase, offering the fascinating opinion that Mr. Bush was part of an axis of evil--a pronouncement that may be helpful in understanding Saddam's position on what constitutes "good."

Iran's regime turned out demonstrators numbering, by various estimates, in the hundreds of thousands, or maybe in the millions, to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of the Iranian revolution by chanting such evil-refuting slogans as the good old favorite of those oh-so-sensitive state-approved mobs: "Death to America." Iraq and North Korea sent congratulatory messages on the occasion, with Saddam wishing the Death mob "progress and prosperity" and the regime of North Korea's Great Leader Kim Jong Il praising them for "firmly defending the gains of the Islamic revolution."

With this crew at their backs, assorted European Union and U.S. officials in a classic show of modern political correctness and historically-neutral cowardice have rushed to criticize not the axis nations, but Mr. Bush. French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin accused Mr. Bush of being simplistic; European Foreign Relations Commissioner Chris Patten labeled Mr. Bush's phrase "deeply unhelpful." German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer suggested the way to approach the axis nations is to feel their pain--something we tried in the 1990s, thank you.

In the U.S., sundry deep thinkers worried that Mr. Bush's language was "incendiary" and "offensive." Mr. Daschle, asked Monday on national television about the axis of evil, fretted that "we've got to be very careful with that kind of rhetoric." Although, faced with the observation that he had earlier endorsed Mr. Bush's speech--which went down very well with the American public to whom it was also addressed--Mr. Daschle on Tuesday began to recant, according to the Washington Times.

So, Messrs. Jospin and Patten and Daschle, etc., all these objections may be interesting and fun to discuss. But observe: The wording that lingers, the phrase that now evokes the discussion and frames the debate, is none of the elaborate reaction cited above. It is Mr. Bush's "axis of evil." And with that, Mr. Bush has advanced us all some valuable distance toward a clearer set of rules about what will be tolerated in the New World Order, and what won't.

The bombast from the bad guys suggests they may be getting the message. That may well reduce the chances of their over-estimating what they can get away with, which in turn can actually reduce the chance of war. And all this fuss kicked up by Mr. Bush's words may help get the message to a lot of ordinary folks living under these evil regimes that we understand what many of them already know about their own governments, but are not allowed to say. That's how it worked in the Soviet Union, where President Reagan's talk of an "evil empire" left Western liberals reeling in horror, but was welcomed by Soviet dissidents as a friendly voice, telling them we understood their plight.

There may also be some value to the fact that in his State of the Union address, Mr. Bush left open the possibility of adding names to the axis. What he actually said, in listing the evil three, was that "States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil." That alone may serve as some deterrent to nastily inclined regimes, whose leaders have now been served notice that they could be placed on the list. One of my favorite footnotes, effective, perhaps, in its own small way, was summed up in a recent Dow Jones Newswires headline: "Bush Remarks Could Complicate Iran Eurobond Sale." I'd say Mr. Bush has sent even the markets a valuable warning about what they are really dealing with.

Even in diplomacy, there can be great virtue at times to telling the truth. Once it has been spoken, it becomes a lot harder to ignore. As long as Mr. Bush is willing to take an honest stand, that stance not only leaves room for his critics to indulge themselves in promoting peace in our time, it also raises the chance that we will actually get it.

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Thursdays on OpinionJournal.com and in The Wall Street Journal Europe as "Letter From America."