Remember the “Axis of Evil?” That was the label President Bush bestowed upon three countries – Iraq, Iran and North Korea –in his 2002 State of the Union Address. His rhetoric was condemned by the usual suspects, furious that he would employ such “divisive bluster,” in the words of New York Observer columnist Joe Conason. Rather than being too bold, however, it appears Bush did not go far enough.
Last month, Israel bombed a series of structures in Syria along the Euphrates River, which, at least according to satellite imagery and the testimony of relevant experts, was a nuclear site in the making.
“I’m pretty convinced that Syria was trying to build a nuclear reactor,” David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security told the Washington Post. Not only was Syria in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory, but it has also been alleged that Damascus received help in the construction of this site from North Korea.
The Syrian government, embarrassed by its total emasculation at the hands of the evil Zionist occupiers, has kept largely silent since theraid, except for the blunt and revealing utterance of a diplomat at the United Nations, who inadvertently admitted that his government was indeed developing a nuclear capacity.
Earlier this month, the Syrian representative to the U.N.’s Disarmament Committee indignantly condemned Israel for taking “action against nuclear facilities, including the 6 July attack in Syria” (the attack occurred on September, not July, 6).
The hapless Syrians blamed the United Nations for a mistranslation, and they will probably cut off their diplomat’s tongue.
Weighing in, of course, was Mohammed ElBaredi of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who not only condemned Israel for bombing the site but also for its 1981 destruction of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak.
“When the Israelis destroyed Saddam Hussein’s research nuclear reactor in 1981, the consequence was that Saddam Hussein pursued his program secretly. He began to establish a huge military nuclear program underground,” he said. “The use of force can set things back, but it does not deal with the roots of the problem.”
Silly me; I was under the impression that Sadddam didn’t have a “military nuclear program” and that such claims were foisted upon the American people by the lying neocons.
ElBaredi is right about another thing, too, which is that the Israeli attack on Osirak only set Saddam’s nuclear ambitions behind temporarily and did “not deal with the roots of the problem.”
The “root of the problem” was Saddam Hussein himself and the United States eliminated the dangerous possibility of a nuclear-armed, rogue Iraqi state once and for all when it toppled Hussein four years ago.
Five months after the “Axis of Evil” speech, then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton delivered an address entitled “Beyond the Axis of Evil,” which named Syria as one of three other “state sponsors of terrorism that are pursuing or who have the potential to pursue weapons of mass destruction.”
The events of last month not only confirm Bolton’s characterization of the Syrian regime, but also demonstrate that Syria has cooperated on illegal nuclear technology with North Korea, a member-in-good-standing of the original Axis of Evil. Now that Iraq no longer represents a threat to American security, perhaps it’s time to replace it with Syria.
The Democrats can wish these sorts of realities away. The debate within the party right now is not what to do about these rogue, terrorist regimes that oppress their own people and threaten American security interests, but about whether or not it’s prudent to “call them names,” as Bill Richardson (the Bluto Blutarsky of the 2008 presidential race) characterized the Kyl-Lieberman amendment. God forbid we call terrorists “names.” What will they think of us if we freeze their bank accounts?
Examiner Columnist James Kirchick is on the editorial staff of The New Republic and can be reached at [email protected].
