Rogue Nation
10/16/06 12:10
I’ve been
pondering North Korea’s claimed nuclear test and my
thoughts seem to keep coming back to dubya’s State of
the Union speech in January 2002. That’s when he
declared Iraq, Iran and North Korea to be an axis of
evil.
In the four months between 9/11 and this speech, we had invaded and conquered Afghanistan, broken up and dispersed the Taliban and generally wreaked havoc on al Qaida. We were kicking ass in the war on terror. But with this speech, dubya unveiled his War on Terra. He moved the goal posts. We went from pursuing known enemies to perceived enemies and it’s been all downhill since.
Looked at in the light of this speech, how can the US be surprised that North Korea is hell-bent on obtaining nukes? The leader of the only remaining superpower declared three other nations to be enemies of the world and subsequently invaded and occupied one of those nations. What the fuck other reaction could we expect from the remaining two? Is dubya stupid enough to think they were going to just sit quietly and wait for their turn to be invaded? Never mind, I know the answer to that one.
In the eyes of smaller countries, the only deterrent to our policy of regime change is to make it too costly to carry out. It worked for Pakistan, right?
In the four months between 9/11 and this speech, we had invaded and conquered Afghanistan, broken up and dispersed the Taliban and generally wreaked havoc on al Qaida. We were kicking ass in the war on terror. But with this speech, dubya unveiled his War on Terra. He moved the goal posts. We went from pursuing known enemies to perceived enemies and it’s been all downhill since.
Looked at in the light of this speech, how can the US be surprised that North Korea is hell-bent on obtaining nukes? The leader of the only remaining superpower declared three other nations to be enemies of the world and subsequently invaded and occupied one of those nations. What the fuck other reaction could we expect from the remaining two? Is dubya stupid enough to think they were going to just sit quietly and wait for their turn to be invaded? Never mind, I know the answer to that one.
In the eyes of smaller countries, the only deterrent to our policy of regime change is to make it too costly to carry out. It worked for Pakistan, right?
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