Once upon a time the American president said there was an "Axis of Evil," consisting of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. In case the reader is confused by those who publicly denounced or ridiculed the president's language on that occasion: the countries in question were all governed by totalitarian politicians; that is, by violent criminals whose absolute power of life and death over the least internal opposition was undeniable. Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq exterminated twenty to thirty thousand Iraqi citizens per year. The North Korean dictator has starved over a million North Koreans to death. The Iranian mullahs hired assassins to dispatch any Iranian writer who mocked or questioned their authority. At the time of Bush's Axis of Evil speech, the rulers of Iraq, Iran and North Korea depicted the United States as if it were their very own mirror image. The warmongers in Pyongyang depicted Washington as constantly plotting war. Saddam Hussein's habit of invading his neighbors was transformed into a noble defense against American imperialism. The Iranian mullahs, who dream of blanketing Israel with nuclear bombs, say that America and Israel are "satanic." This tendency to see oneself in a distant foe belongs to the totalitarian mind. The demonizing of the United States would occur whether the Americans sent food and medicine or bombs and infantry. This would be the case even if Al Gore had been inaugurated in January 2001 instead of George W. Bush. Paranoid schizophrenia is a delusional system of thought, and the totalitarian mind cultivates paranoid delusions as a matter of convenience. Addicted to a devil theory, the totalitarian regime always demonizes and dehumanizes its intended victims (directly or subtly). Hitler did this to the Jews, blaming them for World War II. The communist bloc demonized American capitalism for wrecking and undermining the workers' paradise. The totalitarian regimes of the Muslim world, taking Hitler and the communist bloc as models to be emulated, currently blame both the Jews and American capitalism for their problems. Every totalitarian system justifies its crimes and denounces its victims according to a delusional system of thought. Every totalitarian regime is determined to spread its delusional system as if it were a contagious disease - easily caught and transmitted by the stupid, the ignorant and the thoughtless.
In the West, the party of appeasement doesn't like to admit that certain regimes are totalitarian. It refuses to see that totalitarian regimes constantly and subtly introduce poison into the political discourse of the free world. It is wiser, they believe, to partly ingest the poison (as an antidote to simple-mindedness). Therefore, the party of appeasement predictably denounced what they saw as President Bush's divisive, undiplomatic and unconstructive approach to foreign affairs. At the same time, the war party in the United States found itself confused and disoriented by the president's narrow focus on three of the weakest totalitarian regimes confronting the United States. Iraq, Iran and North Korea were small, poorly run, pariah states, entirely dependent on the "former" communist bloc. Iraq, Iran and North Korea do not pose a threat on their own, but only when armed and assisted by larger enemy states. But the West does not accept the idea that these larger states are enemies. Here we find a problem of intellectual digestion. Only small states with nuclear weapons pose a threat. Big states, like Russia or China, are always friendly. The West won't accept any other formula.
And so the United States invaded Iraq, as if the removal of a hapless surrogate would compel the other surrogates to play nice. The United States seeks to build a friendly democracy in the Arab world. When Libya publicly and loudly surrendered its WMDs the invasion of Iraq looked like a successful push. But now, when North Korea launches missiles to frighten the Japanese, when the Iranians provoke Israel and stir up civil war in Iraq, the situation has taken a nasty turn. But none of this should worry the American side, because the main enemy of the United States isn't headquartered in Tehran or Pyongyang.
It is a soothing mythology to imagine that one's enemies are small and stupid. The lunatic dictator is close cousin to the clown. His performance may be likened to a circus act. With exaggerated egoism, chest pounding and obnoxious rant, the petty dictator cannot achieve victory in time of war. He cannot achieve prosperity in time of peace. If he dared set off a WMD in London or New York, his fate would mimic that of the Nazi leaders at Nuremberg or Saddam Hussein or Manuel Noriega of Panama. As a puny pretender to regional importance the rogue-state dictator earns his keep by diverting attention from the machinations of his great power sponsors. The pawn is always a pawn in the great game, and nothing more. As such, it may be pushed forward as part of a gambit. And this is exactly what we've seen since 9/11/01. That is exactly why the lunatic states dare the odds, taunting Bush with so many pinprick provocations. And then, during a full course of rogue state antics, we find President Bush praising Russia and China as "strategic partners" in restraining Pyongyang and opposing Islamic terror. In taking this line the American president is either parading his stupidity or attempting to buy time through sheer pretense. If he is guilty of the first offense, his entire administration may be put down as a self-negating proposition. If he is guilty of the second offense, then he is playing a game he cannot win. The Russians and Chinese do not care what the American president thinks. They only care about his public words, and the power of his warheads, missiles, ships, aircraft, etc.
With America's troops mired in Iraq, with its intelligence services in disarray, with the political opposition gaining strength, President Bush's war policy seems to have run its course. America's fumbling weakness is now apparent. It will soon be child's play to thwart America's policy in the Middle East, to exploit America's irresponsible financial policies and habits at home. The truth be told, the United States has become a hollowed-out, ill-disciplined country headed for financial, diplomatic and military ruination.
Two months ago, in President Vladimir Putin's state-of-the-nation address, the Russian president defiantly announced that Russia would build up its military potential. "We are aware what is going on in the world," he declared. "Comrade wolf knows whom to eat, it eats without listening and it's clearly not going to listen to anyone." These are not the words of America's ally in the War on Terror. These are the words of America's Cold War nemesis, falling from the lips of a KGB officer. Putin is telling his people what follows. He is telling them that diplomacy will soon give way to a wider war. The time has come to build up the Russian military for this occasion. The time has come to unite Russia's forces with those of China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Brazil, India, etc. By successfully depicting Bush as America's version of Hitler, the Russians and their surrogates in the Third World press have won a great string of propaganda victories. As for the American media, Russia has recruited many journalists. And so, the voice of the American media will not rally the nation to the national cause. Instead, there will be a sharp division between those who hate their own government and sympathize with the enemy and those who wish to support the president.
The United States has been undermined from within. Its educational system is anti-patriotic. Its media elite is oriented toward consumer products and entertainment. The Americans lack anything like a counterintelligence organization. Anyone opposed to foreign subversion is a racist, a paranoid or a xenophobe. To declaim against China is to arouse the ire of big business. To declaim against Russia is to beat one's head against an impregnable ignorance. There is no defense without knowledge, and no knowledge without discussion, and no discussion when entertainment is preferred on all sides. The true facts of the Russia-China case are utterly unknown to the general public. Why would the Russians and Chinese want to destroy America? Countries led by mass murders and KGB officers are proper, peace-loving formations. Right? Only a lunatic would take notes on their war preparations. And so, there is no use recounting Russia's multiple treaty violations, its hidden nuclear stockpiles, its massive underground cities, its support for America's enemies and its blatant authoritarian leadership. And there is nothing sinister in the fact that Moscow's upstanding totalitarian functionaries coordinate their national strategy with the Butchers of Tiananmen Square (those wonderful humanitarians, managers of the world's greatest brainwashing labor camp system - as described in the works of Chinese dissident Harry Wu). Together these comrades against American hegemony denounce George W. Bush's imperialism: the Chinese to the tortured cries of the Tibetans, the Russians to the screaming agony of the Chechens. Never mind the muzzled Russian press, the systematic elimination of dissent and the state-sponsored anti-Americanism on Russian television. The ideals of Ward Churchill are here manifest, in full flower. America's wickedness is found in the struggle to bring democracy, new schools, new power plants and new infrastructure to Iraq; on the other side, we find a boot stamping on a Chechen and Tibetan face forever. Those who denounce America find no occasion to denounce the murderers in Beijing and Moscow. No, the Russians have reason to fear America's "comrade wolf," says the befuddled Patrick Buchanan. Therefore the clueless American confuses wolf with lamb, herbivore and carnivore, and sets his own neck to be ripped out by the real wolves.
It is no use arguing with the fools who cannot see the game. Whatever the faults of the United States, the tragic decadence of American liberty is not to be compared with the genocidal machinery of the Eastern Bloc. Dip your sorry head, as you may, in the acid bath of anti-American half-truth and note (if you can) the sorry pips and squeaks of derangement that invariable bubble upward and outward. Major wars are between major powers. This preoccupation with the small, insignificant dictators, terrorists and mullahs will prove fatal.
