Axis of Evil: the new domino effect

A short piece posted on the Critical Geography email dicussion list, February 11, 2003 It has become de rigueur amongst European pacifists to mock US President George W. Bush's revelation that Iraq, Iran and North Korea are the Axis of Evil. These commentators, most of whom have not themselves lived under Mussolini's fascist regime, seek to outdo each other in their vitriolic anti-Americanism.

That they are ungrateful for the decades of prosperity and protection that the American nuclear shield has brought them does not even need mentioning.

However, the threat to freedom posed by the Axis of Evil should not be misunderestimated. The facts speak for themselves. North Korea is not free; no country can be a democracy where people with similar names to their fathers succeed them as president. Saddam is prepared to use his armed forces to exert influence over countries that have rich oil deposits. And the Iranian leaders so pepper their speeches with reference to God, even writing it on their bank-notes, that they are clearly fundamentalists.

The extent to which this Axis of Evil threatens the free world is demonstrated by a secret map that shows their geopolitical strategy, which cannot be revealed for security reasons. A sudden and simultaneous strike by North Korea across Siberia, Iraq up through the Balkans via Turkey (the 'soft underbelly' of Europe), and Iran across the Caucasus would trap the Russian city of Omsk in a three-pronged pincer movement. Russia, weakened by 70 years of Communism, could not withstand these new Mongol Hordes.

Once this vital heartland, with its vast mineral reserves, capitulates to the Axis of Evil, it would inevitably be only be a matter of time before the sphere of marginality and then the free world itself fell like dominoes.

Our intelligence reports suggest that, if the Axis of Evil were to be given all the necessary materials, skills, and production facilities, they could produce weapons of mass destruction at some point in the future. Our sources, which we cannot disclose as they may contain secret coded messages to terrorists, indicate that some new terrorist outrage may be imminent. Everyone knows that Saddam, Khatami and Kim Jong Il are bad men who have done bad things in the past, and so will certainly try and do them in the future.

Such men will stop at nothing, they are the new Hitlers. To appease them would be to betray those brave boys who fell at Gettysburg and Wounded Knee. Not to take pre-emptive action against them and their terrorist allies now would be to miss the last chance for peace. Future generations will judge us harshly if we fail.

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Nick Megoran