Let's take a moment to examine the froth which has been whipped up over what appears to be the three most dangerous words ever spoken: Axis of Evil.
In the entirety of the 3,800-or-so words in President Bush's State of the Union address only these three seem to have struck a nerve.
The members of this Axis are Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
They all qualify as evil. All three have governments which have said horrible things about America and/or done horrible things to their own people.
And they are, in fact, ON an axis. If you look at a world map they all fall between 32 degrees and 40 degrees north latitude. Latitude lines are the ones which go from east to west.
All right. We've got that part.
Return with me now to about 10 days ago when Washington was all agog about reports of a memo which leaked from the White House suggesting that Secretary of State Colin Powell wanted the detainees in Guantanamo Bay to be considered to be POWs.
The first thing which struck me was this: This White House doesn't leak. It leaks information about as much as the International Space Station leaks oxygen. Compared to the Bush White House, the Clinton Administration was the Mir.
How did this one memo happen to see the light of day? Or, more to the point, why?
Here's what I think.
By refusing to allow POW status to the detainees and by wagging his finger under the noses of the Evil Axis President Bush - and by extension Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - are the tough guys.
Secretary Powell, by comparison, is the Administration's diplomatic voice of reason.
George W. Bush - who was laughed at for his lack of sophistication in the foreign policy arena - has successfully set up a world-wide good cop (Secretary Powell) - bad cop (Secretary Rumsfeld) operation.
Like two investigators working on a suspect in a film noir murder mystery, Secretary Powell gets to chat with our allies while sadly shaking his head over his lack of control over Secretary Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld gets to glare at the Evil Axis - and THEIR allies - looking like he's never more than one stupid question from a reporter away from sending in the smart bombs.
Rumsfeld looks even more menacing - as in every good cop-bad cop set-up - because of the relative sympathy coming from Powell.
Meanwhile, the usual suspects - like former Secretary of State Madeline Albright - are busily wringing their hands over the injudicious language used by President Bush. Ms. Albright, we should remember, oversaw the US foreign policy which helped put the world into the condition in which we now find it.
So why go through all this? Because there appears to be evidence of a growing disconnect between the worst of the anti-American hordes at least in Iran and Iraq and a significant portion of their population - especially young people who watch television, surf the Internet, listen to the radio, and read the magazines about life outside their repressive regimes.
So by using the Axis of Evil line, the President might have been twin messages:
One, a positive message - overseen by Colin Powell - is a signal to potential anti-government activists that the US stands ready to help. The other, a warning - overseen by Donald Rumsfeld - that US is watching them very closely.
Good cop. Bad cop.
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