Let's take a trip on the Way Back Machine to January 2002.
Yes, I can see it now. I can see Regis Philbin demanding to know if that's our final answer.
Look! There's Raymond. Everybody sure does seem to love him.
Oh, and there's Jennifer Lopez with then-husband Cris Judd, back when her love didn't cost a thing. That's not what the prenup said, Jen!
Ooh, wait. Is that President Bush? I believe it is.
Shhh. Let's listen to what he's saying.
I think he's talking about North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Why in the heck would he lump those three countries together?
"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."
OK, I remember. The Axis of Evil. President Bush's attempt to convince the American people that three countries that had nothing to do with 9/11, and little to do with one another (Iran and Iraq were in fact bitter enemies), should be the focus of the United States' War on Terror™. Calling them an "axis" was an effort to evoke WWII. Germany, Japan and Italy were known as the Axis Powers.
So what ever happened to AOE?
Well, you kinda know what happened to Iraq. The United States invaded, and now the White House and Congress are arguing over how to admit the war has been lost.
But what happened with the other two?
Iran and North Korea both metaphorically peed their pants. They feared a U.S. invasion to topple their regimes.
But they also saw beyond President Bush's bluster to notice what few Americans at the time did — that President Bush was focusing the United States' attention on the weakest of the three Axis of Evil nations. The result: Both regimes did what was in their rational best interest; they accelerated their efforts to build weapons that might deter a U.S. invasion.
Kim Jong-Il and the gang went on the offensive. North Korea kicked out the international inspectors monitoring the country's nuclear facilities. They started testing long-range missiles over the Sea of Japan. They announced they had nuclear weapons, the result of cheating on nuclear agreements North Korea had made with the Clinton administration. In October 2006, North Korea tested a nuke, made from materials produced in nuclear plants restarted during the Bush administration.
The message to the United States was clear: You can invade. You may even topple our regime. But if you try to take us down, we will level South Korea, we will nuke Japan, and we may even be able to lob a few missiles at Seattle or some other city in the western United States.
Sometime in 2005, it became clear to the administration that it wasn't going to bully North Korea into doing anything — at which point it began to negotiate. Peace and economic aid, in exchange for North Korea shutting down its nuclear program. It's the same deal North Korea wanted in 2002, only we let them build about 10 nuclear weapons before we gave it to them.
Iran was in a weaker position than North Korea at the time of the Axis of Evil speech. Remember, despite being enemies, Iran cooperated with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. It wasn't just fear, though. Iran hated the Taliban, too.
Iran had a nuclear program, but was years away from being able to build its own nuke. Iran accelerated its nuclear program, but also sent out messages to the United States indicating it wanted peace.
In 2003, just after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and at the height of the United States' power and influence in the Middle East, Iran sent a message to the United States asking for a grand bargain. Everything was on the table. In exchange for normal relations, Iran said it would curb its support of militant groups and give up its nuclear program.
The United States refused to sit down and talk.
Since then, the U.S. position in the Middle East has deteriorated rapidly. Though capable of bombing Iran, the Bush administration is no longer in a position to consider invading Iran. U.N. sanctions are squeezing Iran's economy, but a peace agreement with Iran is nowhere in sight.
This article appears in Jul 18-24, 2007.