Axis of Evil is Busy

If you're a patriotic American who greatly values our freedom, security and safety, you really have to wonder if and when our government will get its act together and deal with some serious threats.

Remember seven years ago when President Bush spoke of the "Axis of Evil"? That axis included Iraq, North Korea, and Iran; later that year, Syria was added to the "axis of evil," a group of nations seeking weapons of mass destruction, or pursuing terrorism, or both.

Well, here we are seven years later...and we've only dealt with one of those four threats. We did well with the first phase of taking out Iraq as a threat, but became bogged down with mismanagement of internal security, and were undermined by liberal elements internationally and here at home.

Meanwhile, Iran, Syria and North Korea have been busy funding terrorism and working on weapons of mass destruction.

Last September, Israeli warplanes struck a mysterious facility in Syria. At the time, both Israel and Syria denied any action; several days later, Syria reluctantly admitted a strike against one of their facilities, but few details came out at the time.

Muted speculation followed that the facility might have been nuclear, and that some leaked intel indicated a ship from North Korea had docked in the Med and a shipment from that boat went directly to this facility.

Now it's come out that this was indeed a nuclear facility in Syria. Further, Koreans were observed in and around the facility, the facility which bears striking engineering similarities to the reactor being built in North Korea. Intelligence estimates believe the Syrians were weeks or months from completing a reactor able to produce enough material to build 1-2 nuclear weapons a year.

But Syria and North Korea aren't the only belligerent nations trying to obtain nuclear weapons. Iran is busy working on "the bomb," too.

Despite a fair amount of muddled grumbling on the part of the West (muddled grumbling is always pretty intimidating), Iran is defiantly pursuing nuclear capability. In fact, today the New York Times features several photographs released by Iran of their nuclear facility.

Even the Times admits:

By this analysis, the move trumpets Iran’s defiance of the West and the United Nations Security Council, which has imposed three rounds of sanctions on Tehran for its refusal to halt the uranium enrichment.

But the threat to the United States from Iran isn't only a "future" problem; it's a "now" issue.

Just a few months ago, we had threatening actions from Iranian boats against U.S. navy warships.

Further, Iran is waging war against the U.S. inside Iraq. From the Wall Street Journal last Friday:

The U.S. military says it has found caches of newly made Iranian weapons in Iraq, leading senior officials to conclude Tehran is continuing to funnel armaments into Iraq despite its pledges to the contrary.

Officials in Washington and Baghdad said the purported Iranian mortars, rockets and explosives had date stamps indicating they were manufactured in the past two months. The U.S. plans to publicize the weapons caches in coming days. A pair of senior commanders said a presentation was tentatively planned for Monday.

Iran is also providing other aid to terrorists in Iraq, and is behind a lot of the terrorism which is taking the lives of American soldiers in Iraq.

Such actions could be considered an act of war by a nation with greater moral fortitude. But after five years of being undermined by some of our "allies" internationally and some of our own Americans here at home, the odds are the United States won't do anything about these emerging and serious threats...and Iran is counting on that assumption.

The saying goes that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The world has ample and bloody illustrations from which to learn, yet we never seem to.

In the days and years leading up to World War II, as Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles and began arming Germany, the free world did nothing. As the Axis gobbled up Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, Norway and the Baltic States, the allies did little or nothing. Appeasement proved worthless, and still there was no action until the wolf was on the doorstep.

Is America prepared to allow the wolf onto our doorstep? This time, the wolf will come in civilian clothes, armed as a terrorist, striking on our home soil. This time the wolf may be armed with nuclear weapons, and possibly chemical and biological agents.

Will we learn from history, or are we doomed to repeat the catastrophic destruction of World War II?