They do not accept the rhetoric of the "axis of evil," or the connection of such a strike to the fight against world terrorism.
President Roh's wavering stance toward America since the election is not giving them confidence, and President Bush's "axis of evil" rhetoric is aggravating the wound.
After seeing what has happened in Iraq, and listening to the "axis of evil" rhetoric, any patriotic Iranian military leader must be advising his government that only a bomb will deter the United States.
But the Republican base, which lapped up the administration's rhetoric about the axis of evil and the war on terror, remains infected by the fear the Bushies stirred up — perhaps because fear of terrorists maps so easily into the base's older fears, including fear of dark-skinned people in general.
And the Bush team are experienced enough to remember that Ronald Reagan rode out the recession of the early 1980s on a wave of rhetoric about "evil empire".
Some intellectuals, like the social theorist Ernest Gellner, thought that Havel's rhetoric of love triumphing over evil had been admirable, perhaps, but "absurd, indefensible" as an explanation for the fall of Communism; that softness, Gellner wrote, had allowed members of the old regime to escape unpunished and reap enormous profits in the new economy.
Our relatives have questioned our intentions, and our friends have assumed our antipathy towards Israel even as they've been willing to accept the theocratic and bellicose rhetoric of Benjamin Netanyahu as "necessary evils" to protect the Jewish State.
He escalated his rhetoric against Mr. Falwell and Mr. Robertson, calling them "forces of evil," and before long he had to apologize for it.
ASCK was first organized in 2002, the year George W. Bush delivered his toxic "Axis of Evil" speech, a conjuncture in which it appeared that violent rhetoric was leading up to war.
Moralistic rhetoric is used by the ruling elite itself on a daily basis: remember the "axis of evil" on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion?
