Fou:a Resolve
David Frum recounts the process through which Bush's speech was written, highlighting the thinking that went into his adoption of the phrase "axis of hatred" and Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson's, substitution of "evil" for "hatred:' See The Right Man, 231-39.
My theorization here is informed by Slavoj Zizek's reading of Hegel. See, for example, Zizek, For They Know Not What They Do, 33-46, and Zizek, The Ticklish Subject, 88- 89.
Susan Friend Harding writes, "Fundamentalists, an" born-again Christians generally, do not simply believe, they know, that the Bible is true and is still corning true, that God speaks to them, and that Jesus dies so that they may live;' The Book of Jerry Falwell, 272. In using the terms believe and know, I am follow:. ing Zizek's account of Lacan's subject-supposed-to-know and subject-supposed-tobelieve. See Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies, 106-9.
I am not saying that those who heard Bush's speech necessarily agreed with him. That resolve championed by conservatives was heavily criticized by more moderate, less unilateral voices. Rather, my aim is to account for (provide the conditions of possibility for) the use of a specific phrase. I am attempting to make explicit or bring to the fore the difering and likely contradictory suppositiops that could underlie the sense ofWhite House speechwriters, administration oficials, and political pundits that such a phrase would . capture the mom�nt, accomplish their goals, or res�nate in powerful ways.
Perhaps a third possible explanation might be found in what Michael Ro"gin refers to as "political demonology" and the "countersubversive tradition" in American politics. He uses these terms to designate "the creation of monsters as a continuing feature of American politics by the i,n£l.ation, stigmatization, and dehumanization of political foes"; see Ronald Reagan, the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology, xi. While Bush's use of the term evil can be viewed in light of this feature of American politics, my concern is with the actual word evil rather than demonization more generally. For a critique of Rogin's reading of Reagan as a sign (and consequent failure to grapple with what is episternically significant about Reagan as a hyperreal object), see Rubenstein; This Js Nqt a President, chapter 2.
See, for example, Nordlinger, '�hcroft with Horns:
For an account that emphasizes the loss of a sense and language of evil, see Delbanco, The Death of Satan.
See, for example, Kurtz, "Postmodernism Kills." Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford Universif:yj insists not only that "postmodernism can kill you" but also that postmodern professors believe "that America is an evil imperialist power which it would be immoral to aid in any way" (emphasis in original).
9 From the standpoint of the hawks in the Bush administration, the link between these regimes is dear: they are rogue regimes bent on developing weapons of mass destruction. These are the three regimes Condoleezza Rice identifies as rogues and threats to U.S. interests in "Promoting the National Interest:' There she urges the United States to mobilize whatever resources it can to remove Saddam Hussein. And she refers to North Korea as the "evil twin of a successful regime just across its border" ( 6o ). Analyzing the first Gulf War, Michael J. Shapiro points out the use of the term weapons of mass destruction as enabling "a geopolitical category that is aimed at saving our identity-afirming cartography:' See Violent Cartographies, 104. Clearly, WMD s function in Rice's essay as the content enabling the category "rogue regime" and securing as well the imaginary moral geography of the "axis of evil:'
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NOTES T O C HAPTER FOUR
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