After the World Trade Center attack, a political cartoon portrayed Superman with his head in his hands, while a young boy asks him, “Where were you?” I thought this was a rather poignant message at the time: faced with a disaster of comic book proportions, we didn’t have comic book heroes to protect us.

Our president apparently felt the same way, because he’s still using comic book metaphors. After his gaffe on September 11th, promising to find the “folks” that did the attack, we’ve been treated to a steady stream of black-and-white views: our enemies are evildoers, and the entire world falls into two categories, with us or against us.

I happen to agree that terrorists are evildoers, but President Bush’s definition has been much more fungible. First it was the terrorists; then it was Al-Qaeda (although we the people had to rely on Britain to provide us with proof); then it was the Taliban. Since the Taliban has been defeated, though, many ex-Talibs are now the allies of the new, US-supported government, and apparently these doers of evil have been completely rehabilitated so long as they weren’t mentioned on the front page of the New York Times.

Now that the country we were at war against has been vanquished, and the terrorist group has been decimated, one might think we could switch to a state somewhere north of vigilance and somewhere south of war. One who might think that hasn’t been paying attention to Bush’s popularity figures, which peaked at an all-time high around 93% and have been hovering in the 80s since.

If you were paying close attention to these numbers, you’d have noted that they started going up before Bush really did anything; it took a week before he reached his first widely hailed turning point, during a speech he gave at the National Cathedral, before which he set the Cheney standard for flying to undisclosed locations. A White House political aide can be excused for coming to the obvious conclusion: war, good; recession, bad. Look no further than the last Bush administration for proof of that.

Bush II is obviously going to avoid making the same mistakes his father made, and it appears he’s decided that daddy’s biggest mistake was letting the war end. So now we’re at war against a shadowy terrorist organization, replete with comic book monsters, which luckily for the administration has no clear finish line.

Destroyed the terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan? Not done yet, bin Laden is still out there.

bin Laden might be dead from kidney disease? Not done yet, he has many lieutenants.

Lieutenants are boxed up on the Pakistan border with no means of escape? Oh, keep worrying; Al-Qaeda has people everywhere.

But someone near the top is paying attention to public opinion, and realized that in order to have a war, you have to have clear enemies. Eventually, the fervor for war will lessen unless there’s a clear focus, and victories in the offing. Clearly, Al-Qaeda won’t fit the bill.

Ta da! For your wartime pleasure, we present: the newly unveiled Axis of Evil! (Somewhere, Lex Luthor must be kicking himself for being upstaged so badly in the criminal naming department.) Let’s look at its founding members:

1. Iraq. Ok, surely there’s some evil here. Biological and chemical weapons development, run by the star of the last War on Evil. Not evil enough to catch the attention of the president before September, but maybe he was just napping.
2. Iran. Hmm. A favorite evil star of the 1970s, but weren’t they one of the democratic up-and-comers of the 1990s? Sure, it’s hard to have a democracy when it’s coexisting with a theocratic state, but there was a brief period of time when the Iranians were looking like the good guys; notably, during our war against Axis of Evil Member #1.
3. North Korea. And from the history files of the 1950s returns that old evil from M*A*S*H 4077. A country devastated by hunger with a military budget that would barely cover Colin Powell’s annual brass polish supply. (We outspend them 55 to 1.) They’ve got a few missiles, though, which on a good day and with a strong tailwind can reach Japan. Perhaps they have to be part of the Axis of Evil in order to justify the Nonfunctional Missile Defense.

Let’s put it this way: South Korea is concerned that we’re being too belligerent towards the North Koreans.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the nations which aren’t even on the Meridian of Perfidy:

1. Saudi Arabia. Source of many of Al-Qaeda’s expatriate members and a vast chunk of their money (funneled out of US pockets thanks to our dependence on oil). Always willing to speak up to the rest of the Arab world about our “misguided” policies in the Middle East, and brilliantly effective distributor of anti-American propaganda whenever CNN isn’t looking.
2. China. North Korea is maybe trying to get nuclear weapons—which would be harder for them if we’d stop blocking international arms treaties. China’s got ’em, and they’ve got missiles that can reach the West Coast. Oh, and they’re still Communist. But they’re also a big market for corporations that give a lot of money to the Republican party, so China good… Cuba still bad.
3. Montana and Idaho. Okay, so they’re not countries. But let’s not forget that before September, the most successful terrorists in America were white guys named Ted and Timothy.

Now, you can’t very well declare war on Montana, it’s inconveniently part of the United States. War on Montana is silly. No, for the terrorists in Montana we need to use the FBI and law enforcement. Iran, though, Iran’s outside the United States.

I’d agree that war was the most efficient method of destroying 80% of Al-Qaeda, but now we’re up against the remainder — decentralized, at least still partially funded, located God knows where. Perhaps in friendly nations without the ability to root them out. War isn’t the way you pursue such an enemy, just as war isn’t the way you pursue the enemy in Montana. Inside the U.S., there’s the FBI. Outside the U.S., there’s the rest of the alphabet soup: CIA, NSA, and all of the other agencies whose budgets we don’t get to know about.

So you’re the Bush administration. You can:

1. ferret out enemies of the United States the way we’ve been doing it for 50 years, with the CIA and Interpol and friendly nations around the world; or you can
2. declare an ongoing state of war, with no clear end, against Axis of Evil countries (and whomever else comes to mind), during which time you may
   1. massively increase the defense budget and the bankrolls of those military-industrial companies who give you money;
   2. ram through right-wing policies which normally cause domestic resistance; and
   3. wrap yourself in a patriotic flag, call your domestic and foreign opponents anti-American, and keep up the military displays as long as they keep your approval rating inflated.

When do you suppose that war would end?