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Axis of Evil

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World map indicating the countries of Bush's "axis of evil".
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World map indicating the countries of Bush's "axis of evil".

  • "Axis of Evil" as described by George Bush:
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The term “axis of evil” was used by United States President George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002 to describe regimes that sponsor terror. Bush named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea in his speech.

Contents

The phrase

The phrase is derived from that of the rogue state, but the term itself is reminiscent of the Axis Powers of World War II and of President Ronald Reagan's evil empire designation for the Soviet Union.

Bush's exact statement was as follows:

In 1994, the United States and North Korea had entered into the "Agreed Framework" to defuse the issue of the North Korean nuclear program. Neither party held to this agreement during the Clinton Administration, and most experts believe North Korea had acquired one or two nuclear weapons before Bush took office. The year after Bush's speech, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Later in 2003, several right-wing political strategists (the neoconservatives, led by Richard Perle) favored by the Bush Administration called for military strikes in North Korea against its nuclear sites. [link]

Origins of the phrase

Shortly after its utterance, the phrase was attributed to former Bush speechwriter David Frum, originally as the "axis of hatred" and then "evil". Frum explained his rationale for creating the phrase "axis of evil" in his book The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush. Essentially, the story begins in late December 2001 when head speechwriter Mike Gerson gave Frum the assignment of articulating the case for dislodging the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in only a few sentences for the upcoming State of the Union address. Frum says he began by rereading President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "date that will live in infamy" speech given on December 8, 1941, after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. While Americans needed no convincing about going to war with Japan, Roosevelt saw the greater threat to the United States coming from Germany, and he had to make the case for fighting a two-ocean war.

Frum points to a now often-overlooked sentence in Roosevelt's speech which reads in part, "...we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again." Frum interprets Roosevelt's oratory like this: "For FDR, Pearl Harbor was not only an attack—it was a warning of future and worse attacks from another, even more dangerous enemy." Japan, a country with one-tenth of America's industrial capacity, a dependence on imports for all its food, and already engaged in a war with China, was extremely reckless to attack the United States, a recklessness "that made the Axis such a menace to world peace", Frum says. Saddam Hussein's two wars, against Iran and Kuwait, were just as reckless, Frum believed, and therefore presented the same threat to world peace.

The more he compared the Axis powers of World War II to modern "terror states", the more similarities he saw. "The Axis powers disliked and distrusted one another", Frum writes. "Had the Axis somehow won the war, its members would quickly have turned on one another." Iran, Iraq, al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah, despite quarrelling among themselves however, "all resented power of the West, and they all despised the humane values of democracy." There, Frum saw the connection: "Together, the terror states and the terror organizations formed an axis of hatred against the United States."

Frum sent off a memo with the above arguments and also cited some of the atrocities perpetrated by the Iraqi government. He expected his words to be chopped apart and altered beyond recognition, as is the fate of much presidential speechwriting, but his words were ultimately read by Bush nearly verbatim. His term "axis of hatred" had been changed to "axis of evil" to match the theological language used by Bush since the September 11, 2001 attacks. North Korea was added to the list, he says, because it was attempting to develop nuclear weapons, had a history of reckless aggression, and "needed to feel a stronger hand."

A decade before the 2002 State of the Union address, in August 1992, the neoconservative pundit Yossef Bodansky wrote a paper entitled "Tehran, Baghdad & Damascus: The New Axis Pact" [link] while serving as a staffer for a conservative House caucus. Although he did not explicitly apply the epithet "evil" to his New Axis, Bodansky's axis was otherwise very reminiscent of Frum's axis. Bodansky felt that this new Axis was a very dangerous development. The gist of Bodansky's argument was that Iran, Iraq and Syria had formed a "tripartite alliance" in the wake of Gulf War I, and that this alliance posed an imminent threat which could only be dealt with by invading Iraq a second time and overthrowing Saddam Hussein. (This is exactly what the second President Bush did in 2003.) In a subsequent September 1992 paper, "Iran's European Springboard" [link], Bodansky argued that Iran and the other members of the New Axis were using the Muslim community in Bosnia and elsewhere in Yugoslavia "as a springboard for the launching of a jihad in Europe." (President Clinton did eventually intervene in the former Yugoslavia. However, Clinton intervened on the side of the Muslims, i.e., he did the exact opposite of what Bodansky advocated.)

\"Beyond the Axis of Evil\"

John R. Bolton
John R. Bolton

On May 6, 2002 United States Under Secretary of State John R. Bolton (now U.N. Ambassador) gave a speech entitled "Beyond the Axis of Evil." In it he added three more nations to be grouped with the already mentioned "rogue states": Libya, Syria, and Cuba. The criteria for membership in this group were: "state sponsors of terrorism that are pursuing or who have the potential to pursue weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or have the capability to do so in violation of their treaty obligations." The speech was widely reported as an expansion of the original Axis of Evil. The allegation of Cuban WMD capability was particularly strenuously denied by the Cuban government, and disputed by former President Jimmy Carter who visited the country a week later after being briefed by US officials.

In January 2005, at the beginning of Bush's second term as President, the incoming Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, made a speech regarding the newly termed "Outposts of tyranny," a list of six countries deemed most dangerous and anti-American. This included the two remaining "Axis" members, as well as Cuba, Belarus, Zimbabwe and Myanmar.

In April 2006, Israel's UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman cautioned of a new "axis of terror" — Iran, Syria and the Hamas-run Palestinian government.

Criticism of the term

One criticism is that unlike the Axis powers, the three nations mentioned in Bush's speech have not been coordinating public policy, and therefore the term axis is incorrect. Indeed, Iran and Iraq fought the long, bloody Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, under basically the same leadership as that which existed at the time of Bush's speech. Additionally, it is argued that each of the three have some special characteristics which are obscured by grouping them together. Anne Applebaum has written about the debate over North Korea's inclusion in the group.[link]

Other uses

The Economist, May 11, 2006
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The Economist, May 11, 2006

By analogy to "axis of evil", the term "axis of the willing" has occasionally been applied to the "coalition of the willing" (for countries that participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq).

The term has also lent itself to various parodies, including "axis of weasels" (mocking certain countries that did not support USA on Iraq issue), "Axis of Eve" (a political action group that opposes Bush), "axis of medieval" (mockingly criticizes the influence that Bush's personal Christian faith has on his political views), "asses of evil" (a mocking insult against Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld), "axles of evil" (denouncing sport utility vehicles for their poor fuel efficiency), and several other variations. Serj Tankian, lead singer for the group System of a Down and Tom Morello, guitarist and former guitarist for Audioslave and Rage Against the Machine (respectively) founded a political action group called the "Axis of Justice." Andrew Marlatt wrote an extensive parody [link] for SatireWire, with the rule: "An axis can't have more than three countries." The term is now becoming so popular that the term Axis of Evil is now considered three people or things that are a menace or a nuisance. The Economist ran a 2006 (May 13-19) cover headline titled "Axis of Feeble" about the end of the George Bush-Tony Blair partnership. [link]

Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela, has described "Washington and its allies" as an "axis of evil," in contrast to an "axis of good" comprising Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia (all three countries now governed by leftist leaders.) [link]

In Star Wars Labyrinth of Evil, in an aparent lampoon of the Bush administration, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine uses the term the "Triad of Evil"[link] when refering to the planets Felucia, Mygeeto, and Saleucami.

See also

External links

 

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