On January 29, 2002, in his first State of the Union address since the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush describes Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil” .
A little over a year after starting his presidency and several months after the start of what would eventually become the longest war in American history, Bush identified the three countries as the major nodes of a vast and a very dangerous network of terrorists and other bad actors threatening the United States. States. The speech described the logic of Bush’s “war on terror”, a series of military engagements that would define US foreign policy for the next two decades.
Bush speechwriter David Frum is credited with coining the term “axis of evil,” which was meant to refer to the Axis Powers that the United States and its allies fought against in World War II. The Bush administration wanted to underline the exceptional threat posed by these three “terrorist states”, arguing that each was building weapons of mass destruction and supporting terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda. Bush’s father, former President George HW Bush, invaded Iraq in 1990 after repelling the Iraqi invasion of neighboring Kuwait, but left Saddam Hussein in power.
After September 11, the administration of George W. Bush waited less than a month before invading Afghanistan and deposing the Taliban regime there. It wasn’t long before Bush turned to “regime change” in Iraq. Although there are no direct links between Iraq, Iran and North Korea – Iraq and Iran, in fact, were generally seen as geopolitical enemies – the concept of a “Axis of Evil” united in its desire to harm Americans has proven useful to those who case a second invasion of Iraq.
READ MORE: Timeline of the US-led War on Terror
