Obama Deconstructs the 'Axis of Evil'

Of all of the political buzz terms with unusually long half-lives, none has lingered quite so notoriously as President Bush’s “axis of evil,” a construction he used to describe Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as states that sponsor terrorism in his 2002 State of the Union address. It was noticed immediately for its bizarre hyperbole, and it will likely appear in books deconstructing political eras for decades to come.

But not without an epilogue to the phrase. Earlier this evening, President Obama sent a brief letter to Congress purporting that one member of the axis, North Korea, might well be delisted. According to the letter, a classified administration report that examined the “conduct of the People’s Republic of Korea [a.k.a. North Korea]” found that the rogue state “does not meet the statutory criteria to again be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.” Phew.

That still leaves a lot of open questions, like what the report actually says North Korea is doing, or what kind of future threat, if any, it may pose. Not to mention whether the axis has been completely dissolved, or if the term is still sitting in a drawer somewhere in the White House to be used in some future speech. What’s certain, though, is that demoting North Korea from the list of terrorist sponsor states has positive implications for U.S. and global security.

Still, one has to wonder if the Dear Leader, as a symbol of his defiance to President Bush and the U.S., actually kind of enjoyed his axis membership.