Another Axis
Rogue war.

By NR Editors
From the February 25, 2002, issue of National Review

ush's address was a fine speech, and as Daniel Henninger remarked in the Wall Street Journal, it is impossible to imagine any top Democrat giving it. Indeed, in the days after the speech, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright was on the airwaves saying it was a "big mistake" for Bush to call Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an "axis of evil." It was a mistake, apparently, because it gave the Europeans heartburn — or at least gave the previous administration's foreign-policy team heartburn. Albright, let's not forget, was the official who decided to replace the phrase "rogue states" with the more anodyne "states of concern" — as though North Korea were some misunderstood teenager. Albright's other notable contribution to the foreign-policy debate since September 11 has been to criticize the first Bush administration for not toppling Saddam Hussein. Never mind that she opposed the Gulf War at the time, served in an administration that left every aspect of U.S. policy toward Iraq weaker than it had found it, and — she has recently informed us — opposes toppling Saddam now. Albright and her colleagues have earned their place in the axis of incompetence.