20 years ago, the US coined the phrase ‘axis of evil’. Guess who’s been the most evil since?
Judging by the way past US leaders have described their rivals, you’d think Washington has been fighting against the likes of Darth Vader. On March 8, 1983, then-President Ronald Reagan branded the Soviet Union, America’s Cold War adversary, as an “evil empire” that was the “focus of evil in the modern world.” Fast forward nearly two decades later to January 29, 2002 and George W. Bush echoed Reagan’s fiery sermon in his State of the Union message when he described North Korea, Iran, and Iraq as rogue states belonging to an “axis of evil.” These were no accidental slips of the tongue.
The use of the good-bad dichotomy by Reagan and Bush worked as a simple yet highly effective propaganda tool since nobody wants to be seen defending ‘evil’, a word with strong biblical connotations practically synonymous with the devil himself. Thus, Republicans and Democrats were unanimous in their belief that these ‘evil regimes’ were worthy of annihilation, and who better to wage such a battle than the ‘exceptional’ nation? (Incidentally, just four months before Bush mentioned the ‘axis of evil’, the self-proclaimed ‘war president’ spoke about a “crusade on terrorism.” Predictably, that poor choice of words set off alarm bells across Europe, which is no stranger to wars of religion).
But was the Bush administration merely projecting its own ‘evilness’ onto other governments? Just days before Bush delivered his infamous ‘axis of evil’ speech, the US opened the doors to hell on earth known as Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp (Gitmo), or, as Amnesty International dubbed it, “the Gulag of our time.” Built on the southernmost tip of Cuba at the US Guantanamo Naval Base, a slither of land the US gained following the Spanish-America War (1898), Gitmo has become synonymous with brutality, torture, and the perversion of justice. In a word, ‘evil’.
Former Gitmo detainees in Bush’s ‘war on terror’ – many of whom were denied a trial or even legal counsel – have described horrific scenes of inhumane treatment, including sexual degradation, forced drugging, and religious persecution.
Moazzam Begg, a prisoner-turned-activist who spent three years at Gitmo, described the scenes of horror he witnessed. “I saw two people beaten to death,” Begg revealed to RT. “I saw one prisoner with his hands tied above his head to the top of the cage being repeatedly punched and kicked until he was killed. The Americans have accepted that this was a homicide.”