George H.W. Bush criticizes son's ‘axis of evil’ policy speech
Former US President George H.W. Bush has criticized his son, former President George W. Bush, for his notorious 2002 State of the Union speech in Congress, which named Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as part of the "axis of evil" that "pose a grave and growing danger."
"I do worry about some of the rhetoric that was out there — some of it his, maybe, and some of it the people around him," the elder Bush says in a forthcoming biography.
"Hot rhetoric is pretty easy to get headlines, but it doesn’t necessarily solve the diplomatic problem," Bush the senior said, according to a New York Times story on the biography, which is by Jon Meacham.
"You go back to the ‘axis of evil’ and these things and I think that might be historically proved to be not benefiting anything," he said.
Bush also criticizes some of his son's top administration officials, including former US Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for having “served the president badly.”
Bush had particularly harsh words for Cheney, who he says for the past 15 years has barely resembled the man who once served as the defense secretary during his presidency from 1989 to 1993.
Bush's remarks reflect a growing consensus among foreign policy experts that the axis of evil speech was a massive blunder, one that caused great harm for the United States and its interests.
The address was widely perceived to be "setting the stage for military actions against one or all of these nations” by Bush, Alex Wagner of the Arms Control Association wrote at the time.
The speech was indeed part of the Bush administration's political groundwork for launching war against Iraq.
White House speechwriter David Frum, who is credited with the "axis of evil" line, wrote in his memoir that the speech was designed to justify invading Iraq.
The administration asked for the speech months before the White House announced false intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
As several investigations of Bush administration decision-making have independently found, this suggests that Bush decided to invade Iraq regardless of any connections to weapons of mass destruction or the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
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