Americans declared three countries as Axis of Evil when Prez Bush announced Libya, Iran, and North Korea as the three “evils”. This was a statement pulled out of the archives of second world war rhetoric. Back then the three evils were Germany, Japan, and Italy.
While the evils of WWII were Industrial giants (little giant in case of Italy), their 21st century versions were in fact puny paper tigers, beggars of sorts who were utterly dependent on the industrial handouts of the West.
The West started out the same way against the old evils and new evils, namely by using the crippling sanctions. Before WWII Germany and Japan were both under sanctions. These sanctions were so bad that both the countries faced do or die situation. Germany and Japan both went for the “do” option and the result was a long protracted war that resulted in horrible deaths of 35 million soldiers and civilians.
At the end of that “do” option exercised by the evil empires Germany and Japan, both were turned into smoldering heaps of flesh and metal. Italians capitulated early so they were kind of spared from the punishment that Japan and Germany were given.
Americans learned an important lesson from this war. They found out that waiting until the other party fires the first shot is probably not a good idea. 400,000 Americans were killed in that bloody war, just because American leadership believed in dialogue instead of taking a preemptive strike.
Dialoguers like Chamberlain were made the escape goat. In reality every Allied leader was guilty of sleeping at the wheel.
Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Fauklands, Granada were the places where Americans and its allies took the war to the enemy. In some they lost and in others they won.
However Vietnam was unique, it gave excuse to the American Chamberlains to become powerful again while the hawks took the backseat. This was the case until Reagan took the charge straight into the heart of the evil of the day called Soviet Union.
There was no sense of waiting for another Pearl, and Reagan upped the anti. Soon after Reagan, Soviet Union was no more just like Axis of evil from WWII era.
As we all know that the death of bigger evils give rise to new aspirant evils. And in this case little tin pot dictators from Kim, to Saddam, to ayatullahs, to Qaddafi were ready to flex their muscle.
Too bad that the West was again being ruled by the Clintonisque Chamberlains. While slumber parties were going on in the Oval office, the new evils were plotting their attacks. Unfortunately another Pearl had to happen on 9/11 before the old Allies were able to put the new Axis of Evil in their cross-hair.
Less than a decade later, Libya was the first “evil” to fall. Now we hear that the second evil aka North Korea is ready to sign the letter of defeat. This has resulted in an enormous pressure on the last remaining “evil”. Let’s see how long will it take for the allies to take it down.
p.s. some readers may add a fourth evil aka Jiahdis. Jury is still out as to what will their fate.