“States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil…” – George W. Bush, January 29, 2002

A couple of interesting links to help provide context for tonight’s State of the Union Address by President Obama:

Peter Baker of the New York Times has a brief and excellent piece today that provides a historical background and overview of the State of the Union Address.

The Daily Beast features the misleadingly titled “Six Notorious State of the Union Moments”,  which includes video of memorable SOTU moments since President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 address.  Two of the six clips, President Reagan opening with a self-depricating joke about his advanced age in 1982 and President Clinton issuing a conciliatory call for bipartisanship in 1995, actually reflect very positively on those men.

The Daily Beast somehow failed to include the most important quote from a State of the Union Address in recent–and perhaps all of–American history, George W. Bush’s 2002 assertion:

North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.

Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom.

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.

These words, more than any others, framed the foreign policy of President George W. Bush’s administration.  With potency derived from the combination of the historically profound term “axis” with the morally powerful term “evil”, they paved the way to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and a war that still persists almost seven years after it began.

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