Evil or not? That's the question.
US President George W. Bush has taken much criticism for using the phrase "axis of evil" in his state-of-the-union speech last month to refer to North Korea, Iran, and Iraq.
The European press and diplomatic world have denounced the phrase as intemperate.
All right, then: Let's hear something more than indignant bluster from North Korea, Iran, and Iraq.
Here's their chance. On Feb. 21, video-taped confirmation came that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl had been murdered by Pakistanis who took him captive Jan. 23.
Pearl was doing his job. He expected to interview the leader of a Pakistani nationalist group. Instead he was taken prisoner and killed.
This is an evil act.
Legitimate governments everywhere should say so. The governments of North Korea, Iraq, and Iran should say so.
But they won't.
They leverage their oppressive authority against hatred of America.
And in the cases of Iraq and Iran, the countries important to the oil and gas business, the hatred extends to Israel.
To denounce the murder of Daniel Pearl - a noncombatant, a professional doing his job, and by all accounts a supremely decent person - would reflect sympathy for America and Israel that the power regimes of Baghdad and Tehran never would let themselves show.
Pearl was Jewish. That this was a factor in his abduction and murder is evident in statements attributed to his captors. And Pearl's having been Jewish makes it all the less likely that Baghdad and Tehran will call his fate what it is.
This extra dimension of hatred compounds the evil of it all. Governments unwilling to condemn terrorist murder are complicit in the nastiness.
Where else will Pearl's murder be met with silence? Where else do rulers extort authority from tribal antagonism and twist it into justification for genocide?
The only thing wrong with Bush's "axis of evil" comment is that he applied the brand to only three regimes.
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