North Korea: how it came to this

There are three standard complaints coming from Bush opponents regarding the Kim regime and its nukes. One is that Bush ought to have attacked North Korea instead of Iraq, because North Korea presented more of a threat. Another is that Bush should have tried more diplomacy. The third is that the regime of North Korea has a right to develop nuclear weapons in order to defend itself against its bellicose enemies (such as Bush.)

These assertions contradict each other. They can't all be true. But they can all be false.

Let's take the first one. When G.W. Bush took office, it was very nearly certain that North Korea already had nuclear weapons. They were very close to having them during the crisis of 1994. Bill Clinton, who was occupying the Oval Office at the time, decided to take his lead from Jimmy Carter, a former president whose whose foreign policy had been arguably treasonous. They came up with a negotiated settlement, which the Kim Jong Il government promptly violated with impunity. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming this mess on Clinton's foreign policy. Bill Clinton didn't *have* a foreign policy. I'm blaming it on his *lack* of foreign policy. He outsourced this crucial decision, to a man whom it would be charitable to call a fool.

By the time Bush came into office, attacking North Korea would, in all likelihood, have led directly to a regional nuclear war. Kim didn't yet have the missiles to reach the United States, but he had South Korea and perhaps Japan held hostage. We did not yet have a missile defense. We've just barely got the beginnings of one now, and no thanks to the Bush haters.

How about assassination? Well, that's supposedly illegal or something. I know Bill Clinton recently said on TV that he had tried to assassinate bin Laden. Oliver North (remember him?) got on Clinton's case for violating - or rather claiming to have violated - a bunch of executive orders against that sort of thing. Well, I'll have to take Clinton's side on that one. The executive orders make no sense to me. Does anyone know what the reason was for them in the first place?

(Not that I actually believe the wagging finger when he says he really, really tried to take the bastard out. But the point is, he's right when in implying that he ought to have done so.)

That said, it's not easy to "take out" people like Kim Jong Il. You see, you have to get to him first. And he owns half of an entire country, which he's turned into his own personal fortress. With nukes that work, and missiles that might or might not work.

Is there another option? Diplomacy? Diplomacy means nothing without the credible threat of force to back it up. Diplomacy without credibility is nothing but bluffing followed by capitulation. And the Clinton-Carter act had thrown away our credibility. Also, Clinton's "sunshine" policy, together with an epidemic of Stockholm syndrome, had weakened the resolve of our closest democratic ally in the region.

The only possible use for diplomacy would have been as a delaying tactic, while we worked on BMD and getting our troops safely away from the DMZ. Which is more or less what Dubya did. Meanwhile, Kim was working on his long range missiles, as he was going to do anyway. It was a classic arms race, weapons vs countermeasures. The race is in the final stretch now, with no clear winner.

All in all, this is the best that could have been hoped for from diplomacy post 1994. Diplomacy is not some magic pixie dust that makes all difficulties evaporate if you just sprinkle enough of it. It doesn't work that way. Never did.

Now, about the final complaint. North Korea needs to defend itself? To anyone who's ever actually heard of North Korea, this idea is absurd on its face. First off, what is the North Korea that needs to defend itself? A large piece of real estate in east Asia? How are we supposed to threaten a chunk of the earth's crust? Not even H-bombs will obliterate a geographical feature of that size. Well then, what? The people of North Korea? North Korea is not a democracy. The people living there do not have a stake in this, and it's not them we're concerned with. The population of North Korea are nothing but hostages and slaves for the Kim regime, eating grass to survive because their Great Leader won't let them have proper food. Anyone who tries to escape this socialist paradise, gets dragged home by a wire through her skin.

So just what is this North Korea that is defending itself? Nothing more than Kim Jong Il and his henchmen. A twisted little man with an Eraserhead hairdo and a penchant for mass murder, plus his homies.

Now that we've properly defined our terms, does this man whom we call North Korea have a right to defend himself and hold on to what is in his grasp? Well, in order to have the right to defend oneself and one's possessions, one must first have the right to exist and to possess these possessions. Morally speaking, does Kim Jong Il have these rights? I think not.

By the way, there's a phrase for the sort of thinking that would presume the Kim regime has as much or more right to exist than does a free country such as the United States, Japan or South Korea. It's called moral equivalence. And it's morally indefensible. Just to stress this point, let me give you an excerpt from the Times of London:

The soldiers, who later told family members of the incident, marched the woman, who was about 30, to the mid-point of the bridge. North Korean guards were waiting. They signed papers for receipt of the woman, who kept her dignity until that moment. Then, in front of the Chinese troops, one seized her and another speared her hand ' the soft part between thumb and forefinger ' with the point of a sharpened steel cable, which he twisted into a leash.

'She screamed just like a pig when we kill it at home in the village,' the soldier later told his relative. 'Then they dragged her away.'

Such stories are circulating widely among Chinese on the border, where wild rumours of an American attack on nuclear test sites have spread fears of a Chernobyl-type cloud of radiation and sparked indignation at the North Koreans. 'I've heard it a hundred times over that when we send back a group they stab each one with steel cable, loop it under the collarbone and out again, and yoke them together like animals,' said an army veteran with relatives in service.

I say:

This is the sort of thing the Left are defending. Never mind sleep deprivation at Gitmo. *This* is cruelty. The real thing.

Just how do the Left sleep at night?






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