The New York Times editorial staff sure likes to bring out some interesting attempts to take head shots at Bush and Co, don’t they? So much going on in the world, and virtually every editorial takes these shots, sometimes seemingly for the hell of it. Mo "woo woo woo woo woo woo" Dowd leads the way, with several others a close second.
I was torn between two idiot’s editorials, so why not comment on both? Let’s start with Nicholas D (gotta have the middle initial) Kristof’s:
Here’s a foreign affairs quiz:
(1) How many nuclear weapons did North Korea produce in Bill Clinton’s eight years of office?
(2) How many nuclear weapons has it produced so far in President Bush’s four years in office?
The answer to the first question, by all accounts, is zero. The answer to the second is fuzzier, but about six.
Gee, and you know this how? Because the North Koreans said so? How do we know that they didn’t get the material prior to 2001? Or started building them? Just because the reactors were supposedly shut down doesn’t provide proof that the murky number of nuclear weapons was initiated prior to 2001, bub.
The single greatest failure of the Bush administration’s foreign policy concerns North Korea. Mr. Bush’s policies toward North Korea have backfired and led the North to churn out nuclear weapons, and they have also antagonized our allies and diminished America’s stature in Asia.
The upshot is that there’s a significantly greater risk of another Korean War, a greater likelihood that other Asian countries, like Japan, will eventually go nuclear as well, and a greater risk that terrorists will acquire plutonium or uranium.
Uh huh. None of the other nations involved in the Six Party talks bear no responsibility, eh?
In fairness, all this is more Kim Jong Il’s fault than Mr. Bush’s. Right now some administration officials are glaring at this page and muttering expletives about smarty-pants journalists who don’t appreciate how wretched all the options are.
Oh, so it isn’t all President Bush’s fault. And right now they are probably reading Kristof’s left wing crap and asking if he has any better ideas. No? None? How about that?
Instead, Mr. Bush refused to negotiate bilaterally, so now we have the worst of both worlds: that uranium program is still in place, and the plutonium program is churning out weapons material as well.
So now it is OK for going it alone, eh? You cannot win with the Left. We go into discussions with North Korea with several other countries, including China, a "coalition," if you will, and that is not good for the Left. Yet, with 40 some-odd countries involved initially in Iraq, we were "going it alone." Furthermore
But Mr. Bush seems frozen in the headlights, unable to take any action at all toward North Korea. American policy now is to hope that Mr. Kim has a heart attack.
And what action would that be, Kristof? Sanctions do not work. The Six Party talks haven’t worked. The other option is military, which is the worst option, unless you would enjoy watching Seoul, a city of 5 million people, be destroyed immediately. Pray tell, what do we do, Nick? In case you haven’t figured it out, North Korea is playing games. Do you honestly think that N Korea will change their tune in a heartbeat if we agree to bilateral talks? Or, will they stall, bluster, and refuse to shut their weapons program down, which is the most likely outcome. Then you will deride the Bush admin for "going it alone."
And, seriously, do you expect to give a rouge nation whatever it wants? You yourself wrote:
North Korea is the most odious country in the world today. It has been caught counterfeiting U.S. dollars and smuggling drugs, and prisoners have been led along with wire threaded through their collarbones so they can’t run away. While some two million North Koreans were starving to death in the late 1990’s, Mr. Kim spent $2.6 million on Swiss watches. He’s the kind of man who, when he didn’t like a haircut once, executed the barber.
Are we supposed to treat them like we would the Vatican? Or like the nasty pieces of crap they (meaning the leadership) is?
I’ll put up Part 2 a bit later.
