[Vision2020] North Korea Policy Falls Miles Short (Molly Ivins)

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (June 30, 2006) Spokesman Review -

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N. Korea policy falls miles short 
Molly Ivins 
June 30, 2006

Y'all, this isn't gonna work. 

North Korea is threatening to launch a long-range missile against us, and
we're threatening to reply with an anti-missile missile. 

Sorry to remind you, but our "missile defense system" does not work. Good
old Star Wars flopped again when tested in 2004 - in fact, it failed to
launch. Since then, several tests have been delayed or canceled due to
technical problems. Just because we spend $130 billion on a bad idea doesn't
mean we can ever get it to work. The latest Bush budget has $10.7 billion
for Star Wars, almost twice as much as Homeland Security is spending on
customs and border patrol. 

The good news is that the North Korean rocket doesn't work, either. The last
time they fired a long-range missile, it went 1,300 kilometers (807 miles)
and could not put a payload into orbit. 

The Korean missile was supposedly tanked up and ready to go more than a week
ago, but, oops, experts now say if that were true it would have been fired
by now, since the fuel is highly unstable. 

If you think the "military standoff" with North Korea sounds silly, wait'll
you hear about the diplomatic maneuvering. As you may recall, the United
States refused to have bilateral talks with North Korea on the grounds that
A) Kim Jong-Il is a nutcase and B) we were already committed to multilateral
talks including South Korea and China. 

This kerfuffle went on for quite some time, but so did the six-party talks.
Last year, the North Koreans agreed to abandon their nuclear program in
return for a security guarantee and economic aid - but in the meantime, it
has come to doubt U.S. sincerity on these pledges. Hard to see how that
could happen with such delicate diplomatic players as Dick Cheney and John
Bolton at work. 

Whenever I need a good laugh, I just think of Bolton's current title:
"Ambassador John Bolton" - ha, ha, ha. Even better, "Ambassador to the
United Nations." While there, he has been making Dale Carnegie proud ("How
to Win Friends and Influence People"). Bolton's latest U.N. trick was to
pitch a wall-eyed fit over some mild (and justified) criticism by a Brit.
Good thing the Brits are our closest allies, at least for now. 

I don't mind leaving our relations with the Brits to "Ambassador John
Bolton," but do we think it's a good idea to have him in charge of our
relations with the nutcase who has a missile with unstable fuel? Then again,
we might as well leave it to Bolton, since William Perry, former secretary
of defense, a Democrat, thinks we should pre-emptively strike their nuke
while it's on the launch pad. Better than trying to hit it in midair, of
course. 

Republican Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, has called for direct talks with the North Koreans on the issue,
which sounds a lot more sane. 

As the American Progress Action Fund points out, the real problem is that
the Bush administration has no policy on North Korea: "For five years, the
Bush administration has been paralyzed over North Korea. Hardliners such as
Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and U.N. Ambassador
Bolton have rejected serious engagement in favor of a confrontational
approach that has backfired. Over time, North Korea has withdrawn from the
Non-Proliferation Treaty, reprocessed fissionable material, increased its
nuclear arsenal and is now on the verge of starting missile testing." 

Boy, that policy worked out well.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Uh, how about a 1-strike law. Death doesn't seem too extreme for a Level-3
sex offender."

- Dale "Comb-Over" Courtney (August 3, 2005)