Three More Years

Some comments I’ve spotted at various blogs have hoped (against all odds) that the Constitutional Court will uphold Roh’s impeachment. Roh is incompetent and the impeachment is legal, ergo it’s a good idea.

That argument misses the point as surely as the impeachment itself did. Just look at where it got the GNP. Roh was riding at 30% in the polls before the GNP gave him that sympathy boost, no matter how illogical and divorced from the realities of Roh’s dismal performance.

The problem isn’t Roh, it’s a narrow selection of his ideas about his relations with the United States and North Korea. I couldn’t possibly care less if he socialized his entire economy, jacked unemployment up to 35%, drove out all of the foreign investment, or even outstole Chun Doo-Hwan. Those are strictly Korean issues. We can find other places to trade and invest; none of that directly affects our own security. North Korea and the treatment of our soldiers are different, because they do affect our security.

Given that there is a limitless supply of clones to replace Roh, isn’t it better to keep Roh instead, given that he has made such impressive progress toward demonstrating the bankruptcy of his ideas? Can anyone suppose that the next standard-bearer of those ideas could be much less effective? You can’t defeat an idea with parliamentary maneuvers. You must expose it as fraudulent. Appeasement must be left to play itself out in South Korea–even if it carries South Korea to shame and disaster–as America watches from the safest possible distance. If anything can defeat the idea appeasement in the shortest possible time, it’s three more years of Roh.

That leaves only one missing element–a credible South Korean who would lead his country toward unification and the North toward freedom. If only there was any hint of such a leader in the cinders of the GNP.