Anju Links for 3/20

*   Renaissance man Kevin Kim, a/k/a The Big Hominid, has launched his new book, “Water from a Skull.”

*    Missed the train, but  not the train wreck.  “Notice me!,” cries Ban Ki Moon, just as the February 13th deal starts to strike immovable objects, one  of which has  an atomic  mass of 238.

*   I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  the Japanese are an odd people.

*   Don’t Forget to Ask for Receipts:   “South Korea will spend about $250,000 to foot the bill for the training of North Korea’s visiting under-17 football squad, the Unification Ministry said Tuesday.”  [Yonhap]

*   Abandonment Issues:   One thing about the  February 13th agreement I’ve been enjoying is how its vagueness has created a new sense of insecurity among  many  South Koreans (see, e.g.).  For years, the only Korean voices we heard were downplaying the proliferation threat to the United States  or even  legitimizing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.  Now,  we hear  South Koreans worry  that the United States is plotting to  leave North Korea in possession of nukes  and focus exclusively on the prevention of proliferation:

The U.S., he said, “may have changed its goal to preventing the North from transferring nuclear materials abroad,” rather than making an issue of nuclear weapons North Korea already has. “This is what Pyongyang wants, but it’s unacceptable to Seoul,” Kang added. A fellow with a state-run think tank predicted that North Korea will pursue a “Pakistan model,” whereby it can have nuclear weapons while normalizing relations with the U.S. at the same time.  [Chosun Ilbo]

When people turn to suspicions of plots and betrayal this quickly, my first non-expert diagnosis is “projection.”  There’s nothing  nefarious about a country worrying about its own security interests first.  It’s the expectation that other countries will give those concerns the same superceding priority that’s the real oddity.  Belatedly,  Korea realizes that  its  government has forfeited the  advocacy of  its real security interests at the six-party talks.  Instead, it invested its energies in  throttling the Americans, appeasing the North, and  cozying up to China,  all while it  seemingly expected the United States to  sacrifice its own security  for South  Korea’s.

*   But We Mustn’t Call Them “Terrorists:”   

Insurgents in  Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday.  [….]

“Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back,” Barbero said.  [Agence France-Presse]

I am  the father of two children, and although there aren’t many people in this world I could personally  dismember with a pair of needle-nosed pliers,  I’d gladly do so to  the baby-killing, Satan-worshipping, cowardly  terrorist  bags of excrement  who did this to two kids and three bystanders. 

As with most “insurgent” attacks in Iraq, the prime suspect here  is al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda  is a foreign-led force that deliberately slaughters hordes of civilians, meaning that these are not “insurgents;” they are “terrorists” who sometimes also  kill the police and soldiers who are protecting Iraq’s elected government.  These people started the war with us, not the other way around.  Keep this in mind if you think we’re dealing with people who can be deterred, appeased, or contained.  They won’t quit when they’ve destroyed Iraq, so you can’t run from them.  Take out nuclear weapons and wood chippers and you’re pretty much down to shooting them or putting them in cages.