Phoney War (I)

It is a natural tendency of people to accomodate themselves emotionally to conditions they cannot change. At its most extreme, accomodation can explain an abused child’s seeming acceptance of an abuser’s predations. At its most benign, it can be a mostly beneficial tendency to compromise with opposing views. But there is a difference between being open-minded and fooling one’s self.

I’m still leaning against belief that a Democratic Congress with a narrow margin is going into an election year with the intention (or the ability) to make dramatic changes to our international policies. For that matter, some of those policies haven’t changed all that much in the last eight years. In the case of our Korea policy, not nearly enough has changed. But I do believe that as rudderless as the Bush policy toward Korea has been, Clinton’s pointed the ship full-throttle toward the whirlpool. Thus I am compelled, Max Von Sydow-like, to write this … because all of Clinton’s old talent has been wandering out of the crypt in one big throng of false machismo. Almost all of this is seepage, and it falls to me to point to the colostomy bag from whence it oozes.

Exhibit A: William Perry, implying that George W. Bush is a wee plaid-skirted pansy for not bombing North Korea, for the second time in less than year (this is much funnier when spoken in a thick Scottish accent). Readers will of course recall that Perry was in the aluminum siding industry while North Korea acquired its nuclear capability.

Exhibit B: Bill Richardson, Kim Jong Il’s favorite American governor, who announced that he will set up an exploratory commitee to run for Secretary of State President.

Exhibit C: Wendy Sherman does Yonhap. More to follow, but I’d like to pause here to notice, as you might have, that Ms. Sherman certainly radiates a unique aura with the assistance of this special nose-magnification lens. I don’t quite know whether to call this disturbing elfish eroticism or luminescent stupidity. I know only that my soul is haunted in some irrecoverable way. One hopes for the sake of our national honor that she did not make those milfy “come-hither-yon-pool-boy” eyes at Cho Myong Rok, but we have borne even greater humiliations than this.

I’ve said it before: this site deals in some disturbing subject matter.

The Democrats are smart enough to realize that defeat and appeasement make for, um, flaccid standards to bear into a presidential election. In that context, we’ve been hearing a lot from the old Clinton talent about North Korea. Now, being limited to the Bush policy and the Clinton Policy is like having a TV that only gets public access and the W.B. I’ve said plenty about both administrations’ misplaced faith in pointless negotiations and their refusal to see the root of the problem. I expect and excuse partisan sharp-shooting from both sides, but I don’t know when I’ve seen a more disingenuous misrepresentation than the one Wendy Sherman gave to Yonhap here:

“So if the Clinton Administration had not put the Agreed Framework in place in 1994, North Korea would have been able to produce enough plutonium during the time of the Clinton Administration for 50 to 100 bombs,” she said. “So I would say ‘the Clinton Administration, zero new plutonium,’ ‘the Bush Administration, at least fourfold and many more.'”

Sherman also blasted the Bush Administration for failing to set any “red lines” North Korea should not cross in the nuclear confrontation, thus allowing it to launch missiles and test a nuclear device.

So, Wendy, would you have bombed them like Perry would have, had he not been putting up aluminum siding?

She said, however, that diplomacy should still be given more time to resolve the problem.

Ah. I see.

“(The Bush Administration) has allowed North Korea to continue to build its nuclear weapons program without any serious consequences,” she said. “I don’t think that any president should ever take military action off the table, but I think that this moment in time, diplomacy is the right approach.”

Damn that George W. Bush for signing out that permission slip. Chimpy probably thought it said “avuncular pest.”

Sherman also warned North Korea not to waste time, misbelieving that a democrat-controlled U.S. Congress or a democratic U.S. president will be more tolerant of its regime.

Yeah. Don’t leave us with this one. We obviously have no clue what to do with the psychotic little runt, either.

“One thing North Korea should understand is that whether it’s democratic Congress or a democratic president, democrats will be very tough negotiators, because North Korea has tested missiles and has tested a nuclear weapon,” she said.

That may be true of some Democrats, and I really hope it is, but coming from Wendy Sherman, it’s colostomy bag seepage. Readers of this site will remember that Wendy Sherman has spoken of the importance of “its right to govern in its own way.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present North Korea governing in its own way. How long can that last? How long should it?

But consider these words from Ms. Sherman, on the occasion of a visit from Cho Myong-Rok, a dessicated old killer whom Kim Jong Il sent to visit with Clinton and Sherman. Having President Clinton meet with one of his underlings was an inestimable propaganda coup for His Porcine Majesty among Asian audiences. This is one mistake Bush has not made. Another is to pretend that North Korea is in the bottle when it isn’t. Here’s Sherman on that occasion:

Q When you went out of your way to say at the end, if I heard you correctly, that the President mentioned that the Vice Marshal might also make a good politician, that suggests at least a degree of camaraderie in the meeting. Can you describe in any sort of way the atmospherics, how they talked and dealt with one another. And was there sort of any warmth or — just give us an atmospheric reading, if you could.

AMBASSADOR SHERMAN: Sure. I think that the beginning of the meeting started off with everyone with the talking points that they had brought with them, as most meetings like this do, I think rather quickly began an exchange of views and a true discussion back and forth between the President and the Vice Marshal. The Vice Marshal spoke on his own in response, without prompting or the need for talking points. He clearly had come with a very strong message from Chairman Kim Chong-il. They had met just before he left for the United States. He knew his brief exceedingly well, and made a very forceful and very strong statement of the set of ideas that he was bringing with him.

The President, as you know, the President is a very engaged leader, and he was in this instance as well. There was some humor in the meeting. There was some back and forth, and I think both came away with a sense of wanting to work harder, even harder to work to improve the relationship.

That was in the year 2000, when Clinton himself was discussing a visit to Pyongyang and the full normalization of relations, and one year after the North Korea Advisory Group’s final report said this:

North Korea’s WMD programs pose a major threat to the United States and its allies. This threat has advanced considerably over the past five years, particularly with the enhancement of North Korea’s missile capabilities. There is significant evidence that undeclared nuclear weapons development activity continues, including efforts to acquire uranium enrichment technologies and recent nuclear-related high explosive tests. This means that the United States cannot discount the possibility that North Korea could produce additional nuclear weapons outside of the constraints imposed by the 1994 Agreed Framework.

In the last five years, North Korea’s missile capabilities have improved dramatically. North Korea has produced, deployed and exported missiles to Iran and Pakistan, launched a three-stage missile (Taepo Dong 1), and continues to develop a larger and more powerful missile (Taepo Dong 2). Unlike five years ago, North Korea can now strike the United States with a missile that could deliver high explosive, chemical, biological, or possibly nuclear weapons. The United States currently is unable to defend against this threat.

The progress that North Korea has made over the past five years in improving its missile capabilities, its record as a major proliferator of ballistic missiles and missile technology, combined with its development activities on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, ranks North Korea with Russia and China as one of the greatest missile proliferation threats in the world.

….

While North Korea’s nuclear program at its Yongbyon and Taechon facilities appears to be frozen under the 1994 Agreed Framework, there is significant evidence that other nuclear weapons development activity is continuing.

We speak, of course, of the five-year period following the Agreed Framework, which didn’t make the world safer, but did help Kim Jong Il’s cash flow situation (meaning, the opposite). Sherman, however, insists on defending it as a diplomatic masterstroke to this very day. Some gratuitious advice for the Dems would be to put Wendy back in the box with the other Christmas decorations and let Tom Lantos, Richard Holbrooke, or someone else who played absolutely no role in Clinton’s Korea policy say this. That way, it’s credible.