Anju Links for 17 June 2007

* Seven years after the last “breakthrough” with North Korea, here’s a complete list of what has been accomplished in reforming North Korea and reducing inter-Korean tensions: .

Even symbolic achievements are getting hard to find lately. South Korean politicians still can’t visit Pyongyang, if at all, without being snubbed and shoveled out of the spotlight. At times, I wonder why the North Koreans make much of a distinction between the two main South Korean political parties. Here’s the “conservative” opposition front-runner, Lee Myung Bak (sometimes spelled “Lee Myung Park”):

Former mayor of Seoul and Grand National Party candidate for the upcoming presidential election Lee Myung Park said on the 14th, “After the leadership is determined, the South-North summit talks will be pushed forward if necessary.

At a press conference, Lee mentioned, “Nonetheless, the Summit Talks will pursue peace policies or economic collaboration as the purpose is not political issues.

Regarding this he said, “Currently, North Korea disagrees with the change in South Korean government and will most probably have other expectations on the Grand National Party. What Mr. Lee means by North Korea’s expectations is anticipations of continuous aid towards the North without any breaks. [Daily NK]

Later, Lee proposes to raise the average national income of North Korea to $3,000, which has to presuppose some pretty wild class disparities. The best than can be said of this is that it isn’t much dumber than the idea of digging a canal all the way down a mountainous peninsula, the long way. Lee has also made some encouraging statements about North Korea policy, but this leaves me thinking the man just says whatever he thinks the audience wants to hear. I can’t say that I’m very surprised, in light of Lee’s history.

* The New, “Reformed” U.N. Human Rights Council is deciding whether to appoint a new Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in North Korea. The outgoing Vitit Muntarbhorn was as effective as could be expected, but the military coup in his native Thailand has probably undermined his chances for a new term. With the United States soft-pedalling the issue and North Korea raising strident objections, the Council will probably (a) drop the position, as it did in the cases of Cuba and Belarus, or (b) it will appoint a typical U.N. bureaucrat to do a typically awful job. I just can’t help thinking what a horrendous waste of money this experiment has become.

* Running Out the Clock: Two months after North Korea failed to meet even one of its AF 2.0 obligations, Christopher Hill is now saying that he’d be pleased if we hold the next session of six-party talks in early July, which probably translates to August or September in North Korean. Today, North Korea is saying that it will invite in U.N. inspectors, but only to one place — Yongbyon — and without saying when or under what circumstances. I’m still waiting to see what their next round of unilateral amendments to February 13th will be. They’ll probably make new demands. After all, they think they can get them. For that matter, so do I.

* North Korea has , which it had previously closed under alleged Chinese pressure.

* The Army has begun a very large offensive against al-Qaeda in Iraq, and one statistic I wanted to make sure no one missed is this one:

The officials I met in Baghdad said that 90% of suicide bombings in Iraq today are the work of non-Iraqi, al Qaeda terrorists. In fact, al Qaeda’s leaders have repeatedly said that Iraq is the central front of their global war against us. That is why it is nonsensical for anyone to claim that the war in Iraq can be separated from the war against al Qaeda–and why a U.S. pullout, under fire, would represent an epic victory for al Qaeda, as significant as their attacks on 9/11. [Sen. Joe Lieberman, Writing in the WSJ’s Opinion Journal.com]

If you believe that prayer influences events on earth, this would be a good time. Meanwhile, Harry Reid’s approval rating has fallen to 19%, half of Dick Cheney’s and tied with Scooter Libby’s, according to Rasmussen (ht: Gateway Pundit). Part of this has to be Reid’s awful presentation. I’ve met tax accountants with more charisma. But part of must be because of the dumb things Reid says. That’s pretty much what I had expected and hoped would come of last fall’s election. The voters hate war — don’t we all? — but they need to think about the other alternative, or the absence of one, to judge and compare it to the status quo. You can’t consider the option of a precipitous withdrawal without considering how it will only accelerate the war and bring it closer to us.

* We may soon have a much clearer vision of that alternative. Iraq after a sudden U.S. withdrawal might look a lot like what Gaza will look like six months from now. I guess I could never be so hard-hearted as to, you know, dance in the streets at the suffering of others, but I really can’t quite summon the will to care much, either. At what point do you have to just admit that some people can’t be saved from themselves? Has any people ever willfully done itself as much harm as the Palestinians have, or missed so many chances to join civilization? Imagine how many groups of people have been through far worse and done a far better job of improving their lot. The Kurds, the Armenians, and the South Koreans are examples that come to mind. In one way, I can see good coming of the Hamas takeover. Can anyone think of a better antidote to Hamas’s popularity than letting the people who voted it into office live under that kind of regime for a while? That’s just the dynamic that cost al-Qaeda its welcome in most of Iraq. After three or four years of life under Hamas, when Gaza has completed its transition to a fetid, stifled, oppressive heap of rubble, I can imagine that the Hamas honeymoon will be over. I’m tempted to say that the most ironic event here is Hamas looting Arafat’s office and stealing his Nobel Prize, but here’s an irony that exceeds even that: in six months, when the streets of Gaza are ruled by hooded thugs preying on citizens and dogs feeding on garbage and corpses, many of the same people who demand we leave Iraq immediately will call for us to join an international peacekeeping force in Gaza. I can see no circumstance under which I’d support that. When the Palestinians are ready to rejoin civililization, we should be ready to assist them with training and material support, but a choice between two competing brands of terrorists is not a very attractive investment for that now.

* Yesterday, one of the public libraries near where I live held a book sale, and we did well for ourselves. One of the bargains was a boxed set of all the Star Wars films that I actually care to watch again. We’re watching “The Empire Strikes Back” now, and it’s better than I remembered. I also picked up two Kafka novels, a Johnny Cash CD, and a copy of “1984” to replace the one I’ve destroyed from overuse. When I told my wife what I’d found, another customer, one of the near-bright, had to slash at the kind of wry sarcasm that really only works if you really are as smart and insightful as, say, Mencken: “He was only off by 20 years.” After a pause, I could only respond, “Yeah, if you say so.” I wonder if it ever occurred to him how dumb he must have sounded saying this as he picked his way through a used book sale at a taxpayer-funded library, wearing his double-X-fat Hawaiian shirt and dorky straw hat, wondering whether he should drive to the buffet or the mall next. Personally, I’d just passed over a copy of David Corn’s “The Lies of George Bush” because, you know, the FBI had probably put it there as bait and embedded it with a metallic homing chip … and then off to the camps in Utah with you. No doubt, this guy considers himself an intellectual. Idiots often do.