Links for 15 Oct 07
* North Korea is building or repairing the fences around its nuclear test site in the northeast. What reports like these don’t mention, however, is that directly to the northeast of that test site lies Camp 16, one of North Korea’s more horrendous concentration camps. And if the Daily NK’s December 2006 report of a mass escape is true, it might be that the North Koreans are actually repairing the camp’s fences, not the test sites. Hopefully, an intrepid and informed journalist who is reading this will find out which side of the test site is the focus of those upgrades.
* How North Korea Wins: South Korea sells out the United States (for the domestic political appeal of anti-American nationalism), the United States sells out Japan (for the domestic political appeal of diplomacy at any price), and now, Japan’s Foreign ministry says his country needs secret talks with North Korea, since no other nation is going to help Japan get its abducted citizens back. This is how allies are lost, and on North Korea, Japan had been our last true ally.
* John McCain delivers a superficial response when asked about North Korea on a Sunday talk show: let’s enlist China’s help. Yes, and maybe the Anti-Defamation League can enlist Mel Gibson’s help, too. McCain seems not to grasp that China’s interests lie far from ours. China wants U.S. power in Asia to be distracted by a psychotic runt with nukes, and it certainly does not want Korea unified, especially as a U.S.-friendly state. China is no more afraid of North Korea’s nukes than it is of Pakistan’s. So if the status quo is acceptable to China and unacceptable to the United States, why should we expect China to help relieve us of a problem it would prefer we continued to have? Bonus: can anyone tell me what the “Cato Agreement” is?
* A Southern North Korea: In Burma, where a New York Times reporter persuaded a few fearful acquaintances to risk it all to describe the ghastly, claustrophobic terror that chokes Rangoon’s atmosphere now. Amid this grim story, one light moment: “What fun is it to get drunk when you can’t talk?” The people of Burma do not lack courage, but they lack guns and ammunition. The Nobel Committee and the U.N. can’t free them. They can only do that themselves now, and they can’t do it nonviolently.
* For those who don’t care to read my comments on Iraq, you can quit here.
For the rest of you, here are some very optimistic reports from two unlikely sources: the AP, and the editorial page of the Washington Post, which said this:
A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that “civilian deaths have risen” during this year’s surge of American forces.
A month later, there isn’t much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 — down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004.
During the first 12 days of October the death rates of Iraqis and Americans fell still further. So far during the Muslim month of Ramadan, which began Sept. 13 and ends this weekend, 36 U.S. soldiers have been reported as killed in hostile actions. That is remarkable given that the surge has deployed more American troops in more dangerous places and that in the past al-Qaeda has staged major offensives during Ramadan. Last year, at least 97 American troops died in combat during Ramadan. Al-Qaeda tried to step up attacks this year, U.S. commanders say — so far, with stunningly little success.
The trend could change quickly and tragically, of course. Casualties have dropped in the past for a few weeks only to spike again…. U.S. military commanders have said that no reduction in violence will be sustainable unless Iraqis reach political solutions — and there has been little progress on that front. Nevertheless, it’s looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus’s credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq’s bloodshed were — to put it simply — wrong.
Let’s hope that trend continues. It’s true that past reductions in casualties haven’t been sustained, but here, the drop is very deep indeed — profound, really. Another optimistic take on the Shiite “awakening” comes from the Christian Science Monitor.