Even the North Koreans think Jimmy Carter is a tool.
I seldom find myself agreeing with the North Koreans on much, but it gives me strange comfort to find that they share my contempt for America’s worst ex-president:
In a memoir about her months as a prisoner in North Korea, Ling records that North Korean officials were infuriated by her suggestion that Carter be enlisted as the high-profile American to come retrieve her. They viewed Carter as washed-up and out of office for too long — a retread unfit to grace a photo-op dignifying Kim Jong Il. “Carter, Carter, Carter!” one official told her. “You have upset many people by asking for Carter. They held out instead for the bigger prize of a visit by Bill Clinton. [Claudia Rosett]
Kum-ba-ya!
I suppose I can’t fault the AP’s Christopher Bodeen for not having read Laura Ling’s memoir of her fool’s errand in North Korea, but I can fault him for taking Pyongyang’s party line at face value when he writes:
Carter is well-regarded in North Korea and met in 1994 with the North’s then-leader Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il’s father, and brokered a U.S.-North Korea nuclear deal.
You have to wonder what basis Bodeen could possibly have to reach and report this opinion within an opinion. It seems fairer to infer that the North Koreans regard Carter as a reliable tool. After all, Carter is a consistent advocate of policies that abet the regime’s goals, one who never demands the moderation of its ruthlessness. In this, Carter is joined by a coterie of fellow has-beens, including Mary Robinson, the former U.N. High Commissioner for refugees Human Rights. Robinson is mostly remembered for criticisms implying that Iraqis would be better off living under Saddam Hussein’s tender mercies — and I wonder how many Iraqis would agree with that now? — but even more than this, Robinson deserves to be remembered for having, as far as I can tell, not uttered a single unpleasant word about North Korea’s prison camps or its selective starvation of its population during her entire tenure.
At Monday’s briefing, Carter also criticized long-standing economic sanctions imposed on the North’s hardline communist regime, saying they were adding to suffering among ordinary citizens amid a severe drop-off in food aid to the North.
“In almost any case when there are sanctions against an entire people, the people suffer the most and the leaders suffer least,” he said. “And we believe that the last 50 years of deprivation of the North Korean people to adequate access to trade and commerce has been very damaging to their economy, as well as some problems they may have brought on by themselves.”
But the sanctions aren’t against the “entire people.” Neither Carter nor Bodeen reveal the slightest hint of having actually examined the U.S. and U.N. sanctions that have been imposed since 2006 (they’re linked in my sidebar). They are tightly targeted at Kim Jong Il’s proliferation, money laundering, and his squandering on obscene extravagances money that ought to be spent on food. The sanctions specifically exempt humanitarian assistance. As Carter should know, North Korea’s people starved for years before these sanctions were imposed, including after President Clinton relaxed most sanctions on bilateral trade. And if sanctions were really starving North Koreans, then why is Kim Jong Il dodging them to buy not food but “94 Swiss watches for about US$200 each early this year,” Clapton concerts and “extravagant lifestyles” for its “princelings,” and an alleged “long convoy of lorries believed to be carrying gifts for North Korea’s elite?” Kim Jong Il even found a spare $500,000 to donate to his dwindling cadre of sympathizers in Japan. These, by the way, are just the examples I’ve noted in the last two months. I could cite many others. Given this sampling of evidence, just what resources does Kim Jong Il lack that we’re now morally compelled to provide?
And given North Korea’s general aversion to transparency, just whose needs would our aid really meet? Some reports from inside North Korea suggest that most people aren’t that much worse off than they’ve been for the last decade. To the extent that they are, the primary cause is the regime’s confiscation of savings from millions of North Koreans, and the impact that confiscation had on the markets that keep 80% of them alive. One thing that does appear to be different this year is the increasing equality of misery among all but the most privileged of the North Korean elite. This year, more than in the past, soldiers and residents of Pyongyang are going hungry, too, and that presents a threat to things Kim Jong Il really does care about — his job security and his survival. That may explain his regime’s sudden desperation. The corruption and embezzlement of its ruling class have reached the unacceptable point where they’re diverting too much food from those who ensure the regime’s stability.
Carter overlooks these questions, seemingly out of an emotional compulsion to transfer culpability to America. But how, exactly, can Jimmy Carter overcome Kim Jong Il’s desperation to keep his people ignorant, exhausted, and hungry?