Thursday, October 12, 2006

Dear Leader Brings It On

Robert Scheer

Well, Bush showed them, didn't he?

Over the past six years, our "my way or the highway" president blew up a crucial nonproliferation agreement which was keeping North Korea's plutonium stores under seal, ended bilateral talks with Pyongyang, squashed Japan's and South Korea's carefully constructed "sunshine policy," which was slowly drawing the bizarre Hermit Kingdom back into the light, and then took every opportunity to personally insult the country's reportedly unstable dictator because it played well politically at home.

If you shun them, they will shape up - this was the essence of President Bush's non-diplomacy, as it was in regards to Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The result? Cold War-style brinkmanship that has left the United States helpless.

Thank you, Mr. President. I feel so much safer now that we have a wannabe cowboy in charge of the free world.

Republican cheerleaders are now making the case that, as with every other problem in the world, this is all Bill Clinton's fault; the line is that former President Clinton caved to the North Korean communists, who then broke their agreements. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, what happened is that Jimmy Carter, on Clinton's behalf, had negotiated an historic deal back in 1994 to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to seal Pyongyang's plutonium in exchange for major energy assistance in the form of fuel-oil shipments and the building of safe nuclear reactors. (Incidentally, Donald Rumsfeld was a director of one of the companies that profited from the reactor deal.)

Sensible Republicans must rein in the Bush administration and demand that progress take precedence over empty threats. They could start by listening to James Baker, secretary of state in Bush's father's administration. "I believe in talking to your enemies," Baker said a few days before the Korean nuclear test, endorsing the resumption of bilateral talks with Pyongyang and noting pointedly that he had taken 15 trips to Syria while serving Bush's father.

Unfortunately, the White House will almost certainly ignore this commonsense truth. It's much easier to blame Bill Clinton.

I think the money line in Mr. Scheer's piece is "Nothing could be further from the truth". Describes this certifiably criminally insane administration to a 'T'.

I think all this talk about "nuclear war" is just stupid and misleading by design, to scare us into keeping the Repugs in power. It shouldn't work, and I hope it doesn't.

I spent my school years listening to monthly air-raid siren tests and hiding under my desk to protect myself from an A-Bomb Blast. Seems kinda quaint now, but the Soviet Union actually had (still does, probably) the capability to wreck the joint, and us them in return. Nice. The closest we came was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, 44 years ago this week, oddly enough just before a mid-term election. Cooler heads prevailed, but 'cooler heads' may very well be what's missing now.

Point is, even after North Korea's oops-in-the-firecracker-factory supposed nuclear test, neither they nor Iran can do the world any damage yet for a long time. On the other hand, the U.S. can turn any place it wants to into a self-lighting glass-surfaced wasteland.

The big problem is that Bush, Kim, and Ahmadinejad are all fuckin' crazy.

Why don't they just go on TV, drop trou, compare their little weenies, and get it over with? It would save the rest of us a lot of trouble and we'd have a good laugh besides.

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