Posted on 03/22/2004 6:39:37 PM PST by perfect stranger
MEET WILLIAM JEFFERSON CHAMBERLAIN
A New York Post Editorial
Regarding North Korea, the world's most frightening nation, Bill Clinton has made bribery the cornerstone of his failed foreign policy once again.
The administration yesterday announced the easing of trade, banking and travel restrictions in place against the Stalinist state since the Korean armistice in 1953.
The loosening of sanctions came after Pyongyang apparently - we use the word advisedly - backed off on a promise to fire a long-range ballistic missile over Japan, as it did just over a year ago. The Japanese viewed the initial missile "test" as a grave provocation - and made it clear that any repetition would have consequences.
There was potential for a real crisis here. North Korea is a destitute, demented nation run by people who feed soldiers while millions of children starve. But Japan and - increasingly - the People's Republic of China have made it clear that their patience with Pyongyang is wearing thin.
Enter Bill Clinton, doing what he does best regarding North Korea - bribery.
The deal appears to be this: North Korea agrees not to do what it shouldn't be doing in the first place - threatening its neighbors - and in return Washington will open its bag of goodies.
It's a pattern that began in October 1994, when North Korea agreed to abandon a nuclear-weapons program - in return for two modern nuclear-power plants and 500,000 tons of heavy heating oil a year, all for free.
Less than three years later, Pyongyang announced that it was pulling out of talks with the U.S., China and South Korea - unless it got 100,000 tons of high-quality foodstuffs from Washington.
Clinton ponied up.
Then North Korea demanded - and got - hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in exchange for allowing America to look for the remains of U.S. servicemen listed as missing in the Korean war.
It also successfully extorted millions from Seoul to permit the reunification of Korean families separated by the post-war demilitarized zone. Then Pyongyang demanded - and got - more than $1 billion from the south to allow religious pilgrims to travel north of the DMZ.
Most recently, North Korea successfully extorted hundreds of thousands of tons of food aid from the United States to permit neutral inspectors to view a suspected nuclear weapons plant - but only after stalling for months after evidence that bombs were being built first surfaced.
And so it goes. The North Koreans take actions that threaten peace - or offend human decency - and then agree to stop only when the price becomes right. And, even then, it's not clear that they've complied with their own promises.
"We are once again entering the cycle of extortion with North Korea," said House International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman yesterday. "Ultimately, we have no assurances that North Korea has halted missile development, or its program for weapons of mass destruction."
The containment of North Korea may be the most important foreign-policy challenge of our time. It's very disheartening to think that, with such a challenge facing this country and the world, the president of the United States is doing a Neville Chamberlain imitation.
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
(Excerpt) Read more at freerepublic.com ...
I've been doing some hunting and saved a bunch of old FR pages dating to back then and wanted to point a few of them out.
Lot's of interesting stuff.
I was playing around over the weekend and found links to alot of old interesting FR posts (pre 9-11 and pre-2k).
Some of them are worthy of reposting.
Like this one here....Clinton Golfs Alone in Rain
See also;
Clinton vetoes international aid bill - October 18, 1999
and
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