Posted on 02/26/2004 7:17:36 AM PST by XHogPilot
I have an option, let's get the CIA (or the Mossad) to put a bullet into Li'l Kim's brain.
That'll make Kim disappear, but it won't make the nukes disappear. I'm sure someone just like him or worse is waiting in the wings anyway.
I don't need to respond to assertions the moon is made of green cheese, either. Because they're both laughably incorrect. I didn't respond, however, because I couldn't get past the OTHER laughably correct assertion in your post.
But here's your response in a nutshell: Which increments of state power make a foreign policy possible in your mind? Military interventionism? Subsidy? Protectionism? Which one are you advocating? I'm your huckleberry, pard. Tell me which powers of the state you think are so inconsistent with your imagined view of libertarianism.
Weak states cannot have a foreign policy since the effectiveness of any such policy demands a strong national will and strong national state.
That is you willingly assuming that having a government that is not the current one ensures a state is weak. You're so used to Leviathan that you've forgotten that we managed just fine as a nation without it.
Others are ignored by the world community.
That is you assuming we should care what the world thinks. When the U.S. does try to do something good, we're vilified for it. When the U.S. intervenes to protect its business interests, we're vilified for it. Why should we worry about what the U.N. thinks, either way?
Velly crever of you to figure it all out.
Nice non-denial denial, too, BTW.
Darn, we're having trouble with you using terms you don't understand again. See, a 'straw man' is when someone sets up an argument different from your own and argue with that instead of yours. But when you obviously can't tell that there is no substantial difference between the aims of Munich and the six-party talks--buying off a dictator--when you suppose that there is something somehow special about Hitler and Chamberlain that makes it different from the DPRK and KimJI, you're saying that that's the defining example for appeasement. That you don't like being called on it is too bad but it doesn't make it any less wrong for you to say that only a declaration of 'peace in our time' would make this appeasement.
Sadly, you can't even address that, so you thought you'd sidestep it here. Wrong. What makes Munich so different from the Six-Party sellout that is coming, exactly?
Foreign policy is not always military confrontation or appeasement, there are other elements involved. Bush is no appeaser as his enemies must sheepishly concede, not even the most deluded and hate-filled will claim THAT.
That Bush has not been an appeaser in some theaters doesn't give him a free ride in all others. And delusion is certainly an area where I will defer to your obvious authority.
Even more deluded is one claiming any real knowledge of what is actually happening with these negotiations. If you claim any such thing then you are a liar.
All I know is what I read in the papers, the KOREAN papers, which focus far more on this issue than the papers back in the States, and from folks I deal with when I am working with the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, people who of course aren't at the table themselves, but know better than the average jackass what's going on. If some jackass wanted to tell me they were more knowledgeable than I so that my opinion didn't count, or wanted to argue that I have no authority to make my claims at all because I don't sit at the table in Beijing, but that some jackass that sits at home in front of their tv set does have authority, that great and wise one ought to spit it out, tell me about how listening to Bill O'Reilly or Dan Rather makes them superior judges of foreign policy. One who has less reason to claim authority on this issue than I do ought to shut his jackass yap instead of trying the argument-by-lack-of-authority line.
At best we know now that the Chinese have gotten involved and have their prestige on the line for the N.Koreans to act rational. This raises the chances of the US having its ends achieved without having to go to war. Such an astute analyst as yourself is surely aware that, given our current force limitations, a war on the peninsula is not in our interests at this time.
I agree that a war isn't in our interests at all, but that's frankly because I'm not particularly interested in us being on the peninsula at all. The populace has pretty much decided with their election of Roh that they don't like the U.S. Notwithstanding GNP and recent Roh suck-ups, the people elected Roh because he said he'd get the U.S. out of Korea.
But more on point would be to address the issue we're talking about here, bribing the DPRK into not proliferating nukes. We rightfully perceive the DPRK a legitimate national security threat because it poses issues to our foreign policy of using the military to protect government-adjudged 'American interests' extraterritorially. But does paying them off remove that threat?
No, because we have two large nuke-tech-proliferating states to deal with, too, and we're not even complaining about the big one, China, or the little one, Pakistan. Here we are about to pay off a third one before it starts because we think it's EVIL and will sell nukes to groups we don't like--never mind that we turn a blind eye to Chinese and Pakistani scientists doing the same! Why should the other remaining member of the Axis care one whit about us telling them to stop making nukes, when the obvious result of trying is going to be getting to keep the nukes and getting a fat check and a security promise from the U.S.?
That war is bad doesn't mean that it will be wrong in this case. We fear a confrontation will spill over into war against China so much that we are quitting again before it even starts. This is a surrender document we're signing, not some great grand peace treaty for the world, Neville. That we decide what the terms will be, and that they are remarkably unfavorable for the people of Korea and demean the notion that America supports freedom, that's what drove the ROK into the DPRK's arms in the first place.
Either we $#!# or get off the pot. We should either be non-interventionist, letting those who cross our borders to other countries exit to their self-determined fates, and stop getting involved in situations like this that can only result in other countries hating us. Or we should go at it for real, extending our dominion and laws to the countries we protect militarily instead of acting as the mercenaries of corrupted semi-democratic states.
Given that China's interests in this area are converging with those of the US any wise statesman will take advantage of that opportunity. But, since wise statesmen are non-existent among Libertarians, presumably you will have difficulty recognizing one.
China's interests lie only in wringing trade concessions from the U.S. and laying low until the day they are sure they can militarily dominate the region and clean the U.S. out of it. Their prestige is only so important to them, or they'd have taken Taiwan back already. If the U.S. is taking advantage of those interests somehow by bribing the DPRK, which is only saving China money, let me know how what 'opportunity' the U.S. is grasping at in the long run exactly? In the short run, of course, there's no war. But the long run is what leaders ought to be looking to, and you're obviously not concerned with that.
Whether you are concerned or not, however, at some point the dragon will turn, and it will be far worse dealing with it later than now. Paying off the DPRK instead of confronting it is only delaying the inevitable and forcing our children to deal with it. Wise statesmen are dead politicians. That you think that there is anything wise about appeasement is simply proof that your foreign policy would be as productive as Chamberlain's.
Perhaps Patton and MacArthur were ahead of their time, but some of us look back and think of all the people that could have lived their lives in freedom if we had followed their initiative.
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