In years past, the US would have taken out targets in Iran and North Korea if we thought they were moving towards hav ing nuclear weapons or ICBM’s. But the Iraq War made the Bush administration gun shy.
“the Iraq War made the Bush administration gun shy”
or rather BDS did. The constant shrill shouting. We have to learn to block that out...
They essentially said to State (while reigning in Defense and John Bolton and Dick Cheney-type hawks/realists) "hey, look, we can't start a new fist fight out in Asia in the midst of the sh*t in Iraq/Afghanistan, so YOU (Chris Hill) try your best to reign the Norkies in at the table in Beijing." Meanwhile, the North stalled and ployed, threatened and stormed out, came back, stormed out again, played games, stalled more, worked behind the scenes, (various Freepers screamed on FR!), kept on producing nuclear material, and worked on improving their missile delivery system, taking slow but sure steps forward--particularly in the last three years when Bush Appeasement mode shifted from "Axis of Evil" mode and economically strangulating them. The sea change was when Chris Hill stumbled over his shoeless, hurredly trying to unfreeze their assets in Macao in Banco Delta Asia (how pathetic and a sign of weakness).
This is a problem of being tied down in one region of the world (Middle East) and a potent enemy somewhere else, i.e. like here in Asia, is, the enemy a) knows it, b) faces Vidkun Quisling/Neville Chamberlain-type naive doofuses across the negotiating table perceptibly hot for any deal, whether it intrinsically sucks or not, or whether they have to be responsible for it 10 years later or not. All this is process-oriented State Department bullshit in some remote room somewhere; the real action is in the nuke, chem and bio labs and rocket factories of the DPRK largely hidden from Western view.
God help us. Democrat and Republican foolish administration ALIKE.