Axis of stupidity: Ann Coulter mauls media for attacking Bush's view of North Korea

When President Bush included North Korea in the axis of evil last year, foreign policy experts concluded that he was a moron. On the basis of years of scholarship and close study, the experts pointed out that Iran, Iraq and North Korea were – I quote – "different countries." As Tony Cordesman, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained, "these are three very different countries here." USA Today sniffed that there was no axis because, "The countries have more differences than similarities." Koreans don't even look like Iranians.

Moreover, as the ponderer class repeatedly reminded us, President Clinton had struck up a brilliant agreement with the North Koreans in 1994, with guidance from Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jimmy Carter. The deal consisted of this fair trade: The Clinton administration promised North Korea 500,000 tons of fuel oil annually and $4 billion to construct a pair of nuclear reactors for "electricity"; in exchange, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

We were assured that the North Koreans had been peaceful little lambs since then. As Clinton himself said of North Korea, "I figure I left the next administration with a big foreign policy win." Alas, he said, Bush had squandered that "win." Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, concurred: "When we left office, we left on the table the potential of a verifiable agreement to stop the export (from North Korea) of missile technology."

USA Today said that "even critics concede the regime seems to have kept its promises so far regarding nuclear weapons and missile tests." But Bush had botched the peace agreement with his "hot-war posturing" – "a simplistic policy of hubris that alienates allies and inflames problems that can be managed more benignly."

The principal area of disagreement among the ponderers was what on earth could have provoked Bush to call North Korea part of the axis of evil in the first place. One popular explanation was ... Enron! Antony Blinken, a Clinton national security staffer, said Bush's axis of evil gambit was intended to distract the public's attention from "things less comfortable, like the economy and the Enron scandal."

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, took a break from denouncing America's treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo to opine that "Bush's State of the Union speech was best understood by the fact that there are mid-term congressional elections coming up in November."

Robert Scheer wrote in the Los Angeles Times that Bush's axis of evil drivel was the "rationale for a grossly expanded military budget." Throwing North Korea into the mix was an obvious scam, Scheer said, because, "North Korea is a tottering relic of a state whose nuclear operation was about to be bought off under the skilled leadership of the South Korean government when Bush jettisoned the deal."

And then in October 2002, the North Koreans admitted that immediately after signing Clinton's 1994 "peace" agreement, they had set to work building nuclear weapons. A few months after that, U.S. intelligence forces tracked an unmarked ship carrying Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen.

It was beginning to look like an "axis of evil." The experts had never paused to consider the possibility that Bush had called North Korea part of an "axis of evil" because North Korea was part of an axis of evil.

With impeccable timing, just two weeks before North Korea admitted it had been feverishly developing nuclear weapons since the mid-'90s, New York Times columnist Bill Keller snootily referred to North Korea as among "the countries the White House insists on calling the axis of evil."

A week later – or one week before North Korea owned up to its nuclear weapons program – Keller's op-ed rival at the Times, Nicholas Kristof, wrote: "In 1994 the vogue threat changed, and hawks pressed hard for a military confrontation with North Korea. ... In retrospect, it is clear that the hawks were wrong about confronting North Korea. Containment and deterrence so far have worked instead, kind of, just as they have kind-of worked to restrain Iraq over the last 11 years, and we saved thousands of lives by pressing diplomatic solutions."

Instead of owning up to their ludicrous attacks on Bush and unrestrained praise for Clinton's "peace" agreement, the ponderers once again concluded that Bush was a moron. Bush, it seems, had somehow provoked the North Koreans to build nuclear weapons by being mean to them. Robert J. Einhorn, who helped negotiate Clinton's masterful 1994 peace deal, said Bush's "tough rhetoric" had "unnerved the North Koreans." Derek Mitchell, another veteran of the Clinton administration, agreed: "We did call them the 'axis of evil.'"

Time magazine was a rare voice of honesty amid the claptrap. "In January, Bush said the three states were seeking weapons of mass destruction and posed a grave and growing danger." On the evidence, Time said, "he's right."

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Clinton Ups Atom Stakes
By ELAINE SCIOLINO, Special to The New York Times
The New York Times
Section A; Page 7; Column 1; Foreign Desk
October 20, 1994, Thursday, Late Edition - Final

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19
In its rush to strike a nuclear agreement with North Korea, President Clinton is gambling that the promise of $4 billion in energy aid can turn what he has labeled "a rogue state" into a responsible member of the global community.

The agreement, announced by President Clinton on Tuesday, reflects the Administration's conviction that offering the Communist Government in Pyongyang a way out of its economic difficulties will induce it to give up its nuclear ambitions and stop threatening neighboring South Korea with its million-member army. The complicated accord also means that, for the moment at least, those Administration officials who prefer to engage enemies have won out over those who want to isolate them. But the strategy represents a major leap of faith.

For more than a year, Washington's policy was based on the assumption that the leaders in Pyongyang were Stalinist totalitarians so untrustworthy and unpredictable that their behavior had to be punished, not rewarded.

When North Korea violated its international commitments by refusing to allow inspections of all its nuclear plants, the United States said it would seek new international sanctions against Pyongyang.

That put Washington in a diplomatic cul-de-sac. Faced with a threat by China to veto any Security Council sanctions, and a warning by North Korea that it would regard such a move as an act of war, the Clinton Administration decided to negotiate.

In doing so, officials were counting on Kim Jong Il, North Korea's new leader, to open the country to foreign trade and to follow a less isolationist foreign policy than his father, Kim Il Sung.

No matter that the younger Mr. Kim has been described by some Administration officials as a a terrorist who masterminded bombings in 1983 and 1987; for the moment, the view of Mr. Kim as a leader capable of becoming a statesman has prevailed.

Beneath the celebration of this week's victory, however, there is widespread apprehension both inside and outside the Administration.

"It is always possible to get an agreement when you give enough away," the Senate Republican Leader, Bob Dole, said in a statement.

Although he ultimately endorsed Mr. Clinton's decision, Deputy Secretary of Defense John M. Deutch objected to what he regarded as inadequate controls over North Korea's access to spent fuel rods from the new light-water reactors it would receive. He further complained that North Korea would be able to keep its spent nuclear fuel rods for too long.

In praising the accord on Tuesday, even Robert L. Gallucci, the chief American negotiator, suggested that the younger Mr. Kim was a man who could not yet be trusted. "Maybe it will produce trust, but it's not based on trust," Mr. Gallucci said of the agreement.

But many foreign policy experts feel that the Administration has embarked on a high-risk course that has often failed in the past. These experts feel the Administration has made concessions that would allow North Korea to resume weapons production quickly and set a dangerous precedent for other countries intent on making nuclear weapons.

The accord with North Korea was immediately attacked by Republicans who described it as a capitulation to dictators.

"It is always possible to get an agreement when you give enough away," the Senate Republican Leader, Bob Dole, said in a statement.

Even those who praise the agreement do not believe that North Korea is poised to change the nature of its Government or abandon its hostile intentions.

"The agreement cuts the heart out of their ability to produce nuclear weapons and that is the most serious and the most immediate problem," said Leslie Gelb, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. "But it doesn't mean it will stop them or that they all of a sudden become good guys."

The agreement also creates a major contradiction in the Administration's approach to curbing the spread of nuclear technology.

The Administration has pressured both Moscow and Beijing not to sell light-water nuclear reactors for energy-producing purposes to Iran, arguing that the Government in Teheran should not be given access to any nuclear technology.

But how can Administration officials now look their Russian and Chinese counterparts in the eye and argue that Iran should not be allowed to buy what North Korea is being given without cost? And how can Iran be expected to continue to adhere to the rules of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty when North Korea, which has violated those rules and will be allowed to do so for years, is being rewarded? As one Pentagon official put it, "Life isn't fair."

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