Posted on 07/30/2003 8:34:49 AM PDT by Chancellor Palpatine
Regardless of how bad a regime North Korea has, its demands of the United States are reasonable. They are four: one-on-one talks, a nonaggression treaty, economic aid and normal diplomatic relations.
The Bush administration's obstinate refusal to consider these could prove to be one of the deadliest blunders in the history of stupid diplomacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at reese.king-online.com ...
He really shouldn't bother sobering up enough to write for publication anymore. Maybe someone should introduce him to the killer asteroid phenomenon and give focus to his paranoia.
Charlie must get a lot of animated discussions going at any backyard party with that introduction.
Hmmmmm.....the "febrile" vs "fetid" debate.....ya know, I think I like "fetid." "Fetid" has those hydrogen sulfide overtones, doesn't it?
You mean a treaty where we can't intercede if North Korea attacks one of our allies? Or that we couldn't respond against North Korea if North Korea supplies a third-party munitions to use against us? That would be a silly thing to sign. After all, the Taliban didn't attack us...they merely provided Al Queda a secure base of operations.
China has been blocking any meeting which would allow such a proposal, and North Korea says they only want a two-legged stool.
Or that the AP says he might be thinking about doing.
We should be wary of believing that communism is dead issue
Charley Reese
A book that created a sensation when it was published in France is now available in English. I can't think of any book that would be more important for Americans to read. If you are going to read only one book this year, make it The Black Book of Communism.
This is an 800-page history of the terror, repression and killings of communism stretching from the Bolshevik Revolution to the present. Written by scholars who are ex-communists or former fellow travelers, the book establishes beyond doubt that communism is the greatest crime against humanity in the 20th century.
Harvard University Press published the book.
The conservative estimate of the number of people killed by communists is 100 million, or four times the number estimated to have been killed by Nazism. Yet 50 years after the destruction of Nazism, Americans still are regaled with its horrors while the worst horrors of communism are ignored. Worse yet, American leftists and amoral businessmen are still trying to paint a human face on the communist monster.
Both systems killed people not because of what they had done but because of who they were. The Nazis killed people by race; the communists, by class. Furthermore, the authors dispel the myth that the horrors of communism were the result of good communism gone bad or some particular person betraying communism. Communism is, in and of itself, a criminal enterprise in which the modus operandi is terror, repression and homicide.
This is shown consistently in every regime from the Soviet Union to China to Vietnam to North Korea to Cuba and to other countries where communists gained a foothold. Unlike the Nazis, the communist killers benefited from the propaganda of their comrades and fellow travelers living in the democracies. And still do. These unrepentant communists are a cancer in every free country where they live.
By coincidence I recently talked with a professional woman who had the opportunity to live in Cuba with some Cuban professionals. She described herself as a liberal Democrat. She described her experience of the reality of Cuba as "horrendous." Though not a Cuban, she came back convinced that it would be a crime for the United States to force Elian Gonzalez, the little boy rescued from the sea, to return to Cuba.
"It would be exactly the same thing as returning a Jewish boy to Nazi Germany," she said. She wishes to remain anonymous to protect her Cuban hosts from reprisals. If you will read the section in the Black Book on Cuba, you will agree with her. It is a hideously criminal regime that spies on and controls every aspect of people's lives. It is fueled by hatred. It is supported by repression, censorship, propaganda and killing.
Americans should be wary of believing that communism is a dead issue. It thrives in Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and China. Because of President Clinton's incredible blundering, the Russian Federation has renewed its interest in and support of Cuba. It is financing a nuclear power plant. It maintains its large intelligence-gathering stations in Cuba. There is no question that if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ever put nuclear weapons into Poland, Russian nukes would show up in Cuba. The war with communism won't be over until the last fat commissar sings his death song.
Col. Stanislav Lunev, a defector, recently wrote, "Normalization -- i.e., accommodation of Castro despotism -- means big bucks for profit-hungry businessmen in the short term but would seriously weaken the United States in the long run. In the latter case no one wins for no one will prosper in the second rate, subjugated America that will be the final result."
Americans are vulnerable to subjugation because they are so naïve. Remember, mass murderers and wannabe mass murderers are still among us on this planet.
Published in The Orlando Sentinel on February 13, 2000.
_____________________________
And he wants to negotiate with these monsters?
Then tell China it is their problem and they better handle it...and tell North Korea to sit down and STFU, they have no right to dictate to the US what we should do.
Fisking is fair use!
Bush Could Make A Deadly Blunder
Regardless of how bad a regime North Korea has, its demands of the United States are reasonable. They are four: one-on-one talks, a nonaggression treaty, economic aid and normal diplomatic relations.
How is it reasonable to demand that we talk with them and that we give them money? If I accost you on the street and demand that you talk to me and give me money, that's a mugging!
The Bush administration's obstinate refusal to consider these could prove to be one of the deadliest blunders in the history of stupid diplomacy.
OK, Charley, you say the Bushies are obstinate, deadly and stupid. Let's look at why you think so. But merely throwing out insults does not constitute an argument. Unless we take the stupidity of the Bush Administration as a given.
First, talks are always cheaper than wars. Why shouldn't the United States and North Korea hold one-on-one talks? There is no reason not to. We held one-on-one talks with the Soviet Union and with Communist China during the Cold War.
But the choice is not between talk or war. Talk does not preclude war, after all. We could have expensive talk, and still require war down the road. Likewise, a lack of one-to-one talks does guarantee, or necessarily make more likely, war. And just because there is no reason not to does not mean that we should engage in such talks. There should be an objective that could be achieved.
And why not sign a nonaggression pact? It's clear from the past 50 years that we have no intention of invading North Korea. After all, it has no oil. Bush's refusal so far to consider signing such a pact sends a clear signal to North Korea that he might indeed be willing or even planning to attack North Korea. That, of course, would be a disaster.
So, which is it? Do we have no intention of invading the North, or are we willing or even planning to do so? Do you just want it both ways?
Somebody in the White House should sit the president down and explain to him that since he (1) included North Korea in his infamous axis of evil speech, (2) attacked one of those three countries and (3) has proclaimed a new policy of pre-emptive wars, North Korea's fears are quite reasonable and rational. It is certainly in America's national interests to allay those fears — unless, of course, Bush wants to go to war. North Korea is far more dangerous than Iraq. American casualties in a war with North Korea will be measured in the tens of thousands, not in hundreds. It would be clear evidence of terminal stupidity to blunder into an unnecessary war with North Korea. Yet some serious people — including, most recently, the Russians — have warned we are in danger of drifting into a war.
Somebody over at Kings Features Syndicate should sit the Columnist down and explain to him that if you want people to comply with your will, it is somewhat helpful if they fear you. It is not necessarily in America's interests to allay those fears. After all, the North Korean nuclear program is not so much about defense as it is about selling nukes on the international market. As the Columnist so ably points out, Korea is naturally defensible and any conventional invasion of that country would be futile.
As for economic aid, we've been handing that out to foreign countries — dictatorships included — for more than 50 years. There are even sound humanitarian reasons for economic aid to North Korea, but even if there weren't, economic aid, like talk, is cheaper than war. We have likewise had normal diplomatic relations with regimes far worse than North Korea (Idi Amin's genocidal government, for example).
Economic aid should have a purpose. Aid to the North Korean regime has been proven time and again to neither help their people nor positively influence their actions. Therefore economic aid can be expensive and still not prevent the need for war. I realize that for a liberal flushing copious amounts of money down the sewer for no reason is a rational policy. But for the rest of us, throwing money at a problem with no hope for success does not make a lot of sense.
This prattle about not succumbing to blackmail is typical of the ideological blockheads in the Bush administration. It's not blackmail. We want something from North Korea — an end to its nuclear-weapons program; North Korea wants something in return. A trade is not blackmail.
So it is prattle from a ideological blockheads to point out that repeated attempts to exchange aid for an end to North Korea's nuclear program have all met with failure? It has been said that one definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and always expect different results. By that standard, you're way 'round the bend, Charley.
The irony is that the North Korean regime is clearly doomed in the long run because of its economic failures. Sound diplomacy on our part can make sure it goes out with a whimper and not with a nuclear bang.
The greatest hope for success for North Korea is to attain a working nuclear program to blackmail the world and to sell nukes on the open market to make money. They don't want to go out, wimpering or banging. Their nuclear program is their one path to success, and they will not trade it away for any amount of aid.
What worries me most about the Bush administration is that it seems unable to recognize reality. The administration keeps insisting on multilateral talks, and Japan, China, Russia and South Korea keep saying to the United States, sit down with the North Koreans. In other words, our "allies" back the North Korean position on talks, not the Bush administration's position.
Of course Japan, China, Russia and South Korea would like to raid the US Treasury to solve their security problems. And make no mistake, bilateral negotiations between the US and the North Koreans is just haggling over price. But the Bush administration recognizes the reality that this approach has not worked in the past and will not work in the future.
We already know that an administration that perceived Iraq as a greater threat than North Korea has a lot of dim light bulbs to begin with. It is bad enough when any young American has to die for his or her country, but it would be an outrage for thousands of them to die because of political stupidity and stubbornness.
Why is it a given that the Bushies perceive Iraq as a greater threat than the North Koreans? Couldn't it be, Charley, that they are both threats, and the Iraqi situation was amenable to a military solution and the North Korean situation is not? Or do you think the US should just rank it's security threats one-to-ten and invade those countries in that order?
A great and powerful nation does not lose face by acting in a conciliatory manner toward a small one. It is not weakness to avoid a useless war, especially when all North Korea wants is what we freely grant to practically all the nations on the planet. So what if its leader is a nut case. He's certainly not the only one.
Why should the US give up it's one bit of leverage in North Korea by bailing them out of their economic mess? If they would give up their nuclear program, I mean really give it up, I'm sure they would be on the US dole before wintertime. But we should not reward behaviour that is dangerous to us.
The president kind of reminds me of a deputy sheriff I knew once. He was arrogant and a bully, but one day he swaggered over to pick up a mental patient and got a knife in the belly. The fact that North Korea's leader might not have all of his wires connected to the right terminals is a sound reason for dealing with him cautiously. It is never much consolation to the dead that they died on the "right" side.
If this story about the deputy sheriff is even remotely true, I'll eat my hat. The fact of the matter is that the North Korean leader's actions make a great deal of logical sense. His only bargaining chip is his viable nuclear program. And his only hope is to extract as much money on that basis while still holding onto that chip. We have to demonstrate that this is not an option before we can expect him to do what we want, namely to give up the program.
Since the president has ignored the wise counsel of the Founding Fathers and decided to be an imperial power ,he'd better get use to dealing with nuts and less-than-pleasant national heads of state. They are probably in the majority.
We've been an imperial power for some time now. The USSR did not just fold up and go away spontaneously, after all. And the way to deal with less-than-pleasant national heads of state is to get them to do with you want by applying pressure for bad behavior and rewarding good behavior. If we remove pressure whenever they misbehave and throw money at them every time they act up, we just guarantee further and ever increasing threats to our national security.
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