It's always America's fault
Did the US Provoke North Korea into rattling its nuclear saber, asks Newsweek, by branding it a "criminal state" guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction? Selig Harrison writes after returning from the region that:
My conversations made clear that North Korea's missile tests in July and its threat last week to conduct a nuclear test explosion at an unspecified date "in the future" were directly provoked by the U.S. sanctions. In North Korean eyes, pressure must be met with pressure to maintain national honor and, hopefully, to jump-start new bilateral negotiations with Washington that could ease the financial squeeze. When I warned against a nuclear test, saying that it would only strengthen opponents of negotiations in Washington, several top officials replied that "soft" tactics had not worked and they had nothing to lose.
It's possibly another 'mistake' by the Bush Administration for failing to reward Pyongyang for its pledge to abandon nuclear weapons, according to Harrison.
On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would "respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations."
Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country's access to the international banking system, branding it a "criminal state" guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration says that this sequence of events was a coincidence.
But the article also notes that the State Department team was bitterly divided between "advocates of a conciliatory approach to North Korea over proponents of 'regime change' in Pyongyang. The chief U.S. negotiator, Christopher Hill, faced strong opposition from key members of his own delegation at every step of the way." A North Korean diplomat allegedly told a State Department official "How can you expect us to return to negotiations when it's clear your administration is paralyzed by divisions between those who hate us and those who want to negotiate seriously?"
Comment
Maybe the North Korean diplomat hadn't heard that America was roughly equally divided into liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, Red States and Blue States otherwise he would have already understood why the US is paralyzed over nearly everything. This division — others would call it a debate — permeates all aspects of America's handling of the world crisis. If the North Koreans wait a little longer, the incident of a creepy Congressman's cybersex escapades will swing the pendulum back to negotiation. That's how foreign policy is made.
posted by wretchardthecat at 10/08/2006 03:12:00 AM
20 Comments:
As you said quite correctly in an earlier piece, the policy takes into account those people who oppose having a policy.
The division in the country has led to a dangerous dichotomy in Wash D.C. If two policies are suggested - e.g., bomb an enemy country or drop food to them - the resultant approach will be to do some of both.
Even within the military the normal approach is to get "buy in" from the uninformed or incompetent, and the resultant contamination of brilliance - or even mere competence - with stupidity, ignorance, self-interest or simple venality does not yield satisfactory results, ever.
But even a suggestion that we not bother to listen to the self-confessed saboteurs is greeted with horror.
After the next successful terrorist attack on American soil, in the aftermath of thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of murdered American children, women, and men, the paralyzers will be dealt with, quite harshly.
In the wake of a modern "kristallnacht" (but far worse, only 91 dead Jews on the evening of Nov 9, 1938, you are saying all dissent will be neutralized) this won't be American soil anymore. It will belong to the gangs of right-wing thugs that perpetrated the violence.
Fortunately, your bloody-minded reverie will never come to pass because it will never find fertile soil in the collective American character.
Wasn't the bench mark for bloodiness set by American characters at Petersburg, Virginia in 1864? Like six hundred and fifty dead in ten minutes using single shot rifles.
Would that all tussles were between equally-armed combatants on a field of honor. But going around lynching unarmed reporters, dissenters, and peace activists in the aftermath of another 9-11 isn't rooted in the American psyche, fascist fantasies to the contrary notwithstanding.
Teresita,
You clearly don't understand the prevailing belief amongst American men that leftist elites are the reason that America is rotting from within. Those 'unarmed' reporters, professors, lawyers that you cite are armed indeed. They are armed with lies and propaganda to subvert the youth. They sow defeat. And they need to do the rope dance feat.
When 4 million Americans are roasted in the coming attack, millions guys like me will create a 'cordon sanitare' in the rear so we can win a war abroad. You can count on it.
Some place back in the mists of time, I can remember reading the musings of a social scientist or a political scientist to the effect that in American democracy, there is hardly ever any great change allowed. Because of the 50/50 split in perceptions, *all* questions are bitterly fought and *all* decisions are the result of compromise that both sides can live with.
In general, that seems pretty accurate to me if you leave out the big exceptions that yank us one way or the other like Affirmative Action, desegregation, Vietnam, and Sputnik. To an outsider in Australia, it might appear that the US is "paralyzed" but really ... when was the last time a President had the power to over-ride Congress? I think it was Richard Nixon and even he had to lie about a lot of what he was doing, AND he finally got bounced out by the electorate for abusing that power.
So for me, I never, ever, expect any Big Decisions to come out of Washington. It's just simply not the way our government was put together to function, with all the different checks and balances. And onlookers need to think of is as being a government of compromise rather than a government of paralysis ... even though they may look very much the same.
If and when the dirty bomb goes off, I don't anticipate that we will *have* to lynch the Lefties. I figure at that point, a majority of them will decide it's time to switch sides and go to war because sure as hell what they *have* been doing isn't working, and the rest will understand that they need to shut up for their continuing good health. If we just lynch a few like Juan Cole and Michael Moore and John Murtha, that should be sufficient.
If we just lynch a few like Juan Cole and Michael Moore and John Murtha, that should be sufficient.
This isn't Iran or Venezuela or Russia. Americans settle things at the ballot box. And in November the American people are going to think about six years of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld and the quagmire in Iraq tying down and burning out our whole Army (some of them on fourth deployments now) while the border leaks like a sieve and the NoKos light off their big firecrackers.
Those 'unarmed' reporters, professors, lawyers that you cite are armed indeed. They are armed with lies and propaganda to subvert the youth. They sow defeat. And they need to do the rope dance feat.
I'm sworn to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States, which has a provision allowing the people to petition the government for a redress of grievances. If you call for lynching those aggrieved people instead, I'm your implacable enemy.
This isn't Iran or Venezuela or Russia. Americans settle things at the ballot box.
As you note, America is NOT Iran or Venezuela or Russia. America and Americans have a long long history of expansion and pushing past where there is law and order, OR a ballot box. We revere Judge Roy Bean, and sheriffs who appointed posses of local men to chase down the bad guys ("who *are* those guys?!?"), and citizens who took the law into their own hands to effect change (some time, read the timeline for reconstruction after the SF earthquake in 1906, where the citizens got it together on their own to begin rebuilding with three days of the disaster -- and not an election nor a politician nor a ballot box in sight).
We are a nation of individual "armed militias". A majority of us subscribe to the bumper sticker, "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands." Why you think, Ms. Teresita, that we're so determined to keep our hot guns in our cold hands if we think that *all* our problems are going to be solved at the ballot box? We don't, and we want to make damned sure that we can efficiently countermand a stupid government if it goes too far in a direction we haven't told it to go via the ballot box (can you say "fence the stupid border"?)
The problems we are facing now are directly attributable to Political Correctness. I would submit that your reply to my comments are a sterling example of that same damnable PC-osity and tendency to try to demonstrate superiority by putting down before thinking.
If it makes you feel better, just substitute "trial by a jury of ones peers with immediate execution thereafter" instead of "lynching".
If it makes you feel better, just substitute "trial by a jury of ones peers with immediate execution thereafter" instead of "lynching".
Okay, but just don't pretend the GOP is the party of "Law and Order" when you are calling for an actual progrom against the Left. I can't abide hypocrisy.
Nahncee,
You go girl. Teresita either doesn't understand or refuses to believe the reality of the clearly evident theme that underlies the commentary here at BC and at the EB, where she also posts. And, like most of the leftist elite, she does not trust in the will of the [common] people.
Teresita,
The leadership elites of this nation
have pursued policies that are contrary to the safety and welfare of the common people of this nation. The system is rotten to it's very core.
The American people did not vote for the destruction of families, sending our industrial infrastructure overseas, multiculturalism, open borders, an inadequate military or any of the other sources of rot. These policies were mandated by elites. How does one seek redress for mandates?
When 4 million Americans die because of the utter disregard of the common people by the elites, we, the people have a duty as cited below:
'That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.'
I think that statement is pretty clear about duty. And in the course of performing said duty, a few elite lawyers, reporters and professors may well dance. Many others will gain understanding by direct observation.
The leadership elites of this nation have pursued policies that are contrary to the safety and welfare of the common people of this nation. The system is rotten to it's very core.
Agreed. That is why not a single member of the leadership elite in power in Washington today will get my vote on November. But 95-98% of the incumbents will be sent back because 95-98% of the governed do not consent to change. Think about that before embarking on your little vigilante movement.
The precursor to the Montana State Patrol was a vigilante posse that was organized to effect law and order in the territory. The arm patch of the Montana State Patrol reflects this history.
Now, git thu rope!
Theresita you ignorant slut -
next time you want to opine against hypocracy and stupidity, you might want to look up the definition of "pogrom" and "program" before you start.
Makes you look all stupid and hypocritical when you mix 'em up.
i think BC
can demontstrate
a higher level of discourse than
a good number of the posts above.
i understand
nahncee's, and forklift's, and cannoneer's and lugh's
frustration and anger.
i've also read terisita's contributions for some time now,
and don't agree with her being labelled a "leftist".
not something i'd consider a complient.
her comments are worthy of the BC
ethos and personal attacks on her
rather than her ideas don't raise the level of discussion.
they don't call it
"the silly season" for nuthin', folks.
keep your eyes on the ball
and try to avoid tearing one another a new one.
spell check =
"not something i'd consider a compliment."
The Hermit Kingdom joined the nuclear club this evening. Experts say the DPRK nuclear device is probably too heavy and large too mount on an existing missle. But would it fit in a tramp freighter parked off the Port of Angeles?
The world changed forever with this news. I hope Americans are ready to live a Dr. No movie.
To make its story interesting, rather than true, Newsweek leaves out a few key facts on the nuclear arms negotiations with North Korea.
First, note that reporter Selig Harrison provides Newsweek readers with this chronology:
* Sept. 19, 2005: North Korea signs denuclearization agreement, pledging to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs” in exchange for a U.S. promise to respect North Korea’s sovereignty and to prepare for normalizing relations with Pyongyang.
* Sept. 23, 2005: The U.S. slaps North Korea with financial sanctions and labels North Korea a “criminal state” for counterfeiting, money laundering and marketing illegal weapons.
But Mr. Harrison leaves out one major event between those two:
* Sept. 20, 2005: North Korea declares it will not abandon its nuclear weapons program unless the U.S. first gives it a free nuclear power plant.
The ink was not yet dry on the Sept. 19 agreement when Kim Jong-il had renounced it and returned to his foreign policy of nuclear extortion. How was Washington supposed to respond?
Funny how Mr. Harrison left out what happened on Sept. 20, 2005. And Mr. Harrison is supposed to be an expert on North Korea.
Didn’t anyone at Newsweek challenge him on this key point? Couldn’t anyone at Newsweek make one phone call to the State Department for the other side of the story?
And by the way, this wasn’t the first time the North Korean government reneged on an agreement to ban atomic weapons. In January 1992, North Korea and South Korea agreed to the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, prohibiting the manufacture or possession of nuclear weapons. But within months, North Korea blocked the inspections required under the agreement.
How would Mr. Harrison explain that? Was that America’s fault, too? Did someone sneeze in Idaho and upset the Dear Leader?
It’s time to stop making excuses for tyrannical dictators.
"It’s time to stop making excuses for tyrannical dictators."
speaking of
sneezing in Idaho,Frank:
hope you're not gonna hold your breath waiting for Newsweek to
"stop making excuses for tyrannical dictators."
"Okay, but just don't pretend the GOP is the party of "Law and Order" when you are calling for an actual progrom against the Left. "
No pogrom will be necessary. Nor will it happen. Instead, we as a nation will find ourselves in circumstances where there is no longer any room for defeatism; no room for the leftist ideology of more sympathy for the enemy than ones own nation. The pointlessness, and ridiculous nature of this school of though will become apparent to more and more of those who entertain it now, and those remaining will be pushed aside and ignored.
It has happened in the past, and with any luck, it will happen before we're beyond the point where we can no longer save ourselves.
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