At 12:28 AM 6/14/2003 -0500 Dan Minette wrote:
>> Dan,
>> Yes - I know him quite well, as amatter of fact.  He's
>> a good guy.  Why?
>
>Because I read an article from the Christian Science Monitor about some of
>the things I've been afraid of that quoted him.  The article is at:

Isn't there something a little underhanded about asking somebody their
opinion of somebody, and then posting an absolutely ridiculous comment from
that somebody?    I mean, I am sure that Mr. Miller is a brilliant man, but
the below comments seem absolutely assinine.....

>http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0613/p02s02-woap.html
>
>And quotes:
>
>"We may look back and see that a nuclear-armed North Korea was the price of
>the Iraq war," 

O.k., this is mind-bogglingly stupid, since the DPRK already *had* nuclear
weapons before the Iraq war began.   In fact, those weapons were assembled
under Clinton's watch.   How come Mr. Miller doesn't say that "We may look
back and see that a nuclear-armed DPRK in the long term was the price of
Clinton's insistence upon negotiations with a fundamentally untrustworthty
regime?" 

Moreover, unless Mr. Miller has somehow developed the Sure-Fire Plan to
Dismantle the DPRK's Nuclear Program (TM) that has eluded just about every
other thinking person that has tried to deal with the DPRK problem, then it
is ludicrous to argue that the Iraq War was somehow a trade-off for the
DPRK's nuclear program.    

The Iraq War can only be a "price" if there was an alternative, and I have
seen not one observer of the situation propose a serious alternative for
using the resources expended in the Iraq war to dismantle the DPRK's
nuclear program.   So, if Mr. Miller has a Sure-Fire Plan to Dismantle the
DPRK's Nuclear Program (TM), I'm sure that President Bush would love to see
it.   

>"The real issue is what the Chinese will be willing to do to coerce North
>Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions," says Harvard's Dr. Miller. "The
>Chinese have not been willing to do Washington's dirty work, 

This is the sort of partisan side-swipe I'd expect from Paul Krugman, not
from a serious analyst.     How on Earth is disarming the DPRK's nuclear
program, "Washington's dirty work?"    I mean, what is "dirty" about it?
Isn't the work of disarming the DPRK noble and necessary?   Moreover, why
are the ROK, Japan, the PRC, and the Russian Federation absolved from
responsibility for securing peace in this corner of the world - their own
corner of the world?   

and frankly
>why should they be? They don't want a nuclear-armed Pyongyang any more than
>Washington does," he adds, "but other than that, their concerns are
>different. They don't want a collapsing regime on their border that would
>send waves of desperate refugees" into China.

So, given that: 
   -The cooperation of the PRC is absolutely essential to applying the
pressure to the DPRK needed to get it to disarm.
   -The DPRK has a history of taking our bribes and building nuclear
weapons anyways.
    -A major concern for the PRC is to prevent a collapse of the DPRK
regime, resulting in an influx of refugees into Northern China.

Isn't the logical response of the United States to convince the PRC that we
are willing to precipitate exactly such a refugee crisis if the PRC does
not cooperate with us?    And isn't this part of what Bush is doing?

JDG
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis         -                 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
               "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, 
               it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l

Reply via email to