http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=24826
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The Left quickly attempted the shopworn tactic of pinning the blame
on the Bush administration’s rhetoric or unwillingness to bribe Kim
Jong-il. Early this morning, Joseph Cirincione of the George Soros-
funded Center for American Progress told CNN, “They had numerous
opportunities to negotiate a deal…They did not.” He concluded, “I
think the North Koreans came to that conclusion: that there is no
deal to be had with this administration, and they decided they had
nothing to lose.”
By way of commentary, the popular left-wing blog The Daily Kos quoted
Selig S. Harrison from the international edition of Newsweek:
<<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.>>
The Kos feels no need to explain which U.S. provocation justified the
birth of the North Korean nuclear program in 1994 – during Bill
Clinton’s presidency – nor that the DPRK’s “‘soft’ tactics” entailed
firing a missile over the Japanese mainland and threatening to strike
the United States.
Worse yet, Kim Jong-il’s methods have paid off handsomely. Each act
of brinksmanship has brought cash, supplies, oil, nuclear reactors,
or additional concessions from the West. Within two months of the
Taepo Dong missile scraping across Nippon in August 1998, President
Clinton sent North Korea a multi-million dollar aid package and
reopened bilateral negotiations.
The Dear Leader’s nuclear test could not have occurred without Bill
Clinton’s decade of dalliance. Clinton could have obliterated the
Yongbyong reactor with one strike when he first learned of North
Korea’s covert nuclear program in 1994. Instead, he allowed Jimmy
Carter’s private foreign policy to preempt him. Upon completing the
“Agreed Framework” in 1994, Clinton stated, “This agreement will help
achieve a vital and long-standing American objective: an end to the
threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula.” We now know
the $4.6 billion bribe gave the Communists the two nuclear reactors
they used to create their current arsenal.
If the Left’s policies allowed Stalinists to arm, they left Americans
defenseless. The Democratic Party has defined its defense policy in
opposition to the concept of defense. For more than two decades, the
Democratic Party has worked in concert to block any missile defense
program and castigated those who tried to shield the United States
from a doomsday device. When President Reagan announced the Strategic
Defense Initiative in 1983, Ted Kennedy promptly denounced it as
“Star Wars.” The New York Times called it “a projection of fantasy
into policy,” and other outlets fretted the abandonment of Mutually
Assured Destruction (MAD) would encourage the United States to pre-
emptively attack the Soviet Union. Bill Clinton pledged his support
for a missile shield in theory during his 1996 re-election campaign,
then withheld critical funds and scheduled deployments in his second
term. When George W. Bush pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty – negotiated in the 1970’s with a nation that no longer exists
– the Left branded him a “unilateralist.” During the 2004 campaign,
John Kerry adviser Rand Beers said North Korea was able to acquire a
nuclear weapon, not because naïve leftists insisted on bribing its
playboy despot, but because “Bush and his closest advisers were
preoccupied with missile defense.” Twenty-three years after President
Reagan’s vision of “rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and
obsolete,” the United States remains vulnerable to madmen like Kim
Jong-il…or whoever purchases his wares. Ironically, the Left’s got it
wrong on SDI twice: the mere idea of missile defense caused the
Soviet Union to spend itself into bankruptcy, and the fact that it
remains merely an idea emboldens tinhorn dictators to engage in
nuclear blackmail.
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The Left has done such a magnificent job demonizing Bush in their
unrelenting propaganda that the other 2/3 of the Axis of Evil, and
their new friend in Venezuela, are able to move against us and mock
the world with impunity. The extremist whack jobs now in control of
the once dignified Democrat party are on the verge of taking over
Congress, partly because they've manage to convince most Americans
that 5% unemployment, record high stock market, ballooning tax
revenues chopping away at the deficit, and other positive economic
indicators are actually signs of impending doom, and partly because
the Party of McGreasy and Kennedy and Toricelli and Frank and Studds
has managed to take one homosexual Republican's terrible
indiscretions and smear the whole party with them.
This is not going to be a good time for America, unless Americans can
see through the rhetoric and the stink of dirty politics and choose
wisely. We could use new leaders in the Congress, but not the ones
the Democrats currently hold up.
Bush tried to do a noble thing in his second term---i.e., social
security reform. The same chicken-shit Republican leadership in the
Congress that turned the other way when warned about Foley saw to it
he could not. Then he made two big domestic mistakes---Harriet Miers
(one of the biggest, smelliest brain farts I think I ever saw a
president make), and not handling the Hurricane Katrina situation as
well as he could have (another outstanding Left-wing PR campaign
aided by some clearly erroneous moves by the Administration).
Finally, the biggest mistake of all, engaging in "diplomacy" with
Iran and North Korea via the UN and various organs and appendages
thereof. That last one is going to hurt all of us, not just Republicans.
And don't act like he hasn't been playing the UN "talk is cheap;
action is not required" diplomatic route. It's actually been quite
painful watching these thugs play the UN and us for fools with tacit
Administration approval, just like Saddam did for 12 years. The
country club Republicans have clearly gotten Bush's ear in his second
term, and look where it's left him---pretty much in the same impotent
spot it got his father. Sad.
- Bob
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