October 09, 2006
The North Korean Nuke
The usual carping critics are assailing Bush and his foreign policy team for an enormous blunder on the occasion of North Korea's nuclear test. This is so unfair I have to protest.
First, for such a regime to have this capability is completely contrary to the whole international affairs theory of our current leaders, so it's just rude and disrespectful to remark on it. Second, it was a small one: if its twin gets shipped to a coastal US city, devastation will not even reach to the suburbs, so let's not get unnecessarily alarmed. Very few people who vote properly live right in the city, and reconstruction will shut up those unemployment whiners pretty quick when Parsons and Halliburton get to work with big no-bid contracts. Third, maybe it was an earthquake anyway: it's never right to say things that put the president or his team in a bad light during an ongoing investigation. Fourth, it actually went off right in the middle of a country we don't like, so it counts as an increase in our own national security, just as though we had launched it at them. You could score it like an own goal! FInally, it's been clear for a long time that the only thing that assures a good election outcome is a nice new war, and this can only grease the skids for a wonderful invasion of Iran. Or Venezuela (intelligence linking Chavez to North Korea is being drawn up as we speak) which has much better weather, and beaches for R & R.
Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rove will deserve criticism if they make a mistake, and if they ever make one, I'll note it. In the meantime, it's only fair to wait while we stay the course and the last throes of this and that play out.
I don't think this post was cynical enough. You're *joking* that the administration might not consider this terrible news. From WaPo:
"Yet a number of senior U.S. officials have said privately that they would welcome a North Korean test, regarding it as a clarifying event that would forever end the debate within the Bush administration about whether to solve the problem through diplomacy or through tough actions designed to destabilize North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's grip on power.
Now U.S. officials will push for tough sanctions at the U.N. Security Council, and are considering a raft of largely unilateral measures, including stopping and inspecting every ship that goes in and out of North Korea.
"This fundamentally changes the landscape now," one U.S. official said last night."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100900047.html
Posted by: Alex F at October 9, 2006 05:06 PMThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
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