Depressing Midnight Musings

I've been lying awake thinking about North Korea, and I came to a realization. I know it's not one that many people will buy, and I hope it never comes up, but...

It occurred to me that if there's any kind of nuclear event in this country at any time in the next 10 years, it will most likely be President Bush's fault (more specifically, his policies).

Here's why:

The major job of the President is foreign policy. Sure, the President also has a hand in Domestic policy, but that's largely as a confirm or veto on the Congress, who have the primary task of passing and amending our laws. On the other hand, the President alone is the human face of our nation when dealing with other nations. It is not our Congress that talks to Britain's Parliament, it is our President who speaks with their Prime Minister.

One part of diplomacy that any school child learns early on is that you don't solely negotiate with your friends, you also negotiate with your rivals, to try to come to some agreement that prevents you and they from "having" to attempt to pummel each other into a red paste on the school playground during recess.

And yet this Administration seems to view diplomacy as a reward for good behavior, one that should be withheld (the mere priviledge of TALKING with us) until the people in question have already capitulated to our will. Witness Iran, with whom the Administration said it would only talk if they gave up all of their nuclear capabilities before sitting down. Really? Why would they do that? Would you agree to a car dealerships terms if they said they'd only sit down and start negotiating the price of the car after you'd given them the full sticker price of the car? Would any politician worth his salt agree to a debate if the prerequisite for that debate was giving up any contradictory positions held from what the opposition holds?

And so it is with North Korea. Like it or not, during the 90s, North Korea had regular inspections of its nuclear program. There were monitoring cameras in their facilities. There were careful controls on where the spent fuel rods ended up and how they were disposed of.

And then along comes George "Axis of Evil" Bush, with his "Do what the U.S. says or else" foreign policy, his schizophrenic "Atomic weapons are so important that we reserve the right to use them in our defense, but so unacceptable that we insist everyone ELSE give them up" message. According to news reports, it was only after running into the Bush foreign policy that Kim Jong Il turned off the cameras, kicked out the monitors and started making nuclear weapons.

And so now, like the fabled Russian "suitcase bombs", there is some unknown amount of weaponizable plutonium out there, in the hands of a guy who seems just mad enough to sell it to the highest bidder and who has already semi-successfully tested at least one nuclear bomb. And unlike the "suitcase bombs", it's fresh. Most reports I've read about the supposed missing Russian nuclear weaponry is that it's so out of date that it would likely not be good for anything more destructive than a dirty bomb. Not a fun prospect, certainly, but a heck of a lot less damaging than an actual atomic explosion.

Which means now we have at least one nation (North Korea) and possibly another (Iran) who have or are working towards a nuclear program, who have expressed extreme dislike for our country, and who haven't shown any tendency towards restraint in who they're willing to deal with. (They might be saying the same things about us, I suppose, given that Osama bin Laden got his start as part of an Afghanistan rebel group funded with U.S. capital to fight Russia.)

If it happens, if a nuclear bomb goes off somewhere in the world (or heaven forbid, somewhere in the U.S.), don't listen when the Right Wing spin machine immediately goes into "Blame Clinton" mode. The fact is that most of this was contained under Clinton, inflamed until it was totally out of control under Bush.

Besides, it's been 6 years. Isn't it about time to retire the old "Blame Clinton" dog? At what point does any responsibility fall on this Administration?

Liam.