"All We Are Saying..."

"ALL WE ARE SAYING...

is give peace a chance."

i am ready to join my comrades in protest. i have bought a pair of birkenstocks, i'm going to tie my gray hair in a ponytail and i pledge not to use any deoderant until this madness is stopped.

kim jong il, let's make love not war.

the administration got its tit caught in a wringer when it included north korea in its "axis of evil." before that goddamned speech the north was contained in a padded cell and kept sedated with the latest anti-psychotic meds. they posed no threat to us. the first rule in dealing with a paranoid schizophrenic is, don't give him reason to be paranoid.

the axis of evil speech gave north korea reason to be paranoid. how could it not have? you don't have to be paranoid to connect these dots. (1) the president says we are at "war" with terrorism. (2) he says in this war you are either "for us or against us." (3) he says iraq, iran and north korea are against us. further, they are an axis of evil, explicitly drawing a parallel with the axis powers of world war ii. (4) the u.s. did go to war with one of the axis of evil states (5) the administration has adopted a military doctrine of preemptive strikes against hostile nations.

what the fucking fuck are the north koreans supposed to conclude except that they're next?

how to get out of this. first, stick a sock in rumsfeld's mouth. it was he who ratcheted up the conflict when, on the eve of the iraq war, in specifically answering a question about north korea, he said that the u.s. had the capability of fighting two wars at the same time. so keep rumsfeld out of this lest some "wolfowitz of asia" be spawned and let secretary of state powell handle it. the administration is doing that.

second, use diplomacy. here our "allies," especialy the chinese, and the united nations can be helpful. this is an opportunity to repair some of the damage done to these relations by the iraq war. the chinese want to be a responsible global actor. this is their opportunity too. china borders the north and so also has an interest in keeping the korean peninsula a nuclear free zone. the administration is doing that too and all the reports seem to indicate that china has been helpful.

what does the north want? by all accounts, food and fuel aid and attention. their economy is ruined, their people are starving, the cutoff of our aid to them following their breach of the anti-proliferation agreement just made things worse and their isolation, though self-inflicted, has them not wanting to be ignored anymore.

give it to them. if they want a face-to-face meeting to show themselves that they are important then give it to them. if a resumption of aid is the condition for a return to the status quo ante then give it to them.

the administration is supposedly torn by hawks and doves on this issue, some wanting to go the diplomatic route, others the military. in this context the military route includes air strikes only as a last resort. it favors giving the chinese a deadline to bring north korea into a negotiated settlement. if that fails then an economic blockade, implicitly with world support, would be enforced, leaving the north with the choice, in the new york times words, between "collapse and dismantling its nuclear programs."

when is the world going to learn that economic sanctions against a dictatorship don't work? it hasn't worked against cuba, it didn't work against iraq and it won't work against north korea. all economic sanctions do is further impoverish the people while the ruling elite lives as before. again, that's the situation with castro, that was the situation with saddam hussein and that will be the situation with kim. a dictatorship will gladly sacrifice its people to maintain its control.

imposing economic sanctions does not leave north korea with only two choices, collapse or abandoning its nuclear ambitions. there is, and they will adopt, a third, lashing out militarily, in which case south korea and perhaps japan will be struck with missiles.

so if our tough option includes that as its penultimate sanction then skip it and go directly to air strikes.

the administration better hope diplomacy works. they better be prepared to swallow their pride and cave in to the north's demands. this recrudecense of hostility is entirely of their own making. under no circumstances must north korea be permitted to develop nuclear weapons. that was the american position even under the clinton administration. but the north would not be doing what they're doing now if the administration hadn't called them out as a member of the axis of evil.

a new war on the korean peninsula would be an unmitigated disaster. thousands of american troops on the border would be jeopardized, south korea might be overrun, japan might be struck. such will be the price to pay if diplomacy fails. such will be the price that will have to be paid if north korea is about to acquire a nuclear capability, but it did not have to be this way. the administration created this problem. now they're going to have to get out of it.



-benjamin harris