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Opinions/Editorials Title: Tired of diplomacy, Pussyboy Bill Kristol runs around whining and sticking his fingers in everyones eyes. Kim's Choice--and Bush's What price will the North Korean dictator pay? --President Bush, at a press conference in Chicago, July 7, 2006 There's a choice for him to make? Hasn't Dear Leader made his choice? All of us said don't fire that rocket. He fired seven rockets. As President Bush put it, "he made that defiance." Having made it, what price will the North Korean dictator pay? Well, five of the six parties to the six-party talks are going to go the Security Council to set forth some new "red lines." (They'll be more like pink lines, thanks to the Russians and Chinese playing their usual role at the U.N.) And when Dear Leader again chooses defiance-what then? Some new mauve lines? The red lines, pink lines, and mauve lines of U.S. foreign policy seem increasingly to be written in erasable ink. What was "unacceptable" to President Bush a week ago (a North Korean missile launch) has been accepted. In retrospect, according to a draft Security Council resolution, the missile launch turns out merely to have been "regrettable." Our assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Christopher Hill, visited China at the end of last week, where he was rebuffed by Beijing on sanctions for Pyongyang. He settled for an agreement that we should all return to the six-party talks. China, it bears emphasizing, has refused to use its leverage to change Pyongyang's behavior (North Korea continues to function only because China provides most of its energy). Yet President Bush praised China last Friday as "a good partner to have at the table with us." Japan, with a ringside seat for the missile launches, looks on in horror, seemingly alone in actually being provoked by the North Korean "provocation." Meanwhile, in the Middle East, at the center of our global war against jihadist terrorists, Iran, perhaps the prime state sponsor of terror, is sitting pretty. The pursuit of nuclear weapons by the clerical regime in Iran has also been deemed "unacceptable" by the president. Yet, as the Iranian regime has resumed uranium enrichment, threatened to obliterate other nations, and scorned offers to negotiate, it has been rewarded with gestures by us that certainly seem to be concessions. Now, watching North Korea, the mullahs must be feeling even less intimidated. And despite Syrian and Iranian complicity in killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq--detailed by our generals--neither has paid a price. The one "red line" the president seems to be holding to is that we will not cut and run in Iraq. But even there, there seems to be no interest in rethinking a counter-insurgency strategy (or nonstrategy) that is not working. Indeed, the president took pains at his press conference Friday to reiterate that he would not insist on changes: "General Casey will make the decisions as to how many troops we have there. . . . I told him this, I said, 'You decide, General.'" So we have a Rumsfeld-Casey decision to plan for a not-too-embarrassing withdrawal from Iraq, rather than a Bush decision to insist on a strategy for victory in Iraq. But hey, we're in sync with the EU-3 and the U.N.-192. And our secretary of state--really, the whole State Department--is more popular abroad than ever. Too bad the cost has been so high: a decline in the president's credibility around the world and sinking support for his foreign policy at home. A few weeks ago, Michael Rubin lamented in this magazine that Bush's second term foreign policy had taken a Clintonian turn. But to be Clintonian in a post-9/11 world is to invite even more danger than Clinton's policies did in the 1990s. The real choice isn't Kim Jong Il's. It's President Bush's. --William Kristol
Poster Comment: Okay everyone.. School is in session. Pay close attention, as we dare to speak of the heresy that's going on in DC. Now, as we all know.. Diplomacy comes at the price of "a decline in the president's credibility around the world and sinking support for his foreign policy at home." and it also means "our secretary of state--really, the whole State Department--is more popular" Believe me, this is no laughing matter.. In addition, we elect Presidents to demand solutions to unsolvable problems and to fire traitors and negative thinkers who are too upity.. like that nutsack Casey. We've obviously forgotten the merits of unilateralism and the "Bush Doctrine" and turned into gutless Additionally.. and since we've all turned into unshaven hippies, Kim Jong may get away with testing his own missles against a clear Presidental warning not to do so! I hope you can live with that!
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#1. To: Jhoffa_ (#0)
This is a clear case of outrageous childishness on both sides.
Oh, he's pissed.. Kim Jong put the icing on the cake with his missle test. On the 4th, no less and he's suddenly seeing his neo-conservative world crumbling. At first glance, it might not seem like a big deal, but in my opinion.. he has good reason to worry about this. Consider.. Time is running an article (You saw the graphic, LOL!) about the "End of Cowboy diplomacy" You realize what that would mean, don't you? It would mean Neo-conservatism failed. Even worse than a sterile, academic faiure.. it's failing in practice. This cannot be allowed to happen. This is the worst possible failure, because it not only humiliates the principles, but it's going to be written into the history books. Remember the paralyzing effect Vietnam had on our foreign endeavors? Like Vietnam, this failure would provide grist to the horrible "isolationists" They'll use it to "scare" people into supporting their strange notion about "foreign entanglements" Especially of the military variety. If this fails, and that looks increasingly likely, there's going to be more than a helping of crow to suffer for it. The whole movement will have been discredited and set back for an indeterminate period of time. Every time these jackoffs beat their war drums, someone, somewhere is going to say: "Oh, no.. We don't want another quagmire like Iraq" Further, there may be personal penalties. Imagine investigations into the pre-war intelligence and conduct? Oh Yeah. This is potentially a very big deal. Much bigger than a snot nosed editor with his nose out of joint. The ramifications could possibly last for decades. Bill Kristol is having a blue fit, and I can see why he would.
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