Sure, It's Clinton's Fault That Bush's North Korea Policy Is A Total Failure

by Steve

There has been much in the news over the last couple of days about the North Koreans and the signs emerging that they are readying to conduct a nuclear test. Of course, our friends on the right think that the only response is to maintain the tough Bush line of doing nothing and making empty threats, like the administration did yesterday, or even worse, asking the Chinese to get Pyongyang back to the table for the six-party talks that stalled last year into name-calling.

Naturally, when you bring up North Korea, the default position for our friends on the right in defending Bush’s abdication of responsibility during the last four years has been consistent and quite predictable: “blame Clinton!” And like other default positions the right has used in blaming Clinton for Bush and the GOP’s own failures over the last four years, it is utter crap. For all we know, what the North is up to now in making very visible preparations for an underground nuclear test is nothing more than a ruse to get direct talks with Washington, which is what they have wanted all along since time ran out at the end of Clinton’s term and since Bush humiliated Seoul at the start of his term by declaring that such direct talks were a waste of time.

Since Bush has come into office, we no longer have inspectors on the ground in North Korea. When Bush came into office, notwithstanding CIA and various commission assertions that our intelligence capabilities are nonexistent in the North, Pyongyang has gone from having no ready nuclear weapons to possibly having several now and as many as another 6-8 more in the coming months. Yet the right’s default position in support of Bush’s unwillingness over four years to do anything except name-calling and posturing is to say that it was Clinton’s fault for leaving Bush with an opportunity to close a deal, and that it remains Clinton’s fault that Bush has done nothing to improve the situation for four years now. And while they blame Clinton, it somehow justifies Bush doing nothing. This is a fallacious and unconvincing argument, but then our friends on the right aren’t bothered by the rest of Bush’s failures and irresponsibility around the world, so why should we expect them to provide a rational defense now?

To me, it is understandable that Bush and Cheney despise the notion of talking directly with North Korea and their unstable leadership. Kim Jong Il is a petty nutcase, who craves the respect of the rest of the world and face time with Washington. Dealing with these types of people is like lowering yourself into a freak show that you think is beneath you. But the tragic thing about the Bush policy for the last four years is that while keeping to their insistence that they not deal with the North directly, our capabilities to manage and improve the situation have deteriorated. In other words, the policy has failed, and the North has gone nuclear. The righties can say that Pyongyang was nuclear when Clinton left office, even though the CIA isn’t even sure about that, but the fact is that even if Pyongyang was nuclear when Clinton left office, they were still willing to deal at that time and had inspectors on the ground. Bush through his inaction and macho bluster has squandered that opportunity into where we are now, with even fewer options than were available then.

So we are left with either ignoring the North further and letting them conduct the test if in fact that is what they are readying, at which point we will be unable to buy them off and keep them from formally becoming a nuclear power. Or we can beg the Chinese to talk the North into more six-party talks, and hope the Chinese will do so, which given the North’s attitude since the talks broke down last year doesn’t seem to offer much promise.

Or we can conduct direct talks under the table through the Chinese and see if the North can still be bought off, even if these latest moves to ready for a test are a ruse to push us. Sure the right wing purists will reject this out of hand and say that the North should not be rewarded for their hostile acts, but the right wing is arguing from a weakened hand given that 1) this position has utterly failed the last four years; and 2) the Bush Administration is in no position to argue with anyone about responsible behavior and moral authority. And letting the Chinese be the intermediary lets them take credit for the deal while pushing the North not to make them look bad by scuttling it. Of course I'd rather not have to let the Chinese have any such opportunity, but this is where we are with Bush's ineptitude.

I, like the next guy, would love to take the position that the North can eat their plutonium and we should let them starve and stay in their caves for the next several decades. But the difference between me and the guys on the right is that I would rather eat a little crow and talk with petty and unstable people to get a deal, get inspectors back inside the country, and give Kim Jong Il the face time and phony respect he wants, than let him go nuclear and then give the technology and material that he got from our friends the Pakistanis to nonstate terrorists.

But that’s just me. Our right wing friends would rather ignore the problem for another several years, make empty threats against Pyongyang, and blame it all on Clinton, and then look stupid when a dirty nuke goes off in Chicago later this decade. And when find out from the rubble that the nuke is traced back to Bush’s friend Pakistan, A. Q. Khan, and North Korea, they’ll still blame Clinton for something that Bush sat on his ass watching unfold for eight years.

But that's the point. Bush has no intention of dealing with North Korea, and has decided since Day One of his administration to treat Pyongyang as just another Cold War threat that can be ignored and dealt with through Star Wars. Yet even though Bush and Cheney understandably can't stomach even dealing indirectly with a petty nutcase like Kim Jong Il and giving him the face time he wants, they ingore the fact that it worked to a degree in Libya, and Libya didn't have a million men ready to run roughshod over Egypt. So the inconsistency here is harder to understand, especially from two guys who claim to be so good in protecting us from terrorists that they would allow a source of dirty nukes to flower on their watch, all while blaming a guy who left office over four years ago.