“If North Korea were to end up with a nuclear weapon, it would be very destabilizing and very troubling for all of us.”
– President Bush, July 30, 2008, Interview with China Central Television (Yes, this week he really said that)
“If” –?? What is Bush talking about? That ship has sailed. That train has left the station. That bomb is out of the bag.
North Korea already has a nuclear weapon, and more likely it has a number of them. According to the Bush administration’s own State Department, North Korea in 2003 was ranting away about bolstering its “nuclear deterrent force.” In 2005, North Korea declared it had “manufactured nuclear weapons,” declared itself a “nuclear weapons state,” and in 2006 tested a “nuclear explosive device” (which, in non-diplomatic English, we call a nuclear bomb).
Surely Bush knows all that. So why, in this interview released Wednesday by the White House, would he utter this bizarre rewrite of reality?
Part of the answer might be that this interview — in which Bush mainly discussed his excitement about going to the Olympics in Beijing – was already such a triple-helping of diplomatic mush that it was easy to conflate North Korea (which has the bomb) with Iran (which is racing to get it). Asked about the former, Bush gave the potted response for the latter.
But there’s a bigger problem here, which encompasses both North Korea and Iran, and slops into plenty of other places as well. Bush was simply speaking the language of “soft power,” which his second-term team has been whispering into his ear for the past three years. In this approach to the prospect of malign, terror-loving governments (and their terrorist pals) acquiring weapons of mass destruction, there is no more “axis of evil,” no more “dead or alive,” no more “with us or against us,” no more “history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.”
Instead, there is the lingo of Secretary of State Condi Rice; or special envoy to the Six-Party Talks, Chris Hill; the jargon of the Annapolis conference and the ever-proliferating UN resolutions. America now speaks with the voice of a fretful nanny, scolding a naughty child even as she stuffs his pockets with sweets. Or – in the holistic spirit of this eco-era – carrots.
In these realms, what matters is “stability” and “process.” You don’t confront threats, or defeat enemies. Instead, you express your “disappointment” and “concern” over “destabilizing” and “troubling” developments… such as their missile tests, rapidly advancing nuclear weapons programs, or the test explosion of a nuclear bomb device. If North Korea turns out to have been building a secret nuclear reactor in Syria with no clear purpose other than to crank out plutonium for weapons, you don’t immediately congratulate the Israelis for their courage in destroying it, and move swiftly to punish the proliferators. Instead, you let the story age quietly in the White House fridge for a couple of months, and then issue a statement that the reactor was “not intended for peaceful purposes,” and — here comes the penalty — you are “seriously concerned” (which is, of course, much more ferocious than being “concerned,” but not “seriously” so).
And if you must bring up such ideas as freedom and democracy, you go out of your way not to offend those who actively deprive their people of these abstractions. Thus, in this same interview with Chinese state TV, Bush explains that he is going to the Olympics in Beijing because “It’s much more likely a Chinese leader will listen to my concerns if he knows I respect the people of China.” Again, what is Bush talking about? He’ll be paying his respects to China’s dictator-in-chief, President Hu Jintao (in this interview, he already did: “I respect the man a lot”). Meantime, Hu’s secret police are busy censoring the internet and sweeping up democrat dissidents, lest the people of China interfere with the Olympic festivities.
And on all these soft fronts, after all the carrots, sticks and diplo-babble, the Bush administration is stuck in the mud. That may seem less and less relevant, as he prepares to leave office in less than six months. But in some of the worst hotspots, the world is moving fast right now — and not in a good direction. North Korea has been raking in cash, aid and political concessions; but apart from shutting down the aging Yongbyon reactor (again), there’s no sign that Kim Jong Il has surrendered an ounce of plutonium, or given up his uranium enrichment projects, or abandoned or even begun to disclose his proliferation networks. In Iran, the centrifuges are spinning, and Ahmadinejad is thumbing his nose — a model for fellow despots.
As for the interview Bush gave this week to the state-controlled CCTV of the People’s Republic of China, I can think of a number of reactions it might reasonably inspire, but respect is not on the list.
There is, of course, one important arena in which Bush, to his great credit, has not gone soft; in which he has stuck by his original promise and principles: Iraq. That, as it happens, is where America is now winning.
Suppose Kim Jong-il truthfully, completely, and finally dismantles Yongbyon reactor and all other nuclear facilities and programs in NK. What then? Award him Nobel Peace Award as they did to his older-brother in ideology Kim Dae-jung, who gave half a BILLION U.S. dollars to his younger-brother in spirit Kim Jong-il? Pat him on the back for starve-murdering 3 million people of his own? Give him more funds to keep the Yoduk Concentration Camp going in full occupancy and operation?
Bush did talk all about this, starvation and concentration camps in NK, when he was sane, before he went, not soft, but crazy. He is insane and stupid to think about his so-called legacy based on Kim Jong-il’s nuclear hide-and-seek. He is shameless now even to talk about freedom and democracy for the NK people. He betrayed them, just as Dr. No (Kissinger) betrayed the South Vietnamese, period. We have to get ready for millions of boat people, not just from NK, but from SK as well.
Bush refused to wear the wristband, “Free North Koreans!” to the Olympics, that North Korean Freedom Coalition sent to him, free of charge. He will just have a straight talk with Hu Jintao, who was responsible for the murder of thousands of Tibetans, even before he became the president of FAT and UGLY and RED Central Kingdom.
The central theme, message, and mantra of Bush’s presidency was “Americans will no longer work.”
Instead of excoriating Kim Jong Il to “tear down this wall,” Bush funds the murder in North Korea.
For some reason, Bush’s approval ratings top Congress by about 300%.
Go figure.
I don’t know Claudia, do you think he might just know something you don’t?
Respectfully,
Major Bill
These are the Democrats, look at what is happening these days with Karadzic, he just declared that Albright and Holbroke had already made deals with him, knowingly that he was a killer, to let him go and not prosecute him.
Same as Chriss Hill, he is just following the same music. These are the Dems, this is the music the american people will be facing soon…very soon…
ans alledgedly they will make america safer….by making deals with cobras
Ms. Rosett is an excellent reporter — when she sticks to reporting. Her opinions on foreign policy, however, are little better than any of the other so-called “pundits” who vapor needlessly on topics of which they have no expertise and less understanding.
Bush is a lame-duck. at this point he is doing the minimum to get by. He is tired of fighting the losing battle against the Democrats and the media, so he is waiting out the next five months. God help the next POTUS.
And God help us all If Obama wins.
We’ve watched the State Department chew up & spit out any semblance of the grit necessary to confront these obvious threats to our long term security that might have been present in Condi or Colin when they assumed “leadership” of this Pompous Palace of Platitudes.
Maybe it’s simply time to admit that there is no sign of the leadership necessary to avert disaster on the horizon, nor is its emergence likely in the near future. No wake-up call will be heard, no unity of purpose likely with such as speaker Pelosi already consumed with “saving the world” in her own cerebral venue; and as far as Obama ….Lord help us! McCain? All too unlikely but perhaps the spark of a chance.
I’m not optimistic.
I may not even be able to say, pardon the language, “Fuck you” on this very forum. But you want Bush to say “Fuck you” to the Chinese?
I guess you’re not much for diplomacy.
Diplomacy, as I learned it, is saying “Nice doggy” till you find a rock.
“What is Bush talking about? That ship has sailed. That train has left the station. ”
Um, no. What N. Korea did was to take a several ton DEVICE and manage to detonate it in a cave, with an explosive yield about the same as the explosions that destroyed the WTC. It was a loud bang, but:
A. It’s not what most people think of when they hear “nuclear bomb”.
and
B. Unless the norks load the thing on a railcar or cargo ship, it’s going to stay in a cave in North Korea.
When the President says “Nuclear Weapon” he means precisely something that can be used as a weapon. In other words, be loaded on a missile or dropped from an aircraft. And that is something that the norks do NOT have.
I believe the North Koreans have FINALLY, after many false starts, decided to curtail their nuclear ambitions for a least 3 reasons.
1. We demonstrated the capability to shoot down a orbiting satellite with our ABM system.
2.They realized that what they had was not a weapon, and was not likly to be able to be sold as such.
3.The Chinese, in return for favors, started putting real pressure on the North Koreans. And the North Korean nuclear problem was first and foremost a foil to try and get an emerging nation of 1.3 BILLION people to at least start to behave in a responsible manner.
Larry Folb
My sentiments exactly. Hopeful but far from optimistic.
crazy thought given his interest in heart wrenching third-world children; maybe John “First Amendment for me but not for thee” McCain will actually do something with NK and its starving children
Very truthful ideas are given in the article
Unfortunately author formulated them in a kinda not a very clear manner.
Comments are mostly shameful
Major Bill:
if our leader knows something
WHY IS HE DECEIVING US? SHAME ON HIM then
http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=09F9FC90-1752-4965-8D02-D2EFD4FB112B
there is no excuse for DECEPTION of American public on the highest executive level
May i quote from the link above because it is so important we realize this:
Loftus: I think what we carry away from Saddam’s secret files is that the average citizen today does not have a clue about world history because so much of it is classified. This is a theme that dates back to my congressional testimony in the 1980′s about Nazis in America. Russian double agent Kim Philby of British Intelligence dumped hundreds (if not thousands) of former Nazi war criminals in America, disguised as anti-communist freedom fighters. When US intelligence found out how badly they had been tricked, they covered it up for a half century, until I exposed it on 60 Minutes.
It is the cover-up that kills America, not the mistakes. The American people are forgiving, they know that all government agencies make mistakes from time to time. The American attitude is let’s fix it and move on. But the liars that cover up their mistakes are traitors to America, because they prevent their mistakes from ever getting fixed. One of my favorite old spies, George Orwell wrote: “The omission is the most powerful form of lie, and it is the duty of historians to ensure that those lies do not creep into the history books.” He was writing about the evils of communism and nazism, but he could just as easily have been writing about Saddam Hussein.
It wasn’t just the liberal press that was utterly wrong about Saddam Hussein having WMD, it was almost the entire mainstream press, and a good chunk of the conservative press went along with it. Heck, even all of the experts in the State Department drank Saddam’s cool aid. Truth be told, just about everyone bought into Saddam’s lie that he had no plans for making any more WMD. Right up to the end of his life, Saddam was even lying to his own jailer. He told this FBI Special Agent that he had no WMD, and was only lying about having WMD to intimidate the Iranians. The FBI Agent actually took Saddam’s word for it, and is publishing a book about him this week. The author is a wonderful agent, but he has been completely conned, as Saddam’s records show repeatedly. I am watching right now as the press praises the conventional wisdom, and tries to bury my report on what Saddam really said about WMD to his closest aides. If the press covers up the Saddam files, they have truly betrayed America.
An alumni of my high school (Boston Latin) once wrote that those who fail to learn the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat them. Iran tells us they have no WMD, but the truth is that they and their Syrian puppets are exploiting every hellish program that Saddam bequeathed to them. This is not over, Saddam may yet have his revenge: the Iranian are finishing the nuclear project that he started. Thank God for the Israelis, who twice now have blown up Saddam”s nuclear facilities: once in Osirak, Iraq, and now in Deir al Zour, Syria. The more things change, they more they stay the same. For once, can’t the press just admit they were wrong and move on? The only thing that matters is the truth, and the truth does not belong to the liberals or conservatives. It belongs to all of us.
I, too, have grown exasperated with the “soft power” verbiage of Condoleezza Rice and Christopher Hill in trying to make this (not working very well) agreement with the North Koreans actually work. Both (especially Hill) seem to have so much invested in their version of personal diplomacy “working” that their judgment is impaired.
The North Koreans and the Iranians seem very adept at the keep the vapid conversation alive and see what concessions we can wring approach to foreign policy.
The short essay is accurate in every detail, but it leaves open the important, puzzling, and tantalizing question: Why?
Why is Bush, willing to be adamant and use military force in two theaters, not willing elsewhere, such as Iran?
In that question lies one of the deepest mysteries of the political mind.
Kabud,
Nazis in brought into the USA and some used in intel was a scandal a few years after the war and has been dredged up every five or ten years since.
There was no cover up. Not much was done about it but cover up? Give me a break.
Read some history.
Mr Kabud,
Thank You for the link to the FrontPageMag article.
This is something that has perplexed me for quite some time. As you may guess, I have a little more awareness on the subject than I think most people do. Anyone with even the least bit of curiosity could do a very simple search on the web and discover that the U.S. has recovered hundreds of chemical munitions in Iraq. Why the President has not pointed that out is beyond me. I think that the reason the media doesn’t mention it is pretty obvious.
The Presidents’ statement about North Korea is interesting, and I suspect that the intended audience is not necessarily the U.S. public.
Respectfully,
Major Bill
Maybe this is an acknowledgement that we can’t confront everyone in the world. After all, we did our best to woo Vichy France and Franco’s Spain in WWll with some success. Spain stayed out of the main fight, leaving the Mediterranean open. Somehow, Claudia and her ilk think we have to be constantly at war or something is wrong.
There is only one way to deal with communists, and Beijing, NK, Kremlin are communists-
No trust, No fear, No negotiations
They are infiltrating our society since day ONE from 1918 or very close.
Today it yields the most devastating results, but it is just the begging
From what i learned in my 27 years spent in USSR, my contacts in their ruling elit, my relatives, some of them from the highest ranks and from all the years after false collapse of communism:
deception is their weapon that is a preparation for a FINAL SOLUTION
their society is just one big criminal conglomerate and we must expect ANYTHING AT ANY TIME
They mastered the art of manipulating of politicians in the Middle East Europe and USA to the unprecedented degree
But it is not going to JUST CORRUPTION or hidden deals
the people in power there are exactly the same kind of people who killed tens of millions of their own population,
in case of NK THEY ARE DOING IT TODAY
They WILL ATTACK US HERE IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY WITH ONE GOAL:
to kill us all. That is their only path to avoide justice
Because justice will be served on them.
I am sure in the end we will win it, but we may and most loikely will have enourmous casualties, think in terms of 9-11 but in millions, may be up to 2/3 of our population. They plan it.
We should get ready on the most serious level.
With polititians like we have- it may go very wrong
Just ask yourselfs:
WHY THEY KEEP AND DEVELOP MORE WMD?
No one threatens them. But the do it: Kremlin, Beijing, NK, Iran.
Everybody must ask them selfs this question: WHY MASS MURDERERS HAVE MORE WMD THEN WE DO HERE?
what a great name for the USDOS, Pompous Palace of Platitudes is an apt description of the US State Dept., the UN as well as all the other Wilsonian World Peace through weakness bildge that is pumped out by the Left!
What else do you expect Bush to drink? Adult beverages? as a former alcoholic with the iq of a retarded 5 year Kool Aid is already a stretch for Dubya!
Javelin, exactly what history you been reading? When did the US or the UK “woo Vichy France”? And exactly what would Franco’s Spain have done to close the Mediterranean? What Italy did?
Why do you we place our self indulgence, our own ambitions before the betterment of others or all? I am asking this because it seems that we can do so much to stop the pain and suffering of others by taking simple stands against injustice.
For instance why did the United States and other countries refuse to participate in the Olympics Games in protest of China’s involvement to help facilitate the genocide in Dar Far?
I commend Steven Spielberg from withdrawing his expertise in directing the event in China but why do we find it so hard to find solutions to issues that we face? Do we over think situations? Do we make them more complex than they really are? Or is it that we truly place our wants, desires, and ambitions before the rights of others. Or is it that we look for others, someone other than ourselves to step forward and solve these issues? Do we feel taking a stand is a hero’s job and not our own? Do we ignore these issues out of genuine ignorance or simply ignore them?
I am extremely bewildered by the actions of the UN, mostly China’s stance in insisting on keeping help at bay for the citizens of Darfur.
This thought is not about whether China deserves to host the Olympic Games or not, this is about the morality of every individual. If you are aware of the issues the people of Darfur face, why would you not feel compelled to protest the Olympic Games? Why would anyone in China not feel the same?
Why do the television stations who intend to air the Games, refuse to show them? Why not instead cover stories, run documentaries and promote the involvement of assistance for the people of Darfur?
China’s stance in insisting on keeping help at bay for the citizens of Darfur.
China has a vast oil deal with its (major ?) supplier, Sudan and even itself built and paid for a pipeline inside Sudan.
China sells arms to Sudan, some of which arms may have even been in play in the government’s (and janjaweed’s) actions in Darfur.
And of course China (and Russia) both use their positions on the UN Security Council to interfere with votes or sanctions on both Sudan and Iran. (the latter also a major supplier of oil to China)
However, once the IOC long ago named Beijing for these Olympics, I don’t believe in boycotting.
if there is a SINGLE act in international policy future president McCain can do- it is:
-final withdrawal of US from UN
-stopping funding this gang of thieves and -kicking them out of USA.
Plus:
a constitutional amendment should be considered to prohibit any kind of future participation of USA in any deceptive international conglomerate where principals of Liberty are not at rule
Every president wants a foreign policy legacy. He only took care of 1 out of 3 of the axis-of-evil. I guess he wants to fake the rest. The only good sign is that we finally have a president who won’t sell us out ‘solving’ the Palistinian problem. Although I do think he wanted to try.
All of it is pathetic really. Kicking tail and establishing Iraq is good enuogh, even if we wish for more.