Posted by
arandomguy on Tuesday, October 10, 2006 5:29:20 PM
This is ridiculous. Many Democrats, in response to the recent nuclear provocations by North Korea, have called on the Bush administration to engage in direct talks with North Korea. They believe it is the easiest way to deliver a "forceful" message to North Korea, and the most likely way to get them to disarm.
This is baloney. It is too late to get North Korea to disarm. Once somebody has something, you cannot say "you cannot have that." Yes, we could take away their nukes, but this implies that we could get inside North Korea long enough to find and destroy their nuclear weapons - an unrealistic notion.
The proper course of action, would have been to stop North Korea before they acquired and successfully tested nuclear weapons. And who was president when NK was building its nuclear stockpile? You guessed it, Bill Clinton. Madeline Albright is seen smiling and shaking hands with Kim Jong Il - less than a year before KJI would totally flout the agreement and continue to test and develop nuclear materials.
Action should have been taken long ago to prevent NK from ever acquiring the tools necessary to create nuclear weapons. That it was not, is a serious problem, because now the world is forced to reap (once again) the consequences for Clinton's failed defense policies.
Talks with North Korea will not work. And it is certainly not the easiest way to deliver a forceful message. Indeed, the easiest way to deliver a forceful message is to scrap the message altogether, and focuse instead on forceful action. North Korea doesn't care about words. They don't really care about actions either, but at least the actions get something done. Nothing is accomplished with talks - and North Korea most certainly won't disarm now with a successful (or was it) test of a nuclear weapon.
The notion that we can talk with these people is one I guess I will never understand. It has no basis in reason or logic, or any other form of rational human thought. It makes absolutely no sense, to talk to terrorists. Kim Jong Il isn't a terrorist - he's a rogue dictator. However, we can't talk to him either, because he is so fanatical that he won't bother to listen.
And this is obvious to anybody who so much as spends 30 seconds learning about the man. He is mentally unstable (i.e. completely and unremittingly insane) and he is so fanatical that he will not modify his delusional positions regardless of any action taken against him.
With this in mind, the US should prepare for harsh measures against him, because even if he does not submit, he will still be hurt by tough sanctions, or military action (which, despite what the UN says, cannot be pulled totally off the table).
What the North Korean situation shows, above all, is the failure of diplomacy with terrorists and fanatics. They don't want to talk. They just want to do whatever it is they do - for terrorists, kill Americans and Jews. For Kim Jong Il, just.. grandstand. No matter what the US says, and no matter what the US does, they will not change or modify their position. So the only way to get them to stop, is to make it so they are unable to - by sanctions (a weak show of force), or military action (a strong show of force). The US must now choose between the two (and I pray to god that they choose between these two, and not some sissy alternative option).