North Korea - The perils of history forgotten

To make the best decisions on how to approach current problems it is important to have a clear understanding of history and how it applies to a present situation. A fundamental flaw with virtually all left-wing philosophies, ideas, policies, etc. is their lack of any historical rooting. This is no where on better display today than as regards North Korea and the current tantrum it’s throwing for attention (of course it is also on display in ways numerous and sundry all about us). A look at even recent history will show that the Clinton Administration’s policies towards North Korea were a total failure. All they did was take a dying regime developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and give it the time, food, and energy it needed to stay afloat until it could finish its task. The sole “success” was to get North Korea to put cameras on their fuel rods containing plutonium until they were ready to process them. Longer-term history of course shows that rewarding tyrants always yields greater problems down the road. Child psychology will also show that rewarding bad behavior shockingly causes a child to misbehave even more. Yet liberals insist on doing it every time (except, for example, when they overreact and bomb an aspirin factory to show how tough we are).

Despite the unambiguous failure of her policy, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is running around telling everyone that the policies of the 90’s worked while President Bush’s have not. Though true that Bush has not had any spectacular successes on the North Korea front, his policies are at least a little more grounded in the reality of the situation (that there isn’t much we can do, and that it is not primarily our problem, there are others for whom it is a much bigger problem who should be the ones at the forefront of solving it) and in the knowledge that Clinton’s policies backfired. Since the end of the Cold War we have had a problem or deal with North Korea in 1992, 1994 (almost led to war), 1998 (missile launched over Japan), 2000, 2002, and now 2006 (the exceptions were 1996 when North Korea’s puppet master China decided to cause a crises over Taiwan instead, and 2004 when little Kim feared he was the next little punk to get sent to detention). Short of regime change or collapse there is nothing that will change this pattern. All we can do is avoid giving North Korea anything for its misbehavior and encourage the collapse scenario before change becomes necessary. Any other outcome will require the East Asians to act much more than they have shown themselves willing or capable of doing.

It is true the North Koreans may become more vocal and throw louder tantrums, but as anyone who has watched “Super Nanny” or “Nanny 911” knows, this is to be expected when little brats no longer get their way and are expected to behave. As it is, the situation in North Korea has become progressively worse. The regime, since we ended aid, has so few resources that it is forced to allow the army to rot away, an exceptionally dangerous move. They have also been forced to behave in a manner that is angering even their colonial master. The last thing we need to do is to put the regime back on life support so it has the time and resources it needs to perfect its nuclear tipped Amerika-missile. This is certainly not ideal as Kim could start a war and use his nukes if his regime collapses, but that is the situation we are in due to the Clinton Administration’s failures. I am not saying this policy will avoid a war with North Korea, but given the present situation, it will maneuver it into happening at a more advantageous time for us. Thanks to Albright and her crowd, “advantageous” is now only Seoul being nuked. The only other option is to get used to forever paying our Danegeld to the pipsqueak of Pyongyang and every other wannabe tin pot despot out there who copies him. This is what happens when smarter-than-everyone-else liberals make policy, history is forgotten (well, never learned) and is thus repeated.