There’s been a lot of chatter over the news that the warhead of a North Korean missile was found in Alaska.
Without much more info — where in Alaska, for example, which is not all that far from North Korea — it’s difficult for me to get too up in arms about this. But that’s not stopping some people from using this as proof that North Korea is a bigger threat than Iraq, and therefore US policy toward the latter is insane and should be immediately reversed.
Huh?
I mean, should we only be responding to the single biggest potential threat, and leave all others alone?
Or should we be responding to all threats the same? Are folks proposing we should move all those troops and ships and aircraft to the Sea of Japan and South Korea? Or, conversely if we’re pursuing multilateral talks regarding North Korea, we should be doing the same regarding Iraq?
Are all threats the same? If North Korea actually has nuclear weapons, and actually can reach US territory with its missiles, doesn’t that require a bit different of a response than to Iraq, which doesn’t have either capability … but clearly has sought the former and a more limited form of the latter?
(And doesn’t the “dangerous threat” of someone like Kim who’s gotten that capability actually provide justification for stopping someone like Saddam who’s seeking it?)
If some maniac like Kim gets off on getting paid attention to, should we indulge him and his ego by dropping everything every time he rattles his sabers?
What does the situation in Iraq have to do with the situation in North Korea, anyway? The US seems to be engaged in both locations. Diplomats in the area are busy. (Indeed, it’s more than a bit ironic that China, which keeps quietly supporting the UN inspections team approach in Iraq, keeps rejecting calls from the US for multilateral talks with North Korea.) Military forces are being shifted, and readied, if needed. I haven’t seen any indication that our activities regarding Iraq are inappropriately limiting our options or activities regarding North Korea.
Of course, concerns about North Korea would carry a lot more weight from commentators who are grasping for any reason to condemn the US policy relating to Iraq. Which might be why I don’t think that makes me “an idiot” or someone who is “walking with blinders on, having given up the right to question further what’s being done by the government.”
Of course, I don’t see the Iraq conflict as “all about avenging those who died on September 11th, 2001,” or as about being “blood for blood,” so what do I know?
The situation is separate yet related. I don’t see how Iraq — which has been contained — is a threat. N. Korea, on the other hand, is. I’m not calling for war — heaven forfend, given what they have sitting above the DMZ pointed at Seoul and other locations — but for something besides belligerence from Bush.
What would you do if you had the leader of the most powerful nation of the world 1) call you a “pygmy” in the international press, and 2) label you a member of the Axis of Evil?
Bush has refused to talk to a country that has the ability to do seriously bad things. Hussein doesn’t have the ability to harm the US directly. Claims that he would give any WMD to terrorists are just that — claims. He’s shrewd and knows once he gives them up, he is dead.
Containment has worked on Iraq and will continue to work.
But no, resources and energy that might better be spent diffusing the Korean problem are being spent in the Middle East.
That’s the bottom line here. We have a president who effectively has ADD; he can’t concentrate on multiple problems. Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t conform to that mentality, nor the black and white that he reads into it.
Iraq has hardly been contained. There’s every indication that, despite the sanctions regime (defended so hotly by some countries now, despite repeated past calls for its end, and covert bypassing of said sanctions by some of those same nations), Iraq has continued to do all it can to continue to develop long-range missiles, and chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs to go along with them. That it’s shown a willingness to attack its neighbors in the past, and, were it to obtain the weaponry it seeks, would clearly be in a position to do significant harm to the US by domination of the Middle East, makes it clear to me that it is an ongoing threat, albeit one that can be handled at this time by military force.
Is North Korea a threat? Certainly. Why it’s peculiarly a threat to the US, one that the North Koreans and others think needs to be handled solely by us, is a mystery to me. (Where are the French calls for inspectors in North Korea? Why does China insist that only the US should sit at the table with the North? Where are the human shields flocking to Tokyo and Seoul?)
Despite that, there are both diplomatic and military resources being brought to bear on the North Korean situation by the US. I see no deficit of attention. We’re just not running around and screaming that it’s the only problem that needs solving, or the one that needs to be solved first.
As to labeling North Korea as a member of the Axis of Evil … would you say that the North Korean regime is not an evil one?
The Anchorage Times provides a bit of additional analysis to the Korean missile claim.
And here’s a bit more on what the US is “doing” about North Korea.
Besides, clever snarks about the president’s supposed attention-deficit disorder — based on what, the fact that he isn’t a multitasking robot? the president does not have to do everything himself, that’s what he has a cabinet and advisors and the entire apparatus of the government and military for — hardly supports your argument.
SDB has an analysis of the Bush handling of the NK situation (especially viz Iraq) that I find myself pretty much in full agreement with.
And Eugene Volokh chimes in here with the same point as I do, only with tables.