Today John Nichols' blog editorial in
The Nation brings up an important point that most of the media are forgetting. In the 2004 presidential debates, it was John Kerry who warned that George Bush's mishandling of North Korea would cost America -- and it has.
Nichols writes:
Noting that the White House had failed to effectively engage North Korea's concerned neighbors and other nuclear powers in the process, Kerry said: "The Chinese are frustrated, the South Koreans, the Japanese are frustrated" by what he described as the president's neglectful and "ideologically driven" approach.
"I think that this is one of the most serious failures and challenges to the security of the United States, and it really underscores the way in which George Bush talks the game but doesn't deliver," explained the senator from Massachusetts, who spoke as one of the most experienced observers of arms control issues in Congress.
Describing what was happening two years ago in North Korea as "a nuclear nightmare," Kerry suggested that Bush's obsession with Iraq -- a country that did not have weapons of mass destruction -- had distracted the president and his administration from doing what was necessary to avert the greater threat posed by North Korea.
Nichols goes on to remind us of how conservatives attacked Kerry's comments, while the media paid little attention to Kerry's warnings. Yet here we are looking at a North Korea that is growing more dangerous by the day while we are up to our necks in the never-ending mess that is Iraq.
As Nichols wisely assesses:
...if the U.S. had elected a different president in 2OO4, the prospects for peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and throughout the region would be far greater than they are today.