George Bush's gift to the future is not only poisonous, but atomic. History will not be kind to him, I think. Not only has he sown the seeds of World War III in the Middle East, but he has allowed North Korea to achieve what Clinton and the IAEA successfully prevented.
Condoleeza Rice's famous advice to Bush was "forgive Russia, ignore Germany, and punish France." I guess the parallel advice vis a vis the "axis of evil" was "invade Iraq, threaten Iran and ignore North Korea."
So now we have the DPRK loudly and proudly proclaiming its status as a nuclear power. And it's Bush's fault.
When the Bush regime took (yes
took) office, in its zeal to be all things anti-Clinton, it snubbed South Korea and
humiliated President Kim Dae-jung, whose
"Sunshine policy" had earned him a
Nobel Peace Prize.
Pyongyang subsequently restarted a breeder reactor that had been sealed since a 1994 agreement (Clinton again).
Bush insisted that six-party talks involving Japan, NK, South Korea, China, Russia and the US were the only venue in which his administration would deal with Kim Jong-il and Kim's nuclear ambitions. However, he made his disdain for the entire issue clear from the start, with his energy and resources focused on Iraq.
The North Koreans banned Undersecretary of State and notorious PNAC loose cannon John Bolton from the meeting for his comments just prior to the talks, after he made a speech calling DPRK a "hellish place" and Jong-il a "tyrannical dictator"-right before the start of the talks. True, perhaps, but remarks clearly intended to torpedo negotiations.
Since then, talks have gone nowhere. The most recent meeting ended without even so much as an agreement to meet again.
And now comes this week's news-which unfortunately, has been obscured by the Manchurian Beefcake tsunami here on dKos and in much of the lefty blogosphere.
Bush continues to insist on the six-party talks, but Pyongyang says no deal. From where I sit, it looks like Kim Jong-il has the upper hand right now. It will be interesting to see what Rice's next move will be. If previous behavior is any predictor of her next move, she'll be sitting tight in DC and the stalemate will continue, leaving the IAEA with its hands tied, and DPRK breeding plutonium, slowly but surely.
Thanks a lot, George.