I gave this North Korea nuke "deal" a few days to digest and, frankly, I'm still nauseous. I realize the incessant carping and whining from the Left that we have to negooooootiate and use diplooooooomacy with every Third-World wackjob dictator out there reached a mind-numbing level a long time ago. But to become brain dead to the point of making any kind of deal with this fruitcake?
What are we? Charlie Brown?
Now granted, this isn't the same kind of deal brokered by Slick Willie and his crew back in the mid-90s. In that agreement, an us-and-them-only deal, we gave North Korea a ton of money (humanitarian aid, wink-wink) and basically built nuclear reactors for them in exchange for ... drum roll ... their promise to use them for "peaceful purposes."
Kinda obvious how that deal panned out.
This time, it's a six-party deal, involving our close (cough) allies China and Russia along with South Korea and Japan, which ... let's be honest here ... possess all the muscle of a poodle in this particular ring of pit bulls. The payoff this time, termed "emergency energy assistance," is a gradual supply of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil ... for starters. So at least this time, we're not handing them another loaded gun. And hey, they've agreed to monitoring and verification by the IAEA as they "halt and eventually eliminate" their nuclear program, including shutting and sealing their Yongbyon nuclear facility.
That's how the agreement was described in the West. In North Korea, it was described as "a temporary suspension of nuclear activity." Which is all this has any realistic hope of being.
We just refuse to learn.
(Imported from Feb. 16, 2007)
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