I'm no U.S. Senator but this approach is just ridiculous:
Seriousness is demonstrated by spelling out a package to the North Koreans that addresses their fundamental need for economic assistance. It is demonstrated by rhetorical restraint. Name-calling aimed at our opponent has only hampered diplomacy. Seriousness means sending a senior U.S. official to meet with Kim Jong Il. And the way to know whether we have been trying hard enough is to determine whether our Asian negotiating partners also think diplomacy has been exhausted.
Urgency is well demonstrated by putting forth a timetable. The administration should take a page from its aborted diplomacy toward Iraq. Just as we did with Iraq, we should negotiate with the Europeans, Asians and others to set international -- read United Nations -- deadlines for solving the crisis. The North Koreans have said they regard a U.N. sanctions resolution as tantamount to war, and Security Council members such as China are not likely to support sanctions unless there is a failure of diplomacy that the international community views as entirely North Korea's fault. Just as we worked with our allies to set deadlines for U.N. inspections in Iraq, we should seek a deadline for the next meeting with North Korea and another one for a final diplomatic agreement.
I have to laugh. North Korea's fundamental need for assistance flows from North Koreas despotism that funneled all resources into nukes. Why validate such a decision by North Korea? They could get all the assistance they need if they unilaterally cancelled their nuke programs and starting feeding their people.
Seriousness is demonstrated by not being stampeded into validating North Korea's nuclear option or their blackmail program.
As for name-calling hindering diplomacy, this is clearly rot since the authors are eager for diplomacy despite two generations of North Korean verbal assaults on us and our allies. If we have to endure their tirades, they can endure our accurate descriptions of their democidal tyranny.
And a deadline? Like with Iraq? Did they just compare their proposal with their past efforts to require X + 1 UNSC resolutions, where X = the number of current resolutions on the subject? And I guess they just telegraphed their intention to turn on any US military efforts to deal with North Korea after exhausting diplomacy. I do appreciate that.
And let me clue them in. Diplomacy is exhausted. We have little choice to be patient now and wait for the North to collapse. I am happy with the 6-party talks precisely because they can never lead to any agreement. I fear any agreement will just be a cover for surrendering either explicitly or by failing to enforce what the North 'agrees' to do. As it is, the talks (or hope of talks) keep the North teetering along with the hope that we will break and just bribe them instead of making them face the stark choice of collapse or war.
North Korea wants nukes, so the talks are doomed just from this point of view. Plus, our negotiating partners of China, Russia, and South Korea don't really want to stop North Korea from going nuclear. Only America and Japan share this goal.
But like I said, I want the talks to continue just to give North Korea hope that they'll win at talks while they collapse.
And despite the good senators' calls for bold surrender, the North Koreans have crawled back to the talks:
"The U.S. side clarified its official stand to recognize (North Korea) as a sovereign state, not to invade it and hold bilateral talks within the framework of the six-party talks," KCNA reported.
North Korea has long demanded that Washington apologize for remarks by Rice labeling it as one of the world's "outposts of tyranny." North Korea said Saturday it took Hill's comments at the Beijing meeting as "a retraction" of that earlier remark and decided to return to the nuclear talks.
The nuclear talks with representatives from China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the two Koreas last happened in June 2004. Since then, North Korea has refused to attend, citing "hostile" U.S. policies.
Hey, whatever they need to tell themselves to sleep at night. The North Koreans had to really want to return to talks to portray recent events as meeting their demands.
Thank goodness we didn't rush to offer a package addressing the North's fundamental needs and establishing a timetable for giving up as the senators suggested. It might have gotten in the way of the Pillsbury Nuke Boy scrambling back to talks before his sorry-ass state collapses around him.
Hey, I'm under no obligation to restrain my rhetoric. I am hostile.
