Congressional Democrats, demanding a bold new approach to end a diplomatic standoff, urged the Bush administration on Wednesday to send the top U.S. negotiator to North Korea and press for an end to its nuclear weapons program.
Such a mission by Christopher Hill would demonstrate "our peaceful intent," said California Rep. Tom Lantos (news, bio, voting record), the top Democrat on the House International Relations Committee. Panel members quizzed Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns about the so-far futile effort to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons and missiles programs. ...Supported by several Democrats on the committee and one Republican, Rep. Jim Leach (news, bio, voting record) of Iowa, Lantos said, "The White House must try a new and bold approach to the vexing North Korean problem."
"I don't understand why it is in the United States' interest to keep them isolated," Leach said.
As a bonus, we are being told by our leaders that we need to prove our peaceful intent. That we haven't nuked North Korea for fifty years is irrelevant, I guess. No word on what North Korea has to do to prove their peaceful intent toward America, South Korea, and Japan.
Honestly, to those who consider talking an objective and not a means to an objective, I imagine the idea that there is a diplomatic stalemate seems like a defeat. It is not. We smile at them, they try to get us to write a check while we smile, and as time goes on the North Korean system slowly erodes. We smile some more at that development.
As to the inane question of why we might want to isolate North Korea? So they don't export nuclear weapons and so their hideous regime will erode, collapse, and die. Jeez dude, don't you attend any of the committee briefings?
Keep the check book in your pockets. The last thing we need is an earmark for a Bridge to Pyongyang.
