Thursday, January 09, 2003

Dear Leader Alert!
Michael Kelly clears up a few things in the Washington Post in Kick the (Korea) Can:
On North Korea, the conventional wisdom in Washington, which happens to be the same as the conventional wisdom in Pyongyang, goes roughly like this: George W. Bush triggered the crisis by excessive hardening-of-line and axis-of-evil-calling; Bush is compounding his hard-lining error by irresponsibly refusing to negotiate with Pyongyang; and, paradoxically, Bush is guilty of foreign-policy incoherence or worse in adopting a harder line toward Saddam Hussein than toward Kim Jong Il.

Conventional wisdom tends by its nature to get things wrong, but seldom this wrong and seldom this dangerously wrong. This is wrong to the point of divorce from reality.
And while we're on the subject of North Korea, y'all be pleased to know that Kofi Annan is helping out by sending over primo wingnut, Ernst Blofeld, er, Maurice Strong to "assess the humanitarian situation". You remember Maury, he's the author of the "Earth Charter" and the guy who thinks:
In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring this about?"
Oh yeah, he also thinks people are having too many children and should require licenses. He's had five so far. To speak of.