See it here on YouTube. While I disagree with the intent of the ad, it being full of 20/20 hindsight-y goodness, I did find it quite amusing. And I have no idea of its authenticity.
Quick summary, it starts with Madeline Albright (an actress, of course) going to N Korea and giving Kim Jong Il the basketball signed by Michael Jordan. And then it proceeds to describe all manner of horrors that Korea has accomplished while Madeline mows the grass outside Kim’s office, cheerleads at basketball games, and changes a flat tire on a terrorist’s limo. The point being that the Pub’s get tough foreign policy would have stopped Kim Jong Il long ago. Funny stuff, actually, I just don’t believe it and am not swayed just because I laughed.
I heard a radio interview a couple days ago with someone who said that North Korea was on the verge of having an atomic weapon when Madeline Albright made her trip there in 2000, and they immediately began cheating on the agreement she arranged.
The U.S. started the Manhattan Project in 1942 and had a working bomb three years later. And we’re supposed to believe that North Korea passed the point-of-no-return six years ago (under a different administration, of course) and just had their first test now?
North Korea is a much much poorer nation than 1942 America. America was the world leader in physics at the time, due to all the european jewish refugees who had settled here. North Korea is a tiny nation enduring starvation due to their ruinious economic and political system.
Why is it so hard to believe it took North Korea 6 years to build a bomb once they decided to build one? I don’t get it.
I’m still trying to figure out how far back in history political hacks can possibly go to blame someone else for today’s problems. If Democrats blamed Reagan for North Korea having a nuke, would people believe it? If Republicans started blaming this whole mess on Truman for firing MacArthur, would that drive more conservatives to the polls?
The claim was that North Korea was “on the verge” of having a bomb in 2000, not that they started their program then.
If someone wants me to hold Madeline Albright responsible for North Korea having an atomic bomb, they have to explain why the test happened six years after she left.
Well, I don’t blame Albright or Clinton for not stopping North Korea from getting a nuclear bomb, because the reality is that short of war and regime change there is no way to prevent a sufficiently determined country from building a nuclear bomb. It might be fair to claim that Albright and Clinton’s policies did nothing to stop the NK nuke, but I also fail to see what different policy would have worked to prevent a NK nuke.
Wait. How did he “let them”? Seriously, this makes no sense.
NK had stopped the plutonium bomb program, in return Clinton’s offer of food and fuel oil. However, they secretly started working on a uranium bomb. So Bush cancels the food and fuel. So NK resumes work on the plutonium bomb, which they apparantly tested last week.
I suppose continuing the food and fuel might have kept the plutonium bomb from going forward, but would you honestly recommend continuing to send aid, because at least then they weren’t developing a plutonium bomb? Plutonium, uranium, both are nuclear bombs, right?
What action did Bush take to prevent NK from enriching plutonium, and thus develop their bomb?
He took no effective action. In other words, he let them build their nuke.
Again, what action should he have taken to prevent them from getting the bomb? War? Aside from invading North Korea, what should he have done? Send more bribes, even though North Korea has restarted their uranium program?
You can only negotiate with someone who wants to negotiate.
That’s not my problem. By failing to find an effective course of action, president Bush allowed North Korea to build and test a bomb.
Clinton found a way to prevent NK from building and testing a bomb in the 90’s. Why should we ask less of Bush?
Excuse me if I may take a break from the debate over whether North Korea getting the bomb is Clinton’s fault, but is anyone at least a little sad that David Zucker is responsible for this ad?* As somebody who loved Airplane, “Police Squad!”, etc., it truly is disappointing to see him become a shill for the right-wing fearmongers who are running the GOP.
*Am I correct in assuming that David (Airplane) Zucker did this ad? If not, and it turns it it’s just a copy of the Z-A-Z style of filmmaking, disregard everything I said.
I’ll tell you two ways Bush failed to prevent the test.
He has destroyed America’s credibility in the international arena and thus it’s ability to form coalitions to take virtually ANY collective action from blockade to military intervention.
He has devasted Ameica’s nilitary readiness and capability to respond to crises by a pointless war in Iraq.
Except in this case, military action was always off the table, barring military action by North Korea.
We can’t and won’t intervene militarily in NK without the permission of South Korea. And they would be devastated in any war with North Korea. So they will never sign off on any sort of war or bombing of North Korea.
We never had the option to invade North Korea. Bush didn’t take it off the table. It has always been off the table.
I’ll agree that it’s as silly to claim that Clinton or Albright “let” NK develop nuclear weapons as it is to claim Bush let them.
Unless, of course, there simply wasn’t an effective course of action. I don’t think there was.
Timing. It was inevitable, if you ask me.
Now, let’s consider Iran. All the experts say they’re more than 2 years away from making a bomb. If a democrat wins the presidency and they test a bomb in 5 years, will blame that guy/gal for “letting” Iran get the bomb? Or will you come back and say it was Bush’s fault?
Oh, and are you ready to sign up for the “Reagan/Bush brought the Soviet Empire to its knees” fanclub? After all, that happened while they were president? Reagan said: Tear down this wall, and sure enough it happened!
We’ll never know now, will we?
Hindsight being 20/20 though, it wouldn’t have hurt for Bush to have pushed a little harder for framework compliance before he released $95 million to NK for nuke plant construction back in early 2002: US grants N Korea nuclear funds.
Why’d the president slack off before the uranium enrichment story even came out?
Airstrikes or cruise missile strikes might have been an option, though I don’t know enough to say whether there were enough known target locatopn so that hitting them would put a serious dent in NKs nuke capability. But assuming the US military had a high degree of confidence they could cripple NK’s nclear program,
South Korea would no doubt hac been asked, but they wouldn’t necessarily have a veto.
In a pre-Iraq world the President could have stood up and said, “Today we have destroyed North Korea’s nuclear capability, and we have reaffirmed our commitment to our mutual defense treaty with South Korea. Any attack by North Korea on the South will be considered an attack upon the United States,”
That would have been a hell of a lot better war to fight than Iraq – but I’m guessing more likely Lil Kim would just piss and moan and do nothing.
And I don’t say the US would have done this, but Lil Kim would have considered it a serious possibility and maybe one to be avoided.
