I think you’re being generous to John Mace’s argument. He, more offensively and less intelligently, suggested that the Clinton policy was entirely represented by Albright drinking wine with the Koreans. Apparently, it wasn’t a matter of simply carrots, but of getting very cozy and drinking with them, with perhaps some sexual overtones.
He characterizes this as a failure because there are suspicions and little evidence for a Korean program of uranium enrichment. Meanwhile, a completely inept Bush policy that resulted in the actual detonation of a nuclear device is regarded as equally successful. At least it has the advantage of making us feel manly!
If they actually had a uranium enrichment program, why did they need to make a big production out of breaking the seals on the plutonium rods? Wouldn’t they be better off giving the impression of compliance and developing their uranium enrichment capacities in secret?
I don’t think John pushed much on the Clinton angle, and you seem to be thinking of Zucker, who made the campaign commerical for the Republicans that you are describing that even they found too silly and dishonest to air. Of course, the election being so close, who knows what they’ll try? Heck, this is a great fucking time to start a war in the hopes that it will cover up the fact that your party is circling the bowl no? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Bush spends the next month dramatically grappling with North Korea and demanding patience and prayers for his efforts and America. Also, little american flags are important.
Of course, had he perhaps spent some time actually doing something more on this issue, we might not actually be at this point to begin with.
'Course not, but as RTF pointed out, what Bush says defines what Bush’s “own standards” are. The topic of this thread is whether the Administration has managed to live up to the expectations it set for itself on foreign policy.
You were asking back in post #3 what those standards were, and I think the quote I gave from Bush in December 2002 answers that question with regard to their policy aims for North Korea.
You know, I already agred with you in an earlier post that you can declare Bush’s policy a failure as judges by his own standards (see post #41). But now we’re just engaging in a “battle of the cites” regarding Clinton’s policies. If you read the PBS cite I gave earlier, it makes it clear that all the NK’s did was use their compliance to the Agreed Framework as a cover for a continued uranium enrichment program. In retrospect, we shouldn’t have allowed rjung’s stupid comment about Clinton to hijack this thread. I’ll take the bulk of the blame for allowing that to happen with my throw-away post in response to his throw-away post. There are two other active threads in GD where that discusion is taking place anyway.
So, since we both agree that Bush’s NK policy is a failure, by his own standards, shall we move on to the other three?
With Iran, the standards should be the same-- ie, that Iran doesn’t get nukes. Right? Well, they don’t have nukes, so I don’t see how we can declare Bush’s policy to be a failure.
Afghansitan: It’s not clcear to me that Bush’s own standards were for proliferating democracy in the M.E., Firstly, Pakistan isn’t even in the M.E., but can we have some cites from you as to what Bush’s policy was there? I seem to remember it was to overthrow the Taliban, destroy al Qaeda’s training camps, and capture the guys responsible for 9/11. Before we move on, I think we need to agree on what Bush’s “own standards” were.
Iraq: Similarly, I think the whole spreading democracy goal was a secondary one wrt the WMD goal, and to the extent that spreading democract was a goal, it was a long term one. I don’t recall Bush giving a timetable for the spread of democracy, but if you a cite concerning that goal, I’m open to being correccted. As I said earlier, though, it’s very clear to me that Bush never indicated that he thought Iraq was be in the horrible condition it is now-- especially 3 1/2 years after the invasion. And wrt to what I saw as the main goal (WMD), that seems like a moot point since no WMDs were there when we invaded. If you want to consider that to be a “failure” of Bush’s own standards, I’ll not argue with that. I can’t imagine how one could construct a scenario in which the Iraq policy is not a failure except in the way you’ve framed it, and only because it’s simply too early to tell.
No, that was you poo-pooing Hentor’s defense of Clinton’s North Korea policy.
I was merely referring to the United States’ policy towards North Korea pre-GWB, which was started under Bush Sr. and continued under Bill Clinton. But I imagine such a subtle distinction must’ve gotten lost in your zeal to find an excuse to take a cheap potshot at me.
Do you get a nickel every time you mention my name or something?
I think it’s perfectly legitimate, in a discussion about Bush’s policy, to compare it with the policy in effect before him. Whether it was Clinton’s or not, it was working. John Mace just had to go all Freeper about it for some reason.
Everybody forgets that we are still trapped in Kosovo-its going on 7 years now. The fact is, we (the USA) and Europe have a very limited power to influence events in the world. This isn’t post WWII; we have neither the will nor the means to take on every problem in the world. Howcan we (short of war) tell the N. Koreans what to do? Or make the IRAQIS LIKE DEMOCRACY? We should mind our own business, and persue energy independence. The fact is, the elite of this country do NOT send their children to serve in the military-that’s reason enough to conclude that intervening in most of the world’s problems isn’t good idea.
By that standard, we’ve been ‘trapped’ in Korea for the past 56 years, and we were ‘trapped’ in West Germany for 45 years.
And Iraq - man, if that isn’t a trap, what is it?
We’re in lots of places where we don’t have a good exit strategy. But at least in Kosovo, we don’t have that many troops there, and they aren’t getting killed.
I would recommend avoiding the slanted language unless it actually makes sense when one pulls back and looks at the forest, rather than at one tree in isolation.
Nonsense. Look at the great strides we’ve made in the past four years to destabilize the Middle East. Do you think some lesser power like Canada or Spain could have done that? I think not!
We can’t tell Kim Jong Il what to do. That’s why it’s called diplomacy. Negotiation.
Aren’t you a little late to this party? I don’t remember your speaking out against the impending war four years ago.
I mean, feel free to switch sides on this one, but at least acknowledge that you’ve done so if that’s the case.
Ron Suskind has a pretty good overview of Libya’s normalization in “The Tyrant Who Came In From the Cold” in the October 2006 Washington Monthly.
It’s also interesting in that it describes a meeting in September 2000 in which then-candidate Bush was warned in no uncertain terms by the CIA about the al-Qaeda threat.
