Still awaiting Korea policy

It would be easy to blame the Clinton administration for North Korea's nuclear program.

Too easy, really.

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There's no question about it – they did what appeasers always do. They bribed Kim Jong-il for an agreement, then waved their "peace in our time" paper around for the television cameras.

Meanwhile, North Korea got oil, nuclear reactors and lots of high technology. Everything a rogue state could want – as well as time and space – to build its nukes.

Before the ink was dry on the piece of paper, North Korea was already violating every provision of the agreement.

Again, it would be easy to relive this history and blame the whole situation on the Clinton administration. Unfortunately, that is what Democrats are expected to do with such situations. They always insist that negotiations can solve all the world's problems. They're still insisting on it today – even as Kim is threatening to incinerate American cities with nuclear weapons the Democrats helped him build.

But I would like to know where we go from here.

I would like to know what the Bush administration policy is going to be toward North Korea.

I would like to know what contingency planning has been going on for this non-surprising moment in history.

What do we do now?

I've been waiting patiently for days, listening carefully to the utterances from the Bush administration. What I hear sounds, sadly, very familiar. It sounds a lot like what I would expect the Democrat appeasers to say.

The grand strategy appears to hinge on persuading China to help us "punish" Kim. We're going to go to the United Nations and get a strong resolution imposing sanctions on North Korea. And China, we're supposed to believe, is going to help us.

It's so na?ve.

Could they really believe this? How many times do people have to be disappointed by tyrannical military regimes that hate the U.S. before they wake up? Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results?

It's not as if we have to go back to ancient history to learn the lesson – though we could.

We're currently already involved in a nearly identical crisis with Iran in which we followed the same script!

We had hoped to block Iran's development of nuclear weapons by pursuing U.N. resolutions against the regime. Who disappointed us? Russia and China. Believe me, history will repeat itself. It always does.

Ask yourself this question: How would China benefit politically by stopping North Korea? They will no more put that Third World nation on a leash than Iran will put one on Hezbollah. North Korea serves China's interests, just as Hezbollah serves Iran's.

No amount of nice talk, no amount of mean talk, will change the equation. It's time for real actions. Because if there is no plan, you can bet we'll see even more proliferation of this kind. Why? Because there is no downside. How long will it be before Syria pursues its nuclear parity card? How long will it be before Saudi Arabia does?

Again, the problem is not really nuclear weapons. As dangerous as they are, in the right hands, they save lives. I'm even convinced that the only time they were ever used in war – against Japan – they saved lives, probably lots of American lives.

We don't worry about Great Britain's nuclear arsenal. We don't worry about Israel's nuclear arsenal. We don't even worry about France's. We know they have all served to keep the peace over the last 50 years.

It's not the weapon that really scares us. It's the people who wield it.

That's what we have to remember about North Korea.

So how are we going to deal with it?

I think the American people would like to know. And given the fact that there are only a few weeks until Election Day, maybe it's time for the Bush administration to articulate how they are going to fix this problem.

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