ALMOST FAMOUS

What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul? I suspect Joshua Micah Marshall will eventually know the answer to that question. He was on CNN's Crossfire tonight, spinning North Korea like a tornado. He seems intensely interested in the difference between plutonium and uranium--that difference and how it relates to the present circumstances seems to be his new line of attack against the Bush adminstration. That's a sideshow and he knows it--US intelligence estimates have for years now stated that the North already has one or two nuclear weapons, so the difference between the two programs is moot: The weapons are there, thanks in part to the unverifiable 1994 Agreed Framework. Unfortunately, it's obvious that the real questions never get asked on Crossfire, or they'd ask him to answer the following:

On your blog, you claim (second-hand) that several Clinton administration officials are ready to state on the record that they knew about North Korea's clandestine nuclear program, and that they briefed the incoming Bush team about it. When did they learn of North Korea's cheating? Why didn't they confront North Korea at the time? If they knew about Pyongyang's nuclear programs, why did they continue to deliver the aid promised in the 1994 Agreed Framework, which North Korea was violating? A 1999 Congressional study concluded that North Korea was cheating on the '94 deal. That panel was led by conservative Republicans--is that the reason the Clinton adminstration failed to follow up on it? As you state, the Clinton administration knew of the North's cheating but declined to confront it, and continued to deliver the promised aid anyway. Was this a sensible policy? What possible good could come from such a policy?

You'll never see anyone ask him or any other Clinton toady those questions. They get too close to the truth, which is that Clinton's rank partisanship and his foreign policy incompetence have led us directly to the present situation.

For the record, the totality of the Clinton policy is what we conservatives have been labelling "appeasement" for years: Signing unverifiable agreements (as opposed to treaties, which come under Congressional scrutiny), suspecting that the other party is cheating on the agreement but failing to take up the issue, and delivering on our end of the deal anyway. Has there ever been a more craven, self-defeating policy than that one? Also for the record, and you can look this up here and here, the Bush administration's stance has always been that negotiation isn't appeasment. Since the completion of its policy review in June 2001, the Bush team has been willing to talk to the North, but not with the preconditions the North routinely puts on those talks. Falling for the North's demands would be appeasment, and the Bush administration thus far hasn't done that. In short, negotiation isn't appeasment. Giving away the store and getting nothing in return is appeasement.

By the way, if you really want to see a lie straight from Marshall's cyber-mouth, check out his latest post. He says the GOP "abandoned" the freed slaves to Jim Crow after Reconstruction. Ahem--which party enacted Jim Crow? Which party did Dwight Eisenhower belong to? Wasn't he the one who sent troops into Arkansas to force desegregation? Which party's representatives in the House and Senate voted in greater intra-party majorities to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Answers: southern Democrats enacted Jim Crow, after successfully driving the "carpetbagger" Republicans out. Eisenhower was a Republican, and yes, he used the National Guard to desegrate schools and colleges in the 50s. And the GOP voted in substantially greater majorities to pass the '64 Civil Rights Act than did Democrats. In that one simple statment about the GOP abandoning the slaves, Marshall is either ignorant or lying--take your pick.

Oh, one other point (yes, that particular post infuriated me, and not even for the anti-Bush nonsense--I expected that). Marshall says the US betrayed the East European states that fell into the USSR's orbit by force after World War II. That is a monstrous lie. The truth is that after the war, the USSR was in a position to do what it wanted to those states, while the US had essentially two options: Start up a second war to free them, or leave them be. The first option was considered, but ultimately turned down out of consideration for all involved. Allied Europe needed rebuilding, Japan still needed defeating, and the American people were sick of war. There was no support for going east from Berlin and liberating the states that became the Eastern Bloc. To suggest that that constitutes a betrayal is a betrayal of its own: It betrays the decency of America's wartime leaders, and ultimately betrays Marshall's narrow, simplistic view of history. In his world, US relations with North Korea began in 2001, and the relationship was entirely botched by George W. Bush. Anything that didn't work out perfectly with Reconstruction or the ending of World War II constitutes an intentional betrayal. Newsflash--the world isn't Pollyanna perfect. Some things don't work out, not because America or Republicans did a bad thing, but simply because there are other factors beyond anyone's control. Marshall in that post has destroyed what was left of his credibility in my eyes.

I do find it fascinating, though, that on the one hand Marshall will libel Democrats long dead for things they didn't do (such as liberating Eastern Europe), while he will leave no falacious argument unused when it comes to defending his boy Bill. It is obvious why after tonight. You can slander the dead and never have to pay for it, while defending Clinton and trashing Republicans gets you a guest spot on CNN.

UPDATE: InstaPundit wades into the North Korea quagmire, comparing South Korea to Theo Huxtable (the son on The Cosby Show). And strange as it may seem, the analogy holds together. He makes some good points, especially regarding South Korean collaboration with the North's horrors. That's actually become an underground issue both in South Korea and Japan in the past year or two, because both governments knew that the North had been kidnapping their citizens for years yet did nothing to a) stop it or b) make an issue of it in talks with the North. That's changing, thanks to a courageous Japanese mother (her name escapes me at the moment) whose daughter was kidnapped by North Korean agents 20 years ago. The mother has written books (one of which my wife read a month or so ago), pestered successive Japanese governments and done anything she can to highlight her plight. Slowly, Tokyo is showing signs here and there that it may make an issue of the kidnappings. So I think Glenn is on to something when he mentions that collaboration is one reason the South Korean government is hesitant to open up the North. Economics play a role here too, as I've discussed before, but it's important to consider these factors when discussing US relations with South Korea. As I've said before, our interests and South Korea's are to some degree in conflict over the short term, though our long-term interests are compatible: A unified, democratic Korea with a healty relationship with the US. That happens to also be a Chinese nightmare, and isn't exactly high on Japanese priorities, which goes far to answer some of the "why isn't so and so cooperating with us better" questions.