Every Place Will Be Vietnam for Fifteen Minutes

Yesterday, I posted on NKZone about the Bush Administration’s emerging strategy–which I believe to be the correct one–of choosing to economically (and hopefully, politically) undermine North Korea rather than resorting to an attack, as President Clinton nearly did, or more interminably pointless diplomacy with a regime that won’t negotiate in good faith or keep its agreements.

Rick Vaughn disagrees; he posted this comment:

How on earth can the DPRK get any more economically isolated??? I’m not sure that anyone in DC actually understands what the everyday people in North Korea are going through in terms of economic hardships. Kim still won’t be affected. The US already tried this with Iraq: bullying a soveriegn nation into doing things the “free and democratic” way, albeit at gunpoint. Didn’t happen. Imposing no-fly zones over or restricting trade in someone else’s country is the worst kind of bullying and shows complete disregard on the US’s part for how the other side thinks, let alone disregard of cultural and political considerations in other parts of the planet. I still have some hope that North Korea will be able to transit to a more peaceful and commercial lifestyle, without having to give up their belief system or lifestyle if that’s what the people of North Korea really want. Kind of like Vietnam, in a way.

Wow. So where to start?

How on earth can the DPRK get any more economically isolated???

Apparently, Rick presumes that the North Korean regime is isolated because it prefers to keep its starving masses that way. False, false, false, and false. All that surplus wealth has a source, naturally–North Korea’s trade with the outside world, much of it in weapons and dope. The regime uses that wealth to sustain and buy the loyalty of its power structure–the party elite, the military, the secret police, and the small segment of industry that still runs. The remainder of the population has been on its own and starving since the early 1990’s. They will never see any benefits from trade with the rest of the world, and cutting off the trade would have relatively little effect on them. Cut off the trade, and the party elite–which does depend on that trade–gets a sample of misery it inflicts on the majority of the (surviving) population. More significantly, it could destabilize the regime’s power structure, which is the only way to free and feed the majority of the North Korean people.

The US already tried this with Iraq: bullying a soveriegn (sic) nation into doing things the “free and democratic” way, albeit at gunpoint. . . .

There are many ways to define “sovereign,” I suppose. To some, it means possession of helicopter gunships and control of the secret police dungeons. Others would say it means a seat in the General Assembly, although that often comes down to saying exactly the same thing. If you accept that definition, then I suppose the governments of North Korea and Ba’athist Iraq were both sovereign. You could extend that logic to argue that the Crips have “sovereignty” over Normandie Avenue, or that Tony Soprano has “sovereignty” over the North Jersey sanitation workers, but that kind of sovereignty doesn’t deserve the respect or legitimacy that only comes from the consent of the governed. The people who live under such regimes have no more say in their own governments than they have over the weather patterns.

If it didn’t? Then I must have hallucinated and this.

The worst kind? Worse than keeping 200,000 people in gulags? Or using food as a political weapon against the hungry? Or gassing children together with their parents to test chemical weapons intended for use against cities? Or, as we see today, shooting dissidents in front of firing squads? If being selective about your trading partners is bullying, I suppose you’re a strong supporter of globalism and the WTO, then? And you buy products made in China or Burma at every opportunity? And oppose trade restrictions based on the use of child and slave labor? Are we bullies if we expect the products we buy to be made by free laborers working at freely negotiated wages and, hopefully, reasonably safe working conditions? Or can we at least demand to see some evidence that trade is improving the lives of the people? Are we bullies if we ground the helicopter gunships that would otherwise be dumping phosgene on day care centers and mowing down crowds of protestors? I think not. It is a warped sense of justice indeed to clothe Kim Jong Il and Chemical Ali in victimhood by self-rightous bullies while calling for the severed head of Kathie Lee Gifford.

I still have some hope that North Korea will be able to transit to a more peaceful and commercial lifestyle, without having to give up their belief system or lifestyle if that’s what the people of North Korea really want.

Ummm, belief system? Are you frigging kidding me? As for what the North Korean people want, such things are typically measured in elections. If that’s what you’re proposing for North Korea, perhaps we agree on something after all. How about next month?

Kind of like Vietnam.

Yes, imposing economic sanctions is kind of like sending 550,000 combat troops and a fleet of B-52s, in the same way that plutonium is kind of like butter cream frosting. Iraq was Vietnam, too, until the election (ours, that is). Afghanistan was Vietnam for nearly a month. Bosnia and Kosovo were Vietnam for two or three weeks each. Panama was Vietnam for six hours. Grenada was Vietnam for forty-five whole minutes. Knott’s Berry Farm may also be Vietnam on certain nuanced levels.

It’s time for a new “Vietnam Corollary” to Godwin’s Law, which holds that over the course of a discussion thread, the probability of a comparison to Adolf Hitler approaches one, at which point the discussion has lost its rational bearing. It’s almost equally certain that most Vietnam comparisons will be just as irrelevant, inane, and unsupported, and will be just as sure a mark of a proponent’s paucity of facts and reason.

Or ideas. Speaking of which, let’s hear a better one.