Life Imitates ‘Team America,’ Part 2

Yesterday, I noted how the reality of the United Nations had upstaged the intentional farce of “Team America: World Police,” a movie that proved too prescient for its shelf life. Today, President Bush counsels patience as Russia and China do their “Hans Brix” impression and Republicans in Congress express their frustration.

“We do know there’s a lot of concentration camps. We do know the people are starving,” [Bush] said. “But what we don’t know is his intentions. And so I think we’ve got to plan for the worst and hope for the best.”

Bush could go far to illustrate the cynicism of the U.N. collective (absence of) values by tying those concerns to a call for an arms embargo on North Korea, a nation that has no business squandering the larders of the starving on weapons of mass murder and extortion. On North Korea, our mantra should be “isolate the regime, engage the people.”

On the editorial page, the WaPo nails it, at least with regard to dealing with the regime. Not only does the Post realize that the U.S. may have to “go it alone” (a phrase always loaded with the imprecise exclusion of allies, but never mind) it sees the pointlessness of those predictable calls for bilateral talks. To what end? To discuss what demand? To say what, that we haven’t said dozens of times, in innumerable arrangements, venues, table shapes, and languages over last decade?

Hawkish language without a corresponding firmness on more tangible things is the worst of all worlds. It it an approach that annoys friends but earns no respect from foes. So let the U.N. facade go on for a few more days, if for no other reason than to give Kim Jong Il the chance to flout his belligerency and the devious cyncism of Putin and Hu. This, in turn, will help recruit more help with enforcement of the Proliferation Security Initiative and the Illicit Activities Initiative. Then, President Bush must select a robust course of options to administer the kind of economic shock that will make blackened copper beads and cinders of Kim Jong Il’s frayed financial circuitry. That list should include The Nuclear Option.