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January 1, 2008

A Better War

HAPPY NEW YEAR.  Iraq and U.S. politics are two subjects that are being thoroughly covered by other blogs, but I’ve been following both stories very closely (while mostly sparing you my thoughts on either).  Here, however, are some interesting (to me) “miscellaneous” stories about Iraq, terrorism, and politics that might also interest you.  MY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION is the same as last year’s:  to make better use of the FOIA.  This new law may make it easier for me to...
Categories Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Military
December 30, 2007

Jay who? Christopher Hitchens, President Bush, and the betrayal of the North Korean people

Christopher Hitchens is certainly one of our age’s most compelling thinkers and one of the English language’s best writers. I disagree with him about plenty of things; who could say otherwise? Hitchens’s greatest logical strength is his consistent argument for the moral superiority of freedom — for all of its flaws of application — over slavery. That is a woefully unfashionable idea among popinjays in Europe and America who are too sodden with the smug confidence of liberties taken for...
Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/U.S. Politics
December 20, 2007

Behind the scenes, a deepening crisis for Agreed Framework 2.0

Maybe the Dear Leader will save us all yet. From ourselves, that is. If he does, it will be because he’s overplayed his hand again. A reader forwards a scan of a letter sent by three Republican U.S. Senators — Brownback, Grassley, and Kyl, the new minority whip, to Chris Hill, the architect of Agreed Framework 2.0. The letter requests that State specifically respond to this Congressional Research Service report’s allegations that North Korea continued to materially support Hezbollah and...
Categories Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics
December 18, 2007

House resolution honors Henry Hyde

The resolution passed unanimously last night (suspension of the rules, voice vote).  You can read the full text of the resolution here. It’s sad to think of Hyde’s own passage; sadder still to contrast him with the rudderless party he left behind.  For purposes of Korea policy, we might as well be in a second Carter Administration with a 1975 Congress.  Yes, a few isolated Republicans (and one or two Democrats) take a principled stand here and there, but it...
Categories U.S. Politics
December 17, 2007

Don’t let the absence of tact, polish, logic, and stability fool you: Ron Paul slithers like a true pol

Please don’t take this as a reflection on my personal  life, but perhaps  because I’ve lived in Nevada, Korea, and Washington, D.C.,  I  have only  mild moral objections to voluntary exchanges of sex for money between adults.  I’d think that this would be a rare point on which I’d agree with Ron Paul.  But when asked if he was  “shocked” to learn that  the Moonlight Bunny Ranch had contributed to his campaign, Paul missed  the chance  to  defend social libertarianism by...
Categories U.S. Politics
December 13, 2007

Condi: U.S. not ready to engage N. Korea broadly

A day after the New York Philharmonic announced it would play a concert in the North Korean capital and a week after word of a personal letter from Bush to leader of the communist nation, Kim Jong Il, Rice downplayed the significance of both. “This is not a regime that the United States is prepared to engage broadly,” she said. “If we are going to engage it broadly, it’s clear in the program that we have laid out how that...
Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
December 13, 2007

Congressional Research Service issues report on the implications of removing North Korea from the terror sponsor list

Yesterday, a reader and friend was kind enough to forward the entire report to me (thanks!), which I’ve uploaded onto this blog, and which you can access here: crs-north-korea-terrorism-list-removal.pdf   Since then,  this has  generated some press attention in South Korea.  The report’s authors are the highly regarded Larry  Niksch and Raphael Perl.  There’s too much valuable information in there for me to graf and do it justice; this one is a must-read.  I’ll limit my comments to a few...
Categories Six-Party Talks/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
December 12, 2007

Senate resolution would set conditions for de-listing North Korea as a terror sponsor

I knew this was coming but was asked not to  write about it.  But now, I see that Richardson has a link to a Yonhap story about it.  Now that it’s out, I’ll speak out of school for a moment and say that I suggested  a couple  of the provisions that made it into the resolution, although I’d rather not say which ones. The sponsor is Sam Brownback, who having dropped his presidential bid, is back to doing what earned...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
December 11, 2007

Desperately in need of a stranger’s hand

At the end of last month, I linked to a post at Powerline, quoting Noah Pollak on the subject of Annapolis, which I said then could just as well apply to  Condi Rice’s  eleventh-hour test of Kim Jong Il’s character.  Pollak said, If Condi’s pursuit of the peace process is due to a belief that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible and will unlock the forces of moderation and conviviality in the Middle East, then, well, she is simply a...
Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
December 4, 2007

Liberation Through Litigation, Part 2

Way back in the very early days of this blog, I proposed that North Korean workers should be able to sue their government for coercive and abusive labor practices under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789.  In fact, the statute was recently used with success against Unocal Corporation for its use of forced labor in a pipeline project in Burma.  Just watch Kaesong empty out if that ever comes to pass. I had mentioned the idea once or twice since...
Categories Human Rights/U.S. Law
December 4, 2007

KCNA Announces Hill’s Arrival

Pyongyang, December 3 (KCNA) — Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of State, and his party arrived here today.  [link] That’s the entire story, not an excerpt.  Why so terse?  Maybe their friends in Seoul sent them this (ht: GI Korea): The U.S. government decided to impose three new conditions for removing North Korea from Washington`s list of state sponsors of terrorism, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Saturday. The new conditions are in addition to the current U.S...
Categories Diplomacy/Proliferation/U.S. Politics
November 30, 2007

Henry Hyde, R.I.P.

I last saw Henry Hyde at the  final hearing  at which  he presided as Chairman of the International Relations Committee.  Months later, despite the  passage of control to another party,  a larger-than-life portrait of  Hyde still hangs in hearing room of the re-named Foreign Affairs Committee.  Nearly all that has been written about Henry Hyde after his  passage yesterday  has focused on his role in Whitewater or his steadfast opposition to abortion — in other words, things about which the...
Categories U.S. Politics/Washington Views
November 24, 2007

Casualties of Banalities: The Arrest and Coming Death of Yoo Sang-Joon

One of the bravest men I have ever met is locked in a Chinese prison this weekend, facing the risk of being sent back to certain execution in his native North Korea.  His story stands for the human suffering that endures while diplomats craft a controversial agreement to disarm North Korea of its nuclear weapons and to grant its dictator, Kim Jong-il, the peace treaty and the recognition that his regime has sought for decades.  [The Sunday Times, Michael Sheridan]...
Categories "United" Nations/Activism/China/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees/U.S. Politics
November 21, 2007

No Legacy for You

The Washington Post declares: The war in Iraq seems to have taken a turn for the better and the opposition at home has failed in all efforts to impose its own strategy. North Korea is dismantling its nuclear program. . . .  Yet none of this has particularly impressed the public at large, which remains skeptical that anything meaningful has changed and still gives Bush record-low approval ratings. No, not if the Washington Post does not choose to make it...
Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
November 18, 2007

It Takes Many Wards to Make an Asylum

Maybe this will help support my efforts to talk one of you off the Ron Paul ledge.  The favorite candidate of “truthers” and other conspiracy theorists the mainsteam won’t embrace is  also the favorite of  white supremacists and neo-Nazis.  Andrew Walden lays it all out in meticulous detail.  Call it guilt by association if you will, but weeks after the questions  were raised,  Paul isn’t refusing their money or blocking those donate links from white supremacist sites.  I’ll save you...
Categories U.S. Politics
September 24, 2007

Some USFK Stats and History

A few days ago, a reader asked me how much the presence of the USFK cost American taxpayers.  This is a research project I’ve taken on before, only to be confronted by few answers from credible sources.  You’re about to see what I mean here. Writing for the Nautilus Institute, Selig Harrison claimed in 2001 that the annual cost was $42 billion per year.   Another Nautilus alum,  Doug Bandow, claimed in his recent Korea book  that withdrawing from the...
Categories An Alliance?/History/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
August 30, 2007

State Dept. Won’t Remove N. Korea from Terror List … Yet

The chief U.S. envoy at North Korean nuclear talks said Wednesday the United States will make sure close ally Japan is satisfied before lifting North Korea from a U.S. list of countries accused of sponsoring terrorists. Christopher Hill acknowledged the North has raised the terror-list removal repeatedly as a crucial part of a February nuclear disarmament accord. But, he said, the United States is “not going to cup our eyes and pretend a country is not a state sponsor of...
Categories Abductions/Diplomacy/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics