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Monday, October 09, 2006

Learning the lessons of Iraq

Whatever one's opinion of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, let's agree about one thing- he understands the lessons of the Iraq war extremely well.
Saddam Hussein allowed weapons inspectors into his country and pleaded with Uncle Sam that he didn't have WMD. As a result his country now lies in ruins. Kim Jong-il has played a different game: refusing access to any weapons inspectors and going full steam ahead on his WMD programme.
The result- plenty of international condemnation- but as yet no bombs on Pyongyang. Nor, after this morning's news- of a successful nuclear test- are there likely to be.
Kim Jong-il has clearly been following the very sound advice of the paleo-conservative U.S. politician Pat Buchanan: "If you want the respect of Uncle Sam, get the bomb."

UPDATE:
A prominent neo-conservative writer, not known for concurring with the views expressed on this blog writes:
"A military strike on North Korea is out of the question, precisely because this is a nuclear-armed state with - presumably - contingency plans to retaliate against South Korea and possibly Japan."

I rest my case.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Neil, what's up with this? Did you delete The vassal state of Serbia or what?

Neil Clark said...

Hi estavasti,
There were some problems with the blogger.com service last night and 'Vassal state of Serbia' somehow disappeared. But I've posted it again today!

Ken said...

I have pretty much said the same thing as you over at my place - great minds and all that.

You will be amused to learn that young O. Kamm argues for regime change. The problem is that the silly sod made a right pig's ear out of his posting: more at my place.