Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This post is in: Humorous
A wise group of men once said: “When the shit goes down, you better be ready.”
Layne is ready, and when the shit goes down, I am heading that way. I can bring some good, smooth Appalachian moonshine, run through the finest radiator in Mon. County, and some good, home grown tobacco. Whatcha say, Ken? Got room for me?
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
I don’t think we need congressional action on this issue, but French and German manufacturers better recognize the sleeping giant they are awakening. We will hit em where it hurts the most- in the wallet.
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
This will no doubt distress Josh Marshall, who is at the height of his game when he is examining the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Here is a taste of his thoughtful analysis:
The president and his crew are acting like that not-as-smart-as-he-thinks-he-is high school kid who’s always running into reverses and always blaming it on someone else. At first you think he’s getting a bad shake until you see the same thing happening over and over again. It’s always someone else’s fault. The South Koreans are lame. The Europeans are lame. Our Arab allies are lame. Everybody is lame. We’re given excuse after excuse. But at the end of the day the result seems to be our historic alliances, if not in shambles, then at least thoroughly beat-up.
At any rate, we have this news flash:
The International Atomic Energy Agency today declared that North Korea had failed to meet its nuclear commitments and sent the issue to the United Nations Security Council.
The resolution, passed by the IAEA’s 35-nation governing board with Russia and Cuba abstaining, had been sought by the United States as a way of increasing pressure on North Korea and providing a forum for resolving the standoff with the reclusive regime. The North Koreans have demanded direct talks with the United States, but the Bush administration has refused to negotiate unless the North Koreans first take steps to dismantle their nuclear weapons programs.
Got it, Josh- the North Koreans are not complying with agreements or international law. This is not because the president is stupid, or a high school kid, or can not accept blame. It is because the president is not going to stand for the nonsense that Albright and Clinton took for the previous 8 years. You keep your word, or you get called on it. You don’t get credit for saying the right words and doing the wrong thing. Get it?
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
One of the most repeated (and most annoying) refrains from the anti-war left and the Eunichs is the nonsense about American unilateralism. Daniel Drezner has a wonderful post defending the Bush administration today in The New Republic. A relevant piece:
The problem is that when you separate actions from rhetoric, this administration has doggedly pursued a multilateralist foreign policy since September 11. The reaction to the terrorist attacks themselves has been besotted with multilateral institutions. U.S. military operations in Afghanistan took place with the full blessing of both NATO and the United Nations Security Council. And the administration’s approach to combating terrorist financing was to strengthen the relevant international bodies–the Financial Action Task Force, the Egmont Group, and the International Monetary Fund.
We are not behaving in a unilateralist manner- quite the contrary. The eurocrats are merely used to the Clintonesque approach to foreign policy, best described by Porphyrogenitus yesterday:
For all that people like to claim that this is a “Bush problem” and “we didn’t have this when Clinton was in office”, that’s not quite true. Sure, everyone was more jovial. But (again as I’ve mentioned before) while there was more good cheer and bonhomie on the surface when Clinton was in office, that didn’t stop them from designing treaties (rather deliberately) stacked against the United States. Clinton would say “hey, buddies. You know, if we could just get a clause in that treaty on land mines allowing us to have them along the Korean DMZ, I could get the Senate to pass it” and they would refuse to compromise. Clinton would say “you know I want a good Green record. I’d love to have this Kyoto pact ratified. Any chance we could negotiate for America some of the cozy deals you stuck in for yourselves?” and they would say “no”. They liked Clinton just fine as a person. But they weren’t about to do America any favors, and even during that period were (openly among themselves, reported in the European press if not given much notice in the American press) talking about building the EU so as to oppose the United States. So this isn’t really out of the blue, all the sudden.
Simplistic Europeans.
This post is in: Excellent Links
If you read only one thing today, it should be John Hawkin’s outstanding interview of Mark Steyn. Here is a snippet:
John Hawkins: Who do you see winning the Democratic primary and taking on George Bush in 2004?
Mark Steyn: Not the newly Jewish John Kerry, or whatever his original name is. There’s an Irish butter called Kerrygold, which seems vaguely apt. John Kerry is this season’s Al Gore: he’s being defined by the jokes about him. Not Howard Dean: he’s a lightweight already way out of his league, and his “pro-choice” pandering was pathetic even by Dem standards; he all but called for audience volunteers so he could demonstrate his bona fides by performing a partial-birth abortion on them.
Go read the entire interview, as it is well worth your time.
This post is in: Humorous
Scrappleface has the details:
(2003-02-11) — The United Nations will form a new agency this week to address the growing need to have highly-paid experts wander about in nations that have no weapons of mass destruction.
The new agency will free up UNMOVIC to do its real job of monitoring and verifying compliance with U.N. resolutions.
Secretary-General Kofi Anan decided to form the new agency when South Korea announced this week that North Korea has no nuclear weapons.
The new Commission for Hiking Around Regions Absent of Destructive Elements will replace the UNMOVIC staff in Iraq and stay there as long as France and her allies insist on it.
This post is in: War
This is why Matthew Yglesias will end up going places- he refuses to deny the obvious, whereas others in his ideological realm continue to spin, spin, spin. I’ll let Matthew speak for himself:
If Saddam woke up one morning, had a sudden change of heart, and decided to abandon his WMD programs because he was all the sudden a good guy, then of course it would be absurd for us to invade. That, however, is not going to happen. Insofar as Saddam might make concessions to the UN, he’d be doing it because he felt threatened by American policy and was trying to save his ass. Thus he might really open up to the inspectors and let his entire program get destroyed. And then the inspectors would leave. And the US troops built up in the Gulf would leave. And the sanctions on Iraq would be lifted. And the attention of the world community would drift elsewhere.
And then Saddam would start his program up again.
And then some hawkish American president would start making noises about war again. And folks would say that war must be the last resort. And that the US has to proceed multilaterally. And so we would go to the UN again. And there’d be a new resolution. And Saddam would obstruct the new inspections team. And we’d threaten to go to war. And some would call to give the inspectors more time. And there’d be talk of a new resolution. And talk about how the president was determined to have a war one way or another.
And thus the cycle would proceed, over and over again until either Saddam dies (but maybe not even then if he just hands off power to a successor) or else without the inspections and the no-fly zones Saddam builds a nuke before US intelligence can figure out what he’s up to.