Posted by Dan Ewert : 10/18/2002 02:23:00 AM (Archive Link)
You’ve probably already read in the news that North Korea has been developing its nuclear program for some years now and has been doing so in direct violation of an agreement with the U.S. Not so shockingly, this seemed to take nobody by surprise. The “Agreed Framework” was a 1994 appeasement agreement in which the U.S. gave North Korea fuel-oil, food, and “non-threatening” nuclear power plants and in return, North Korea would cease its nuclear weapons program. International blackmail at its finest. They tell us they’re going to develop the bomb unless we give them what they want. And we did. Love that Bill Clinton… yet another example of how he tried to sweep a problem under the rug instead of facing up to it. He’s the classic personality who says, “At least let there be peace in my day.” We should never provide any aid to a nation like NK. The country was on the ropes anyway and couldn’t support or feed itself and we only helped to prop up the dictatorship. If we can’t fight a country militarily, then we can at least let it destroy itself from the inside. True, there would be an unfortunate humanitarian toll involved, but keep this mind… it’s the government in power that is creating the depressing conditions. In the short term, aid helps the people there, but in the long term, you’ve damned far, far more people to continued tyranny and starvation by helping the government survive.

At any rate, NK now considers the Agreed Framework dead. I rather like to think of it as being still-born. I can just imagine Kim Jong Il and his cronies (or was Kim Il Sung still around at that point in ’94?) trying to suppress uproarious laughter as the papers were being signed. The NK officials have also indicated they’ve got more nasty stuff around than just possible nuclear weapons. It will be interesting to see how Bush handles this situation, especially in relation to the present Iraq affairs. One thing is definite… Bush was right on the money when he included North Korea in the axis of evil.