Archive for January, 2004
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 29, 2004 at 3:05 am · Filed under Uncategorized
There is no limit to the harm that the stupidity of U.N.-think causes,* and if you doubt me, then check out this story, and this one. That’s right–three international “aid workers” have published a guide to fine dining in Pyongyang. As we never would have doubted, those with money and power can eat very well in Pyongyang, even as millions are going hungry elsewhere in this small country. Here, as elsewhere, size does matter, because these international aid workers, if they were any better than wide-eyed tourists making a career and industry out of other people’s hunger, could cater those delicacies to the starving in a few hours.
If you don’t get the Walter Duranty reference, click here.
* U.N.-think–The belief, based in intellectually lazy presumptions of moral equivalence, that all systems of government are inherently equal and legitimate, regardless of the absence of consent of the governed or their welfare under said system.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 29, 2004 at 2:50 am · Filed under Uncategorized
A few days ago, I missed this editorial in the Korea Herald, a left-leaning rag from Seoul, written by former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea (Bush-41 era) Donald Gregg. The editorial mourns the demise of the U.S.-South Korean alliance. It is an astonishing admission from the same diplomatic quarter that had denied for so long that the alliance was even running a high temperature. Of course, the Kremlin is probably still insisting that Brezhnev and Stalin have nasty colds, but I digress. The editorial goes on to place the blame for that condition on President Bush (the new one). To admit illness, of course, suggests actions like treatment, diagnosis, and prevention of recurrences. That requires people to make decisions.
Mr. Gregg�s editorial (I strongly recommend you read the whole thing, because it�s jammed with great research and useful facts) is a perfect example of what�s wrong with the American diplomatic establishment. Ambassador Gregg has a very impressive command of the facts surrounding both Koreas’ hatred of America; he is clearly very intelligent. The only thing that impresses me more is his ability to avoid the obvious conclusions to which those facts lead. His intelligence notwithstanding, he lacks the spine and judgment to follow the facts to their logical conclusions.
Gregg makes a compelling case that: (1) South Korea’s people and government have become deeply anti-American; (2) their views of North Korea are unrealistically trusting and naive; and (3) these unrealistic views developed when the Clinton Administration was doing its best to appease the murderers in Pyongyang and keeping dutifully mum about their death camps and violations of past agreements. Amb. Gregg’s conclusion? We should have done much more of the same, in spite of where it got us.
In so doing, he places himself squarely in the �Yes, but� camp, among those who react to every report about North Korea�s systematic starvation of its own people, the growing threats from its WMDs, its million-man army poised in an offensive position just above Seoul, and its serial mendacity in violating every international agreement with a reflexive �Yes, but . . . .� To men like Donald Gregg and the Seoul academics among whom he has grown so cozy, there is simply no crime the North Koreans can commit that is too hellish, no lie they can tell that is too bold, and no provocation so dangerous that they do not instantly strain to excuse it, justify it, or place the responsibility for it on one of its victims. Here is my favorite example:
“In 1998, after North Korea surprised us by firing a multi-stage rocket, a report by Donald
Rumsfeld on missile threats to the United States made North Koreas the poster child for
national missile defense. A foundation of hostility between the Republican Party and North
Korea had been laid.”
Wha?? That’s right. Amb. Gregg blames Donald Rumsfeld for creating a “foundation of hostility” after Kim Jong-Il launched a missile over Japan–Amb. Gregg conveniently leaves the “over Japan” part out. Thus, faced with a direct threat to nuke Tokyo, Donald Rumsfeld is to blame for suggesting we plan to defend against it. The fact of the demonstrated threat from a regime with an impeccable record of disregard for human life is somehow missing from Amb. Gregg’s analysis. He begins to sound like the long-suffering and ever-forgiving wife of an abusive husband, who applies pancake makeup to cover her black eyes and tells the neighbors–and the cops–how the husband’s abuse is his strange way of showing his love and partly her own fault. What provocation would it take for Mr. Gregg to finally decide that Kim Jong-Il must move out of the trailer? Answer: a good therapist.
Finally, Amb. Gregg admits that he knew what any soldier in Korea could clearly see�that our P.R. situation was an accelerating disaster during the Clinton Administration, just after his tenure in Seoul. He admits that he never once visited a South Korean university campus. I wish he had, as I did during my years in Korea. Had he done so, and had he bothered to learn some Korean (and I suppose he has by now), he could have seen the radical pro-North Korean and America-hating banners that festoon them, and how they have come to resemble the anarcho-syndicalist communes described in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Even the police don�t dare enter them. Mr. Gregg offers that he was not allowed to go for security reasons, which is hard to believe, even from one so obviously missing the chutzpah gene as Amb. Gregg. What if he had gone? He might have learned something alarming and important. He might also have started a riot, which would have at least awakened Washington from its pollyanish slumber and its failure to see how reliable old South Korea was falling under the sway of agitprop from the world�s most repressive state–a goofy John Birch conspiracy theory proven eerily true.
The duty of an ambassador includes finding and reporting important facts, including disturbing ones. But bureaucrats being what they are, Mr. Gregg got where he is by learning to prevent the revelation of problems on his own watch. Weaklings like Donald Gregg will always be chum for sharks like Kim Jong-Il. They congenitally ignore unpleasant facts, shrink from challenges, and assess all risks associated with action as prohibitive. Meanwhile, Kim Il-Sung’s minions were hard at work a few subway stops away, educating the next generation of South Korean journalists and politicians.
Thanks for your input, Ambassador Gregg. If only we had heard it when there was still time.
Posted by joshua on January 28, 2004 at 10:05 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
There is no limit to the harm that the stupidity of U.N.-think causes,* and if you doubt me, then check out this story, and this one. That’s right–three international “aid workers” have published a guide to fine dining in Pyongyang. As we never would have doubted, those with money and power can eat very well in Pyongyang, even as millions are going hungry elsewhere in this small country. Here, as elsewhere, size does matter, because these international aid workers, if they were any better than wide-eyed tourists making a career and industry out of other people’s hunger, could cater those delicacies to the starving in a few hours.
If you don’t get the Walter Duranty reference, click here.
* U.N.-think–The belief, based in intellectually lazy presumptions of moral equivalence, that all systems of government are inherently equal and legitimate, regardless of the absence of consent of the governed or their welfare under said system.
Posted by joshua on January 28, 2004 at 9:50 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
A few days ago, I missed this editorial in the Korea Herald, a left-leaning rag from Seoul, written by former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea (Bush-41 era) Donald Gregg. The editorial mourns the demise of the U.S.-South Korean alliance. It is an astonishing admission from the same diplomatic quarter that had denied for so long that the alliance was even running a high temperature. Of course, the Kremlin is probably still insisting that Brezhnev and Stalin have nasty colds, but I digress. The editorial goes on to place the blame for that condition on President Bush (the new one). To admit illness, of course, suggests actions like treatment, diagnosis, and prevention of recurrences. That requires people to make decisions.
Mr. Gregg�s editorial (I strongly recommend you read the whole thing, because it�s jammed with great research and useful facts) is a perfect example of what�s wrong with the American diplomatic establishment. Ambassador Gregg has a very impressive command of the facts surrounding both Koreas’ hatred of America; he is clearly very intelligent. The only thing that impresses me more is his ability to avoid the obvious conclusions to which those facts lead. His intelligence notwithstanding, he lacks the spine and judgment to follow the facts to their logical conclusions.
Gregg makes a compelling case that: (1) South Korea’s people and government have become deeply anti-American; (2) their views of North Korea are unrealistically trusting and naive; and (3) these unrealistic views developed when the Clinton Administration was doing its best to appease the murderers in Pyongyang and keeping dutifully mum about their death camps and violations of past agreements. Amb. Gregg’s conclusion? We should have done much more of the same, in spite of where it got us.
In so doing, he places himself squarely in the �Yes, but� camp, among those who react to every report about North Korea�s systematic starvation of its own people, the growing threats from its WMDs, its million-man army poised in an offensive position just above Seoul, and its serial mendacity in violating every international agreement with a reflexive �Yes, but . . . .� To men like Donald Gregg and the Seoul academics among whom he has grown so cozy, there is simply no crime the North Koreans can commit that is too hellish, no lie they can tell that is too bold, and no provocation so dangerous that they do not instantly strain to excuse it, justify it, or place the responsibility for it on one of its victims. Here is my favorite example:
“In 1998, after North Korea surprised us by firing a multi-stage rocket, a report by Donald
Rumsfeld on missile threats to the United States made North Koreas the poster child for
national missile defense. A foundation of hostility between the Republican Party and North
Korea had been laid.”
Wha?? That’s right. Amb. Gregg blames Donald Rumsfeld for creating a “foundation of hostility” after Kim Jong-Il launched a missile over Japan–Amb. Gregg conveniently leaves the “over Japan” part out. Thus, faced with a direct threat to nuke Tokyo, Donald Rumsfeld is to blame for suggesting we plan to defend against it. The fact of the demonstrated threat from a regime with an impeccable record of disregard for human life is somehow missing from Amb. Gregg’s analysis. He begins to sound like the long-suffering and ever-forgiving wife of an abusive husband, who applies pancake makeup to cover her black eyes and tells the neighbors–and the cops–how the husband’s abuse is his strange way of showing his love and partly her own fault. What provocation would it take for Mr. Gregg to finally decide that Kim Jong-Il must move out of the trailer? Answer: a good therapist.
Finally, Amb. Gregg admits that he knew what any soldier in Korea could clearly see�that our P.R. situation was an accelerating disaster during the Clinton Administration, just after his tenure in Seoul. He admits that he never once visited a South Korean university campus. I wish he had, as I did during my years in Korea. Had he done so, and had he bothered to learn some Korean (and I suppose he has by now), he could have seen the radical pro-North Korean and America-hating banners that festoon them, and how they have come to resemble the anarcho-syndicalist communes described in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Even the police don�t dare enter them. Mr. Gregg offers that he was not allowed to go for security reasons, which is hard to believe, even from one so obviously missing the chutzpah gene as Amb. Gregg. What if he had gone? He might have learned something alarming and important. He might also have started a riot, which would have at least awakened Washington from its pollyanish slumber and its failure to see how reliable old South Korea was falling under the sway of agitprop from the world�s most repressive state–a goofy John Birch conspiracy theory proven eerily true.
The duty of an ambassador includes finding and reporting important facts, including disturbing ones. But bureaucrats being what they are, Mr. Gregg got where he is by learning to prevent the revelation of problems on his own watch. Weaklings like Donald Gregg will always be chum for sharks like Kim Jong-Il. They congenitally ignore unpleasant facts, shrink from challenges, and assess all risks associated with action as prohibitive. Meanwhile, Kim Il-Sung’s minions were hard at work a few subway stops away, educating the next generation of South Korean journalists and politicians.
Thanks for your input, Ambassador Gregg. If only we had heard it when there was still time.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 28, 2004 at 11:34 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Nigeria is the latest nation to buy missiles from North Korea. According to the WFP Web site, Nigeria is not a food aid recipient, but every country bordering it is. So what missile gap does Nigeria need to close?
Posted by joshua on January 28, 2004 at 6:34 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Nigeria is the latest nation to buy missiles from North Korea. According to the WFP Web site, Nigeria is not a food aid recipient, but every country bordering it is. So what missile gap does Nigeria need to close?
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 24, 2004 at 9:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
What can I add to something like this? After the glorious day when Kim Jong-Il kicks away his miserable little existence at the end of a hangman’s rope, we will have video of indescribable horrors. Without video, you can’t get media attention; raw facts and numbers don’t seem to matter. Thus, to a shallow mind, countries that let the press run free (Israel) look worse than places like China or North Korea.
In Afghanistan, when the Russians were deliberately targeting civilians and killing two million of them, they had a fat bounty on any journalists killed or captured. One can see that North Korea learned from the best.
Posted by joshua on January 24, 2004 at 4:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
What can I add to something like this? After the glorious day when Kim Jong-Il kicks away his miserable little existence at the end of a hangman’s rope, we will have video of indescribable horrors. Without video, you can’t get media attention; raw facts and numbers don’t seem to matter. Thus, to a shallow mind, countries that let the press run free (Israel) look worse than places like China or North Korea.
In Afghanistan, when the Russians were deliberately targeting civilians and killing two million of them, they had a fat bounty on any journalists killed or captured. One can see that North Korea learned from the best.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 24, 2004 at 3:02 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Kudos to Instapundit for making the apt comparison between Walter Duranty, the NYT reporter who got a Nobel Prize for his rosy–and completely false–reporting on the (lack of) famine in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and flood of ink from the Washington Post’s Glen Kessler on North Korea recently. Kessler was led by the nose to a North Korean Potem-K-Mart and reported on the bounty of vibrancy of the commerce there. Kessler must have missed this report from Amnesty International; otherwise, he might have wondered how things are outside Pyongyang, where, despite apparent mass-starvation, the government has kept out all foreigners, especially those distributing food aid. The story revealed little suspicion that the market tour was a mendacious little dog-and-pony show, designed to show that economic pressure against Pyongyang would never work. Kessler dutifully filled his story with money quotes from the now-dismissed Undersecretary for Appeasement, Jack Pritchard, like this gem:
“Pritchard said the visit indicated that change is occurring in one of the world’s most closed societies, even during a crisis over its nuclear ambitions, and that North Korea is far from economic collapse. . . . ‘Time is not on the U.S. side.’”
The real problems with this story are (1) the WP Post printed it four different times; (2) it doesn’t say much about about the food situation for anyone except those Kim Jong-Il trusts and who keep him in power–ie., the people who are allowed to live in Pyongyang; and (3) it’s based on a false premise–the idea that Kim Jong-Il can stay in power without outside help. In fact, better reporting elsewhere gives us a pretty good breakdown of where the regime gets its money.
Posted by joshua on January 24, 2004 at 10:02 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Kudos to Instapundit for making the apt comparison between Walter Duranty, the NYT reporter who got a Nobel Prize for his rosy–and completely false–reporting on the (lack of) famine in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and flood of ink from the Washington Post’s Glen Kessler on North Korea recently. Kessler was led by the nose to a North Korean Potem-K-Mart and reported on the bounty of vibrancy of the commerce there. Kessler must have missed this report from Amnesty International; otherwise, he might have wondered how things are outside Pyongyang, where, despite apparent mass-starvation, the government has kept out all foreigners, especially those distributing food aid. The story revealed little suspicion that the market tour was a mendacious little dog-and-pony show, designed to show that economic pressure against Pyongyang would never work. Kessler dutifully filled his story with money quotes from the now-dismissed Undersecretary for Appeasement, Jack Pritchard, like this gem:
“Pritchard said the visit indicated that change is occurring in one of the world’s most closed societies, even during a crisis over its nuclear ambitions, and that North Korea is far from economic collapse. . . . ‘Time is not on the U.S. side.’”
The real problems with this story are (1) the WP Post printed it four different times; (2) it doesn’t say much about about the food situation for anyone except those Kim Jong-Il trusts and who keep him in power–ie., the people who are allowed to live in Pyongyang; and (3) it’s based on a false premise–the idea that Kim Jong-Il can stay in power without outside help. In fact, better reporting elsewhere gives us a pretty good breakdown of where the regime gets its money.
Posted by joshua on January 24, 2004 at 10:02 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Kudos to Instapundit for making the apt comparison between Walter Duranty, the NYT reporter who got a Nobel Prize for his rosy–and completely false–reporting on the (lack of) famine in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and flood of ink from the Washington Post’s Glen Kessler on North Korea recently. Kessler was led by the nose to a North Korean Potem-K-Mart and reported on the bounty of vibrancy of the commerce there. Kessler must have missed this report from Amnesty International; otherwise, he might have wondered how things are outside Pyongyang, where, despite apparent mass-starvation, the government has kept out all foreigners, especially those distributing food aid. The story revealed little suspicion that the market tour was a mendacious little dog-and-pony show, designed to show that economic pressure against Pyongyang would never work. Kessler dutifully filled his story with money quotes from the now-dismissed Undersecretary for Appeasement, Jack Pritchard, like this gem:
“Pritchard said the visit indicated that change is occurring in one of the world’s most closed societies, even during a crisis over its nuclear ambitions, and that North Korea is far from economic collapse. . . . ‘Time is not on the U.S. side.’”
The real problems with this story are (1) the WP Post printed it four different times; (2) it doesn’t say much about about the food situation for anyone except those Kim Jong-Il trusts and who keep him in power–ie., the people who are allowed to live in Pyongyang; and (3) it’s based on a false premise–the idea that Kim Jong-Il can stay in power without outside help. In fact, better reporting elsewhere gives us a pretty good breakdown of where the regime gets its money.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 24, 2004 at 4:16 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Advocates of getting tough on North Korea over food aid are getting their way. Donations are down, and the World Food Program is cutting back the list of those who will be fed this year. The problem, of course, is that the food wasn’t going to the hungry; most of it probably went to help Kim Jong-Il reward those who keep him in power. Still, some must have found its way to those who needed it, even if only through the black market. The decision is agonizing. Aid or no aid, this winter, many North Koreans will expend what little energy they have hacking away at the frozen earth to bury people they love.
All of which brings us to the bitter truth–Kim Jong-Il probably wants a few thousand (or million) more “surplus” people to die this winter–that is, those in the classes deemed politically “wavering” or “hostile.” Why, then, must we recognize the North Korean government’s right to decide who eats and who starves? Why must we accept the classic U.N.-think that invests all rights in governments, no matter how illegitimate, no matter how lacking in the consent of the governed or compassion for their suffering?
The question then becomes how to save lives without starting a war. Chris at FreeNorthKorea.net correctly notes that feeding people without the permission of the government means you need an airlift. No one is under any illusion that you can save many people without the heavy-lift capacity of an air force. Could this be done without provoking a war? Put differently, the question is whether Kim Jong-Il, knowing that war means the loss of his pleasure squad, his fine brandy, and his collection of Daffy Duck cartoons, would see a humanitarian airdrop as a causus belli. I venture that he would not. What he lacks in compassion for those who would die in a war, he makes up for in cold, rational selfishness. War is not in his personal interest unless it poses a direct and immediate threat to his personal lifestyle.
Of course, no government has decided to carry out such an airlift, and none of the countries within easy range of North Korea has the chutzpah to lend us an airfield. Doug Shin and Norbert Vollertsen have tried using balloons to carry a few radios, but they are well aware that they are mostly delivering media attention. Another quixotic idea that Doug Shin has discussed–and which I believe could actually work on a limited basis–would be using simple, inexpensive, GPS-guided UAVs to carry substantial amounts of humanitarian supplies to specific destinations. Other organizations, like Helping Hands Korea, smuggle small amounts of food into North Korea from China.
It is a tragedy that North Korea’s heartlessness has forced us to this point. But it’s inexcusable that we have no plan to help the North Korean people in spite of this.
Posted by joshua on January 23, 2004 at 11:16 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Advocates of getting tough on North Korea over food aid are getting their way. Donations are down, and the World Food Program is cutting back the list of those who will be fed this year. The problem, of course, is that the food wasn’t going to the hungry; most of it probably went to help Kim Jong-Il reward those who keep him in power. Still, some must have found its way to those who needed it, even if only through the black market. The decision is agonizing. Aid or no aid, this winter, many North Koreans will expend what little energy they have hacking away at the frozen earth to bury people they love.
All of which brings us to the bitter truth–Kim Jong-Il probably wants a few thousand (or million) more “surplus” people to die this winter–that is, those in the classes deemed politically “wavering” or “hostile.” Why, then, must we recognize the North Korean government’s right to decide who eats and who starves? Why must we accept the classic U.N.-think that invests all rights in governments, no matter how illegitimate, no matter how lacking in the consent of the governed or compassion for their suffering?
The question then becomes how to save lives without starting a war. Chris at FreeNorthKorea.net correctly notes that feeding people without the permission of the government means you need an airlift. No one is under any illusion that you can save many people without the heavy-lift capacity of an air force. Could this be done without provoking a war? Put differently, the question is whether Kim Jong-Il, knowing that war means the loss of his pleasure squad, his fine brandy, and his collection of Daffy Duck cartoons, would see a humanitarian airdrop as a causus belli. I venture that he would not. What he lacks in compassion for those who would die in a war, he makes up for in cold, rational selfishness. War is not in his personal interest unless it poses a direct and immediate threat to his personal lifestyle.
Of course, no government has decided to carry out such an airlift, and none of the countries within easy range of North Korea has the chutzpah to lend us an airfield. Doug Shin and Norbert Vollertsen have tried using balloons to carry a few radios, but they are well aware that they are mostly delivering media attention. Another quixotic idea that Doug Shin has discussed–and which I believe could actually work on a limited basis–would be using simple, inexpensive, GPS-guided UAVs to carry substantial amounts of humanitarian supplies to specific destinations. Other organizations, like Helping Hands Korea, smuggle small amounts of food into North Korea from China.
It is a tragedy that North Korea’s heartlessness has forced us to this point. But it’s inexcusable that we have no plan to help the North Korean people in spite of this.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on January 23, 2004 at 8:12 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Today, the Korea Times carried this story; a popular South Korean actress is embarking on a guided tour of North Korea, complete with state chaperones–sorry, journalists. The subject of this prop-a-mentary? North Korean food. Once you can watch the North Korean government talk about cooking skills with a straight face, you have officially been swept away by the currents of denial. So while South Korea gulps down more of North Korea’s Kool-Aid about the bounty of North Korea’s feast, four million of Kim Jong-Il’s less-favorite subjects are starting another long, hungry winter. Amnesty International isn’t fooled by the apparent inconsistency here. Quite obviously, it’s no accident that in North Korea, some people live very well, while others don’t live through the winter. Thanks to Chris at freenorthkorea.net for bringing this to light.
Posted by joshua on January 23, 2004 at 3:12 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Today, the Korea Times carried this story; a popular South Korean actress is embarking on a guided tour of North Korea, complete with state chaperones–sorry, journalists. The subject of this prop-a-mentary? North Korean food. Once you can watch the North Korean government talk about cooking skills with a straight face, you have officially been swept away by the currents of denial. So while South Korea gulps down more of North Korea’s Kool-Aid about the bounty of North Korea’s feast, four million of Kim Jong-Il’s less-favorite subjects are starting another long, hungry winter. Amnesty International isn’t fooled by the apparent inconsistency here. Quite obviously, it’s no accident that in North Korea, some people live very well, while others don’t live through the winter. Thanks to Chris at freenorthkorea.net for bringing this to light.
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