Who’s afraid of Peace-loving nations?

The Washington Times is running a story today about North Korean Dear Leader Kim Jong Il’s list of demands that must precede any negotiations aimed at his nuclear program. So who’s surprised? Il has seen how far anti-social behavior has taken the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, who also announced today that the world can’t stop him from developing nuclear weapons. This is what exchanging words with maniacal despots gets you. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lost ground yesterday in elections so he’s back to making his failures everybody else’s fault and flexing his muscles on the world stage.

I still suspect that Il’s nuclear tests in October were more of the dirty bomb variety than an actual nuclear detonation in order to fool the world into thinking they’ve got the technology for nuclear weapons to accompany their missiles.

All of these tinpot dictators are quite certain that they can pretty much get away with anything these days. They saw that by paying off Old Europe, Hussein escaped their ire, until the US and Britain, et al. decided to go it without the greedy corrupt Leftist governments of Russia, France and Germany.

Last summer’s war between the Israelis and Hezzbollah in Lebanon only reinforced Iran, Korea, and Venezuela’s view that the peace-loving nations of the world will do nothing, no matter what they do. Check Chavez’ speech at the UN, the riots in France, the cartoon riots, Jimmy Carter’s ransom payments to North Korea in 1994. What do fear-mongers fear?

Opposing strength. When the US removed Hussein from Kuwait, all of the Arab nations, even Arafat, fell into line. When the US removed Hussein from power, even Qaddafi trembled at the thought of US troops at his palace gate.

North Korea and Iran need to be dealt fierce and violent blows immediately – either by our proxies in those regions, or failing that, ourselves. Direct strikes against their nuclear programs.

Maybe with a South Korean as Secretary general of the UN that’s more possible now than it was last week.

UPDATE: The US is talking separately with North Korea over financial matters relating to their Macau banking endeavors to launder their WMD sales and to pass counterfeit $100 bills according to the Wall Street Journal today. Leveraging that seizure of assets might cause North Korea to backpedal temporarily from their demands, but it certainly won’t be a permanent fix to dealing with a nation whose government is engaged in petty crimes as foreign policy.

Category: Jimmy Carter, Terror War