By Mary Lyon, From The Left -- World News Trust
Oct. 9, 2006 -- “Cowboy Diplomacy” strikes again -- or perhaps more accurately, strikes
OUT again. This gang that won’t shoot straight has squandered thousands
of lives, billions of tax dollars, and our reputation around the world
for the sake of propping up a dictator. Ours, here, an arrogant wannabe
dictator in the White House, and the real thing across the Northern
Pacific. And now, the real thing has thrown a serious punch that we
didn’t see coming. With his proclaimed nuclear test over the weekend,
Kim Jong-il just pulled a “gotcha” on our government, almost as though
he’s suckered us into a game of North Korean Roulette.
We certainly should have seen it coming, especially since we helped set up the playing field for it. Back when George W. Bush was just getting warmed up, he stated in the sternest tones, before the most august of company, that there was an “Axis of Evil.” That “Axis” consisted of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Certainly there were unsavory specimens calling the shots in all three places, if not elsewhere, too. They’re everywhere to one extent or other. Heck, there’ve been unsavory specimens aplenty calling the shots here in our own much-beleaguered country. Some of them are even now pushing Bush toward air strikes to take out suspected nuclear bomb sites. The republi-CONS in general are probably thanking their lucky stars for this new crisis, as it steers national attention away from their homegrown and wholly-owned scandal, Foleygate. But as much as this may distract from the Congressional Page Predator, Bush and friends have allowed themselves to fall victim to an even worse, and potentially catastrophic distraction.
Okay, so they identified three big meanies, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. They then set about picking a fight with the least troublesome of the three -- Iraq, and they lied all over the map to gin up a phony threat that didn’t really exist there. Funny how everything they spoke of, so ominously, about Saddam Hussein turns out to be undeniable fact with Kim Jong-il. While the blowhard in Baghdad wasn’t in any position of strength to be able to do something about acquiring WMDs, the Pyongyang problem child was, and did. But we didn’t notice because we were so singlemindedly focused on Iraq.
Sadly, in the process of this not-so-benign neglect, we created a tangible threat to world peace and stability where none existed beforehand. And by betting it all on Iraq, we allowed a potential hot spot in North Korea to fester like a big zit -- into a large, ugly, and rather unsettling boil. We ran around chasing imaginary boogeymen in Iraq while another real-life one was allowed to flourish in Northeast Asia. Now, he’s hardly imaginary. And he’s that much more difficult to deal with, because he just dealt himself some substantially stronger cards. Texas Hold ‘Em didn’t work out so well this time.
Bush’s “Cowboy Diplomacy” blew it again. His preference for talking tough instead of simply talking has led us directly to this, without passing “Go” OR collecting 200 dollars. Short-sightedly and simplistically turning our backs on people we don’t agree with leaves us with many more backs, both benevolent and not, potentially turned in our own faces. I don’t have many good things to say about former Secretary of State and self-described “Fixer” of the 2000 Election James Baker, but I will agree with him on one statement. On one of the Sunday talk shows, he said we should be talking with our adversaries. Maybe that’s how he views holding one’s friends close but one’s enemies closer, at least in his own scheming mind. But that’s what we should be doing. That’s what we should have been doing for the last five-plus years.
There are, of course, multiple reasons why Bush has never been interested in such things. We all know how he doesn’t “do nuance,” doesn’t respect diplomacy -- he’d rather be shooting (or shooting off his mouth) than talking. Talking’s for sissies. He’d rather go with his gut -- the one with all the fun little pop-guns holstered around it. When Junior finds himself forced to appear before a big room full of international diplomats, he responds by boring the room with disingenuous platitudes no one finds trustworthy or sitting back and passing notes to his nanny about whether he can get up and go to the bathroom. Furthermore, his gang of thugs “took” office originally with barely-concealed sneers on their faces for all things Clinton -- including some of the most important, essential and wisest things. While Clinton was in charge, everybody was at least talking to each other, even the most adversarial among them. They were far more inclined to be reaching for translation cheat-sheets than they were for their guns. I guess that was just liberal weakness. Or maybe appeasement, by a lot of people who are simply “confused.”
So now we get to play catch-up in a dead-serious game of North Korean Roulette. And we have a lot of catching-up to do because we’re almost six years behind. It may not even be possible to catch up completely, because in the time we wasted paying no attention to a credible threat in Northeast Asia, we squandered all our strongest cards at another table where we didn’t really need them because we were already winning. Saddam was contained, and couldn’t pose much of a threat to anyone outside his own borders. Kim Jong-il, on the other hand, was left alone and allowed to beef himself up bigger than Barry Bonds. But there we went, racing off to Iraq to spend at least three years, thousands of lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars, plus our credibility on the international scene, chasing ghosts, rumors, lies, and other assorted fairy tales.
Now, when we need to be able to throw our weight around, we don’t have much available to us anymore. Now, when we need to speak loudly and take a global leadership position, we have no diplomacy templates established from which we can build, and potential allies whose first instincts encourage them to doubt our motives and our sincerity. With what military strength do we back our tough talk now? What track record of sensible, well-advised and informed war planning do we bring to the table? What results do we have, with which we can prove we knew best? What effective international alliances reinforce us? Who’s going to want to stick his or her neck out and bet with us -- or on us? Who’d be fool enough by now, knowing what the world knows (especially since the rest of the world was never misinformed, left in the dark, or waltzed down the garden path the way the American public has been)?
The republi-CONS think this plays into one of their strong hands -- the security gambit. And they can be trusted to talk a good game about how the United States is so much better off, and the world at large so much safer, with them in power and Bush at the helm. I’d suggest they avoid such boasting long enough to recognize when to fold ‘em. A lot of Americans have awakened to the harsh reality the GOP has created, and there’s too much evidence out there now that the people in charge were holding cards that were mostly jokers. The new game in town is North Korean Roulette. The other guys have the surprise bullet hidden somewhere in their chambers. Our pistols, on the other hand, are loaded with blanks.
Visualize IMPEACHMENT!!!
Then go DO something about it.
***
Mary Lyon spent the first 25 years of her adult
life as a broadcast journalist, at Los Angeles radio stations
KRTH-FM,KFWB-AM, KHJ-AM and KLOS-FM, the NBC, ABC, RKO Radio
Networks,and KTLA-TV. She retired from day-to-day broadcasting in
1996, after covering Hollywood for nine years in radio, TV, and print,
for the Associated Press. She wrote and illustrated "The Frazzled
Working Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood," and is presently at
work on a new craft book for kids and friends. A lifelong Democrat who
began her political involvement in the Student Coalition for
Humphrey-Muskie, and Tom Bradley's first L.A. Mayoral campaign, Mary
currently is a weekly columnist for www.democrats.us -- from the Left.
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