From A to B to G

I’ve always been intrigued by the Left’s view of America’s actions toward North Korea, especially during Bush’s regime. They seem to lay the sole blame of NK’s nuclear development at the feet of Bush. I find that extremely disingenuous (aka a lie!!) What in the hell do they think their ‘Savoir’ Bill Clinton did for eight years? Keep them in “developmental lock-down”? A Pandora’s Box just waiting for an incompetent boob to unleash to the world? Please….

A nuclear program just doesn’t pop up over night. So this tells the world NK was playing the Clinton Admin as fools, while stringing them along. But don’t try to tell that to the Left. They feel the whole NK development program is the fault of the Bush Admin.

Make no mistake; I’ve never disparaged the Clinton Admin in any of my rants. I thought he was a rather decent President. I didn’t agree with some of his plans, but I thought he was better than Bush I and Carter combined.

So, it was something to stumble upon this article by Sue Raging Roz during my Daou feed this evening. The title was US Backing off on North Korea. And her lead before the NY Times/International Herald Tribune article was:

Are there other fish to fry or is the Bush administration finally clueing in to the complexities of the situation over there?

Yet, the entire block is such a harsh break from the standard US policy (/sarcasm):

BEIJING The six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis opened here Tuesday with the top American negotiator stating that the United States recognized the sovereignty of the North Korean government as a "matter of fact" and had "absolutely no intention" of launching a military attack against the Stalinist regime.

The American envoy, Christopher Hill, also appeared to suggest that the United States would be amenable to a step-by-step process under which North Korean concessions would be met by rewards from the United States and other participants in the talks.

He described the approach as "words for words and actions for actions" - language that seemed to signal a softer line compared with earlier days, when the Bush administration demanded that North Korea must first dismantle its nuclear program before the United States would offer any direct aid or other benefits. Washington has already said it would send 50,000 tons of food aid to North Korea through the United Nations.

So, let me get this straight…. If we play extreme hard ball, we are thought of as evil villains who are unyielding in our own ‘principles’, yet if we show negotiating skills we are thought of as going “soft” on the issue.

Can you say “political pettiness” five times quickly?