"Shock and Awe"

[Henry Secularpeturbations]

--- s~Z <keithsz at concentric.net> wrote:
> Drunken cowboy hoping braggin' loudly in the saloon
> will intimidate his foe?


Attempts to understand the Bush administration's
foreign policies in term so the President's Texan
roots are not very convincing. 

It's a complicated chess game. 

There are the war protests, bigger in Europe, but
growing in the US. There is the popularity of the
President, which is still pretty high but waning as is
support for war with Iraq. Wag the dog? Whatever, it's
an issue. 

What should the administration do about North Korea? 



NK has withdrawn from the NPT. What should the Bush
administration do? Surely they can not sit back and do
nothing. 

German and France say there is no smoking gun in Iraq.
But that's not the point of the Inspections. The Bush
administration has massed huge forces in the Gulf and
tried to build a coalition. It went to the UN. It got
the Inspections going again. Now what? Blix will
report soon. Will the UN find Iraq in material breach?
Probably not. Will the US seek to pass another
resolution? Blix needs more time. Will he get it? How
much time will he get? What if the interviews with the
scientists turn up a smoking gun? What if the US (the
US claims to have evidence and if they don't this is
surely a foolish gambit that I doubt Powell & Co.
would take) presents its evidence and the UN finds
Iraq in "material breach"? Will Hussein be forced to
exile? 

If the US attacks Iraq, does it need to attack NK too?

NK has toosed out the inspectors and violated
agreements, withdrawn from NPT too. 

It looks like the US can't keep its finger in the
dike. 
Nukes, and other WMD, or programs to build them and
launch them, kept away from most nations for decades
during the Cold War, are showing up all over the
globe. 
If the US and the UN can't keep those nations that
have signed NPT from developing these weopons who
will? And if it pays off, as it might for NK, won't
other nations follow in NK's footsteps? The US and the
Russians and others have dismantled thousands of
weapons over the last few decades, have provided
carrots and sticks to prevent proliferation. But it
seems that nations think that having bombs and getting
the stick pays more than not having them and getting
carrots. 

Why reduce it to a silly cartoon of the President in a
saloon? Hell, NK didn't beging its program when W got
his presidential guns. They started building their
program under Clinton's wandering eye. 

Iraq signed NPT. Yet, it was only after going to war
with them that the inspectors discovered that Iraq was
a lot closer to building a bomb than scientists
thought possible. This has been the trend: nation's
develope WMD faster than expected. 

What is the world going to do? Sit back on its ass and
let the Americans deal with while they call the
President a drunken cowboy or act? 




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