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No Mushroom Clouds, Rice?
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No Mushroom Clouds, Rice?
M.J. Akbar, [email protected]
Curiosity may be as injurious to the health of columnists as it is to cats, but there is much to be curious about these days.
Kim Jong Il, the not-so-mad dictator of North Korea, tests a nuclear device, his officials immediately begin threatening to use it, and President George W. Bush, the famed seeker of weapons of mass destruction, says that America’s “commander in chief must try all diplomatic measures before we commit our military”. Is this the same man who refused to give the United Nations time for more diplomacy, the weapons inspectors time for more probing and started a catastrophic war that has taken more than half a million lives in search of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein never had?
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who foresaw mushroom clouds in Iraq, grits her teeth in her best schoolmistress manner and threatens severe sanctions against North Korea. Is this the same administration that spat on sanctions as a pathetic UN-type wobbly-knee answer to dictators and demons?
Is this the Bush-Rice partnership that keeps threatening to go to war against Iran for enriching uranium — and urging multilateral talks when North Korea becomes a nuclear military power? Or shall we put it another way: In Bush’s mind, nuclear North Korea can be trusted because it is not a Muslim country and Iraq and Iran could not be and cannot be trusted because they are Muslim nations?
Just asking, friends, just asking. I told you curiosity could be injurious to a columnist’s health.
It is clearly fine to be fascist in George Bush’s worldview, even a nuclear fascist. What you cannot afford to be, as long as Bush is on fire, is an “Islamic fascist”.
Bush had a chance to act militarily against North Korea, in 2003, when Kim Jong Il withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and announced that it would go ahead with its weapons program. A strike might have been successful because it was believed that all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons were in one known location. What did George Bush do?
He invaded Iraq instead.
There is a simple explanation for what North Korea has done. It has called George Bush’s bluff. Three years ago Bush was not bluffing at the nuclear poker game. He had the strongest hand in the world, by all rules of this game an almost invincible hand. The United States had unquestioned military supremacy, in addition to the most powerful economy. One mistake, wrought by hubris, the stamp of one defect, has shackled American military’s ability and released competing powers to pursue paths that are alternative, if not hostile, to America’s.
more...
[link to www.arabnews.com]
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