On with the links.

Obama is invoking Reagan a lot these days, trying to promote his agenda. But as Steven Hayward notes, Obama takes Reagan’s words out of the context of the politics and the times in which they were spoken.

Just prior to Reagan, Jimmy Carter worked with the dictatorship of North Korea to send food in return for not pursuing  nukes. In light of the recent (failed) N. Korea missile launch, you have to wonder why we thought it was a good idea to strike bargains with megalomaniacs.

The Hillary Rosen remarks, condemning Anne Romney for being a stay-at-home mom tipped the hand of the Democrats as to what they really think of women who make that choice. (Because, as with everything else from the Left, it’s not about the principle so much as it is the politics). On the Right, some were suggesting that we don’t need to worry about this because it means stooping to their level to respond to "Rosen-gate". But Ben Howe points out that, yes, this issue is worth our time and effort to respond to.

Irony Alert: For the third year in a row, Democrats punt on the budget, while at the same time accusing the Paul Ryan budget of being irresponsible.

Abortion as religion, with Planned Parenthood writing the prayer book.

GENEVA (Reuters) – North Korea’s health system would be the envy of many developing countries because of the abundance of medical staff that it has available, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, speaking a day after returning from a 2-1/2 day visit to the reclusive country, said malnutrition was a problem in North Korea but she had not seen any obvious signs of it in the capital Pyongyang.

No, nothing to see here, as long as you look where we say you can, and only in the "obvious" places.  But it gets better.

North Korea — which does not allow its citizens to leave the country — has no shortage of doctors and nurses, in contrast to other developing countries where skilled healthcare workers often emigrate, she said.

This allows North Korea to provide comprehensive healthcare, with one "household doctor" looking after every 130 families, said the head of the United Nations health agency, praising North Korea’s immunization coverage and mother and child care.

"They have something which most other developing countries would envy," Chan told a news conference, noting that her visit was a rare sign of the communist state’s willingness to cooperate with outside agencies.

See?  All we really need to do is seal the borders, and we’d have the best healthcare in the world!  We could solve the illegal immigration and health care issues with one stone.  Then we’d be the envy of the developing world, and be complimented during the rare times we talked to anyone on the outside.  (Hey, that solves our "lost our standing in the world" problem, too!)

Chan spent most of her brief visit in Pyongyang, and she said that from what she had seen there most people had the same height and weight as Asians in other countries, while there were no signs of the obesity emerging in some parts of Asia.

But she said conditions could be different in the countryside.

News reports said earlier this year that North Koreans were starving to death and unrest was growing as last year’s currency revaluation caused prices to soar.

And that’s how you solve the obesity problem; centrally control the economy to invoke food shortages and starve your people!  It just seems so simple.  (And I gotta’ wonder if Jonathan Lynn, the Reuters news service writer, had a grin on his face as he deadpanned that last paragraph.)

Chan, who described her visit as "technical and professional" — in other words avoiding politics — said the North Korean government’s readiness to work with international agencies, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, was encouraging.

The Global Fund requires countries it works with to provide sound data, account for resources contributed and allow access by officials, she noted.

"I can confirm that at least in the area of health the government is receptive to engagement with international partners," she said.

Which, when translated, means, "They’re ready for their bailout."

Kim Jong Il (who is a man) has eliminated obesity, stopped illegal immigration, is complimented by world organizations, and has held on to his country’s doctors.  Margaret, you need to emphasize this in your documentary.  I smell Oscar!

Some may argue that South Korea, the wealthier southern capitalist neighbor, is doing better economically, but you know something, Margaret; I bet they have fat kids there.

In response to my post on the blog "Stones Cry Out" about the delusions of negotiating with Iran, commenter Dan Trabue responded with why negotiation and pressure should be able to convince Iran not to go nuclear, and if it didn’t then it was a failing on our part.  If we go to war, it is an admission of failure on our part "that we’ve failed to outsmart this particular unreasonable leader."

I disagree.  Let’s look at some major cases.

Saddam Hussein had been negotiated with for decades.  Not even the first Gulf War was enough to keep him back.  Iraq regularly fired at coalition planes enforcing the No-Fly zone after the liberation of Kuwait (a country, by the way, that we liberated even though they had been a close ally of the Soviets and were extremely anti-Israel).  The UN and most Western governments (and in the US, both Democrats and Republicans) believed that Hussein was hiding WMDs.  He hindered UN weapons inspectors.  The threat of war from the US didn’t even move him.  This was a madman bent on both personal power and funding anti-Semitism.  There was nothing to give him that would take away those desires. 

Let’s go back a little further…

The Clinton administration, via former President Carter, thought it could buy off North Korea with food, in exchange for their not pursuing nuclear weapons.  We thought we could negotiate with a despot and a megalomaniac.  Now he has our food and international attention to get what he wants.  He bought the time he needed to get the power he sought. 

The Clinton administration thought that offering Yassir Arafat 90% of what he had been asking for would seal a peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel.  To his shock, it didn’t.  For Arafat and his allies among the Arabs, peaceful coexistence with Israel isn’t the issue.  It should have been no surprise when negotiations broke down when one party is a genocidal maniac.

Dan, in his comment, responds to one of Eliot Cohen’s remarks, that pressure won’t erase Iran’s nuclear program.

Pressure “will not” work? Why not?

I see no reason why one would not believe that the appropriate pressure could work. IF, as reason would dictate, the people of Iran (leaders included) are indeed people (ie, human creatures), then we can count on some amount of reason. IF we can help them see why it is not in their best interests to pursue this path, then why would we expect reasonable people could not be persuaded?

Now, one might make the case that their current leader is not reasonable – that he is perhaps insane or lacking in basic rational capacities (although, truly, even crazy people can be reasoned with, it’s just more difficult). But this leader won’t be in power forever. EVEN IF he were unreasonable, we can go around the leader and approach his allies and others with the ability to influence him.

The folks on the street in Iran do not have much influence.  Not when the mullahs decide who may or may not run as political candidates.  If Ahmadinijad pushes the nuclear button, the people of Iran will have little say in the matter.

His allies in the region?  They’re rooting for him.  They, too, want to see the end of the state of Israel.  You think we can influence the Middle Eastern countries with similar designs, and who have had them for over 60 years, to drop that goal?  Israel forcibly removes its own citizens from settlements in hopes of peace, and what happens?  The Palestinians, who could have turned Gaza into a Mediterranean beach resort, have instead made it a launch pad for missiles directed at Israel. 

This is the virulence of the hate that is in the region against a tiny country that has been more than accommodating over the years.  "But this leader won’t be in power forever", you say.  Fine, let’s wait for Kim Il-Sung to die.  Oops, now there’s Kim Jong-Il.  Let’s wait for 40 years for Yassir Arafat to die.  Oops, now Hamas is voted in. Let’s wait for Stalin to die.  Oops.

At least, when Saddam Hussein died, as justice prevailed, his reign of terror ended.  And while the Iraqi people were waiting for that, the torture and rapes continued.  And while the North Korean people arewaiting, they are starving to death.  And while the Palestinian people wait, they continue to live in squalor while their government builds bombs instead of buildings.  And while the people in the Soviet Union waited for almost 70 years, they were economically and culturally and religiously oppressed with Communism.

And now the Iranian people are waiting.  Waiting for the talk and the pressure and the Sternly Worded Letters(tm) from the UN, while their most recent re-election of their madman has signs that it was fixed.  How much time is left on their clock?

War, indeed, should be a last resort, but resorting to it is not necessarily a failure.  Sometimes, after the negotiations and the pressure and the sanctions, sometimes you just have to do it, because no form of influence or concession will assuage what the aggressor wants.  Oh, it might delay, but delay only the inevitable, as with the North Korean nukes.  It may delay enough to give the aggressor time to carry out his plans. 

You cannot negotiate with everybody.  Some will only listen to force, or at least the credible threat of force.  As George Washington once said, "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."  Ask Osama bin Laden, who never thought we’d respond to being attacked.  If he had, he likely wouldn’t have been so bold, and 3,000 people might still be with us today.

Oh, and don’t forget Neville Chamberlain.  His negotiations and containment strategy are the rest of the story.

Well, except for the nuclear bomb stuff.  But yeah, otherwise they’re just like ’em.

Washington’s chief negotiator on North Korea outlined a dramatic programme of rapprochement with America’s long-time Stalinist foe yesterday after international inspectors verified that it had closed its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed a North Korean statement that the reactor, which processed the plutonium for the country’s nuclear weapons test last October, had been shut down.

In response, Christopher Hill, American assistant secretary of state, said talks to sign a formal peace treaty between the two countries, which ended the 1950-53 Korean War only with an armistice, could begin next year.

America would also consider removing North Korea from its list of “state sponsors of terrorism”.

“We’ll see when we can complete that because we’ll see how far the North Koreans are prepared to move on denuclearisation,” he told reporters in South Korea, where he held talks.

For perspective, Saddam Hussein did not do this when given the chance.

Technorati Tags: North Korea, terrorism, Mohamed ElBaradei, Christopher Hill, Korean War, Saddam Hussein, disarmament, nuclear weapons

For the past eight years, rich Venezuelans have been trickling out of the country, spooked by the socialist bluster of their populist President, Hugo Chávez. But since being inaugurated for his third term in January, Mr Chávez’s talk has begun turning into substance, with an evermore radical series of moves to transform Venezuela into the world’s first “21st-century socialist state”. Now the super-rich are being joined by middle-class professionals and, increasingly, families.

At the US Embassy, citizenship claims and visa enquiries have doubled since January. A Canadian job fair, with a capacity of 500, was swamped by a crowd of 1,500. Every morning snaking queues form outside the embassies of Australia, Spain and Portugal to inquire about emigration there.

My expectation is that this will increase as more things like closing RCTV happen.

Hat tip: The Anchoress

Technorati Tags: Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, socialism

Iran will be able to develop enough weapons-grade material for a nuclear bomb and there is little that can be done to prevent it, an internal European Union document has concluded.

In an admission of the international community’s failure to hold back Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the document – compiled by the staff of Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief – says the atomic programme has been delayed only by technical limitations rather than diplomatic pressure. “Attempts to engage the Iranian administration in a negotiating process have not so far succeeded,” it states.

Imagine that; trying to negotiate with radicals has failed. Who would’ve thought? The result has been that indeed Iran is going to have nuclear materials.

The downbeat conclusions of the “reflection paper” – seen by the Financial Times – are certain to be seized on by advocates of military action, who fear that Iran will be able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb over the next two to three years. Tehran insists its purposes are purely peaceful.

“At some stage we must expect that Iran will acquire the capacity to enrich uranium on the scale required for a weapons programme,” says the paper, dated February 7 and circulated to the EU’s 27 national governments ahead of a foreign ministers meeting yesterday.

“In practice…the Iranians have pursued their programme at their own pace, the limiting factor being technical difficulties rather than resolutions by the UN or the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“The problems with Iran will not be resolved through economic sanctions alone.”

If those sanctions had been in place earlier and would’ve been stronger, then maybe–maybe–they would have had more effect. But everyone’s afraid of making the mullahs mad at us. “If we push too hard, it may increase tensions and drive them away from us.” Well guess what; they’re going their own way anyway, and all the UN resolutions you can muster won’t change that.

Not to mention that it’s hard to imagine sanctions working when our “allies” like France and Russia were enriching Saddam during the Oil-for-Food program. With friends like these….

The admission is a blow to hopes that a deal with Iran can be reached and comes at a sensitive time, when tensions between the US and Tehran are rising. Its implication that sanctions will prove ineffective will also be unwelcome to EU diplomats. Only yesterday the bloc agreed on how to apply United Nations sanctions on Tehran, overcoming a dispute between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar.

So the diplomatic elite will dither and produce more reports and redundant findings that confirm, once again, that you can’t negotiate in good faith with radicals. In the meantime, some say that the military option should be completely off the table, which I’m sure Tehran is very comforted to hear.

What the solution is at this point, I have no idea. I do know, however, that the world, in recent decades, has looked down at the US for its solutions but always lays the world’s problems at the feet of the US and scolds us for not doing more long after the world has failed to really do anything. What has Europe really done about the Iran problem? What has the UN done about the North Korean problem? Insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. When will the world wake up to the fact that negotiating with dictators and radicals is an insane proposition, for everyone?

Technorati Tags: Iran, nuclear bomb, United Nations, North Korea

Another big question is whether or not the sanctions will have the desired effect on North Korea. Both questions will require that we be vigilante in making sure they are fully in force, and also not kid ourselves that they just need more time when it becomes apparent they’re not working.

Technorati Tags: China, North Korea, sanctions, United Nations

Giving foreign aid to countries because we’re afraid of what they’ll do with a nuke doesn’t curtail proliferation, it promotes it. Rogue states get what they need to prop up the dictator, and thus the lives of its citizens are made to be anything from miserable to fatal for the coming years. In the meantime, said rogue state still continues to work on obtaining nukes. There’s never any penalty to be paid, other than a nasty-gram from the UN, so there’s no real reason to live up to the agreement.

This is textbook codependency. We’re enabling the very actions we’re hoping to prevent. And when we try to cut off the free ride, others accuse us of being cold-hearted. The world is acting like the wife of an alcoholic man. And neither situation is healthy for the parties involved.

Technorati Tags: North Korea, Chuck Asay, nuclear bomb, codependent