North Korean Delusions

We make an agreement with North Korea, in which they promise to dismantle nuclear weapons programs in exchange for five hundred thousand tons of oil per year from us, tons of food aid, and for the world’s help in building 2 "safe" nuclear power plants.  A few years later they reinstate those weapons programs (sounds familiar by the way), so we naturally stop giving them $100 million worth of free oil.  This throws the already-hopelessly-failed country into a crisis.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il then proceeds to blame us for their development of nuclear weapons:

North Korea has since said the crisis spawned over the admission could be settled if the United States were to back off from its "hostile policy" toward the country.

And not only is it our fault that they violated the agreement, but in fact, we declared "nuclear war" on them:

"This is a declaration of war, a nuclear war against the DPRK. Therefore, the U.S. openly violated and destroyed the DPRK-U.S. agreed framework and nullified the North-South joint declaration on denuclearization," the Rodong Sinmun said.

North Korea huffed and puffed for months in an attempt to wring concessions out of Bush.  They threatened that New York, Washington, and Chicago would be "aflame" and there would be "nuclear war" if we took out their nuclear facilities.  Despite these lunatic ravings, and the lunatic ravings of some Americans saying that we shouldn’t attack Iraq because we weren’t attacking NK, Bush quietly refused to humor the dictator’s demands.  Presumably, he believed that Kim Jong-Il was all hype.  A few months later, without any actual substance behind all their big talk, we can only conclude that Bush handled that situation pretty well.

Now here’s the funny part.  After breaking their agreement with us, losing the benefits of that agreement, and showering us with empty threats, they want us to do it again -- but this time, they’ll only hold up their end after we’ve satisfied a long list of demands:

Administration officials said that during talks in Beijing last week North Korea had asked for a step-by-step package under which it would receive oil shipments, food aid, security guarantees, energy assistance, and economic benefits, among other requests. In return, they said, North Korea had offered to dismantle its nuclear weapons, but only at the end of the process.

Ok Kim, let me get this straight.  You lied to us once, so we should not only trust you again, but trust you even more, to the point that we don’t ask anything of you until we’ve already delivered our half of the deal?  Right.  I think you’ve been talking to Carter too long.  President Bush is no Jimmy Carter (thank God, honestly), and he understands that appeasing a tyrant is not an acceptable solution.