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Broken Bone
by Paul F. Heller
Saturday, Jan. 18, 2003 at 2:00 AM
The Bush Administration is at the crossroads with Iraq and North Korea
Have you ever had a broken bone, the kind that resulted in having a cast plastered to one of your limbs? If so, you know what it means to have an itch in a place that you cannot scratch. Well, actually, you can scratch it, but only by using a wire coat hanger, which tends to scratch a lot more than you really want it to, and is just a disturbing procedure overall. So in many instances you have no choice but to live with the itch. For quite some time now, I have been resisting the urge to address the internecine issues of Iraq and North Korea in something more than a cursory manner.
I have left it alone, for the most part, because it such a fruitful media topic already, robust in its prominence on newscasts and in print. The Bush Administration has done much the same thing, so I figure I can get away with it, too. But the military buildup in Iraq has reached a real pace now, although they think it will still take months to prepare for a full-scale war. And the North Koreans have made all kinds of noises at the same time. It has become a sibling rivalry in playpen of the evil axis, with the kid who clamors for the attention being ignored while the quiet one gets reprimanded by a parent who knows the little snot has done something, but can't quite figure out what.
So we stick to the shortest routes. We know we can overpower Iraq relatively easily, even if the occupation might be extremely ugly. But we also know North Korea's propensity for skating on thin ice. They have always been this way. We also know, sure as the sky is blue, that North Korea would be a bloodbath, and could quickly escalate into a world war. That's what makes commentators different from politicians. Commentators think they know what's going on. Politicians, all appearances to the contrary, tend to know better.
Rush Limbaugh, of course, says that North Korea would be over in a minute. As usual, he has no idea what he's talking about. The problem is the DMZ at the 38th Parallel, where there are too many men and artillery pieces in place. It has been this way since the end of the Korean War. Even a nuclear strike on our part would not stop the churning frenzy at the line of control, nor would it prevent casualties in Seoul the likes of which have not been seen since World War II. None of that even addresses which directions the missiles would fly from the peninsula, and whether or not some of those missiles would be armed with nuclear warheads. To be certain, U.S. air power would take over very quickly, and everyone knows that we would respond in spades to any sort of nuclear strike. North Korea, to quote Bill Clinton, would cease to exist as a nation.
So the U.S. has to step softly as we keep an eye on Kim Jong-Il, as legitimate a madman as any out there. Yet Bush stomps his foot regularly when it comes to Saddam Hussein, saying he "sick and tired of the games and deception", and expressing a disdain for war timetables. More and more troops are on the way to the Middle East, with over 100,000 in place already. We are not just gearing up for a scrimmage there. The idea will be to win decisively; Operation Overkill would be a good moniker for this grand adventure we are about to undertake. Recent polls, however, indicate that the American people have no stomach for unilateral war, and that a huge number of casualties on our side would be strictly unacceptable. Bush has no coalition without a U.N. resolution authorizing force, and he's not likely to get that. But he does have Tony Blair in his corner, like a faraway echo, in that annoying accent. But Blair's people don't support him; his own party doesn't even support him.
The media is twisting in the wind in all of this. It's almost played it out to the point where all they do is trade the same lines, program after program, story after story. And for every talk-show host like Armstrong Williams who stands up and says we look like hypocrites, there is another who will sit there and say that Bush is doing what his constituents want him to do, that Republicans love the tough talk. Then there's the comment by Chris Matthews on Lardball the other day. He said that the United States should "stop being the UN's Ghurka force." As my dear old English teacher, Mrs. Albee, would always ask me, after something I said made no sense, Eh?
And now, suddenly, out of Bush's hat pops this "bold initiative" that he says he was discussing with Colin Powell last year, which would actually reward the North Koreans for distancing themselves from The Bomb. That rings hollow to me. And a Japanese news agency has also reported that Bush is on the verge of giving the Communists what they've asked for, a peace treaty from the people of the United States. The White House denied the report, of course, to save face at home. But if that is true, then his fan base will erode even further, as he will have shown one of two things. Either Bill Clinton was right the first time we danced with North Korea in '94, or Bush is a Neville Chamberlain appeaser when it comes to an enemy we cannot readily conquer.
But for conservatives, the rule of thumb is Just Trust George. They'll tell you he's a man of honor and integrity, and that he wouldn't lie to you. He's not like Bill Clinton, they'll say. But where do we see that? There's no honor or integrity in refusing to release Reagan's presidential papers, which might just show that Dubya's dad was more in the Iran-Contra loop than we ever wanted to know. There's no honor or integrity in promising to bring the boys home at campaign time, then leaving thousands of troops facing what will be their third Bush February stationed in the Balkans. There's no honor or integrity in buying precious oil from Iraq even as we fuel up our tanks and helicopters to sack that country.
When you put it that way, it sort of makes The Big Lewinsky look like what it was, a titillating story in a slow news cycle. This year promises not to be so boring.
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