McCain at the Captain's Quarters

Senator John McCain has posted the following over at Captain's Quarters:

Time for Decisive Action on North Korea

Korea doubts the world's resolve. It is testing South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the United States. They launched seven missiles in July, and were criticized by the Security Council, but suffered no serious sanction. We have talked and talked about punishing their bad behavior. They don't believe we have the resolve to do it. We must prove them wrong.

I am encouraged by the Security Council's swift and strong condemnation of the act on Monday, but the permanent members must now follow up our words with action. We must impose Chapter 7 sanctions with teeth, as President Bush has proposed.

China has staked its prestige as an emerging great power on its ability to reason with North Korea, keep them engaged with the six party negotiations, and make progress toward a diplomatic resolution of this crisis. North Korea has now challenged them as directly as they challenge South Korea, Japan, Russia and the U.S. It is not in China's interest or our interest to have a nuclear arms race in Asia, but that is where we're headed. If China intends to be a force for stability in Asia, then it must do more than rebuke North Korea. It must show Pyongyang that it cannot sustain itself as a viable state with aggressive actions and in isolation from the entire world.

They have missiles, and now they claim to have tested a nuclear device. Eventually they will have the technology to put warheads on missiles. That is a grave threat to South Korea, Japan and the United States that we cannot under any circumstances accept. North Korea also has a record of transferring weapons technology to other rogue nations, such as Iran and Syria.

The President is right to call on the Council to impose a military arms embargo, financial and trade sanctions, and, most importantly, the right to interdict and inspect all cargo in and out of North Korea. I hope the Council quickly adopts these sanctions, and that all members enforce them.

The worst thing we could do is accede to North Korea's demand for bilateral talks. When has rewarding North Korea's bad behavior ever gotten us anything more than worse behavior?

I would remind Senator Hillary Clinton and other Democrats critical of Bush Administration policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated was a failure. The Koreans received millions in energy assistance. They diverted millions in food assistance to their military. And what did they do? They secretly enriched uranium.

Prior to the agreement, every single time the Clinton Administration warned the Koreans not to do something--not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from their reactor--they did it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton Administration with further talks. We had a carrots and no sticks policy that only encouraged bad behavior. When one carrot didn’t work, we offered another.

This isn't just about North Korea. Iran is watching this test of the Council's will, and our decisions will surely influence their response to demands that they cease their nuclear program. Now, we must, at long last, stop reinforcing failure with failure.

Three thoughts on this:

1) Again, note how elite American leadership is seemingly incapable of advancing a case for America's interest, even to an American audience. Instead, the test is presented as an affront to the Chinese.

2) That cultural shortcoming aside, note how much more straightforward this statement is than that of the President. Of course, the Senator is not actually responsible for anything other than representing the people of Arizona, so it's easy enough for him to talk tough. Still, it is heartening to me to see the presumed 2008 front-runner speaking realistically about the danger here.

3) No other candidate has come close to McCain in willingness to wade into the Blogosphere and test out the waters. He deserves credit for this. While I disagree with McCain on some basic matters--most critically his abyssmal record on free speech--it reflects well on him that he as, at least, hired people who understand that the old way of doing things is a dead a a headless chicken who hasn't quite stopped running yet.

Quick Notes Tuesday

Another Tuesday, more Quick Notes.

-- Let's say that you are a new Army lieutenant. You're brand new, right out of some Midwestern college ROTC programme. You do the initial training and get assigned to an Infantry outfit. You get your orders and report for duty. Hey, it's the big time. No more playing soldier at college: you're a platoon leader in a real U.S. Army platoon.

That's the good news. The bad news is that you quickly realize you've inherited a mess. Whoever your predecessor was, he was a loser. Your equipment has not been properly maintained, your soldiers seem to think that the proper role of an infantryman is to file grievances about petty issues and your outfit has a lousy reputation. You were just starting to get a handle on this situation when New York got smashed.

War has a way of concentrating the mind quite effectively. You thought you were moving things along in a good direction before whoever it was that set off two nukes simultaneously in Manhattan and the Bronx but now you're really moving. Overnight, the powers-that-be became more attentive to your point of view and quit their annoying practice of setting up roadblocks in your path.

The Old Man calls his officers in for a chat. Things are hot and are going to get hotter, he explains. It has been determined that our only response will be war. The attackers didn't leave behind a return address, but the government has decided that war must be waged, so war will be waged. And he wants to tell his officers exactly what he thinks their units need to do in order to be ready for the reality of battle.

The other officers are senior to you, so your sorry platoon goes last. You know your outfit is the black sheep of the family and has a bad reputation. It's unfair. It's not your fault. You inherited a disaster. Apparently your predecessor was fooling around in the utility shed with some female soldier 20 years his junior when his eye should have been on the ball. He was so distracted with the investigation of that affair that the platoon's readiness went all to hell.

Still, the shit has well and truly hit the fan and you're in the seat, so you have to say something. You know what duty commands, so you say we're going to do X, we're not going to let Y happen again and when battle comes we will be in Condition Z, so help me God.

Prior to moving out, there are some maneuvers. War games. Some big general in charge of the whole damn outfit is there to see the plan executed before the planned invasion of Iran. You do your best, but you fail. By your own stated objectives and goals, your platoon, your command, has failed badly.

You said your unit was going to do X, but it didn't. You said Y wasn't going to happen, but there was Y all over that goddamn battlefield. And your platoon sure as hell is not in Condition Z. You're a good man, you think you are a good leader, you have a lot of support (although a lot of people resented you for trying to change things and stood in your way), but when push came to shove, you didn't make it.

The Old Man calls you into his tent for an after-action report. He upbraids you for your failure. Do you:

A) Helpfully point out that while you may have failed you did a much better job than other members of your ROTC class would have done if they had been appointed platoon leader rather than you?

B) Argue that X, Y and Z were givens and unchangeable thanks to your no-good predecessor in office and that you realistically had no chance to avoid them?

C) Make a pitch for "staying the course," knowing that your plan for getting the platoon in shape will work if given more time?

D) Take your lumps, knowing that you are solely and completely responsible for your charge, and vow to do whatever it takes--whatever--to make sure that the next time you're before the Old Man X, Y and Z will look radically different?

-- Last night while I was watching Heroes I found myself thinking "I wonder just how indestructible Claire is?"

Then I got my answer. She is *that* indestructible. Hats off to these writers for pulling off yet another "Oh My God!" ending.

-- Speaking of things science-fictiony, you may be aware of the debate over at NRO regarding the season opener of BSG. I've read Jonah Goldberg's essay on point and I have to say that I think he's being way too generous to the writers and producers here.

The storyline of New Iraqica is a collection of cliches. If they had seriously wished to explore this issue, they could have at least added in some real-world moral dilemmas. Instead, every issue presented is stark black and white and, that not being enough for the writers, they then have to hit you over the head with a sledgehammer to drive the point home.

If you believe we're in Iraq because we're Christian supremacists, that we detain completely innocent people and torture them as a matter of course, that we are cynical about our motives and are actually enemies of the Iraqi people, that tying people up in plastic cuffs with bags over their heads is done for fun, and that somehow holding people in war means "bringing charges against them" then, yes, the allegory was masterful. If you believe things just might be a teeny-weenie bit more complicated than that, it was just clumsy propaganda (with the emphasis on clumsy).

As for the suicide bombing bit, which was easily the most offensive of an offensive lot, the writers made the same mistake liberals always make: judging violence by its objective qualities and not its motivation. Is not Col. Tighe correct when he states that he has sent a number of military men on missions he knows are one-way tickets? So, in a way, "suicide bombings" are not any different from important military missions, right?

Well, sure, in a manner of speaking. But what differentiates them in the real world is their purpose, their point. We all (I hope) would support a soldier being sent on a "suicide" mission if it was the key to winning a just battle or staving off disaster. That is not the same as blowing up families in a pizza parlour.

A ha! (I hear the half-educated say.) But who are *you* to say so? Isn't one man's terrorist another man's just warrior?

No.

There is an objective measure to be applied here. And, really, that is what this all comes down to. There are those who believe that since every human action makes sense to those who are carrying it out and since those who are carrying out suicide bombings must believe in the righteousness of their cause, then they must be justified in context.

People who say this pose as moderate, thoughtful and wise, but if you ask them to then apply that line of thinking to the Nazis and the Holocaust they just fall apart.

Of course desperate measures are sometimes justified. However, *these* particular desperate measures are not.

-- And that is what really scares people: the unavoidability of exercising judgment with meaning. I've found that modern man will go through extraordinary hoops to avoid the issue.

Ask a man if it was right for the U.S. to take up arms and slaughter Germans and Japanese in their millions and he says "yes." (Well, most. The truly progressive say "no") But, why? Why was it right? Who said so? Who approved? Who gave us the green light?

We gave ourselves approval.

We judged, we found the right in ourselves. Modern "democratic" fetishes no longer allow self-judgment of this sort, which is why so much of the Left idolizes the UN Security Council. It's a way to avoid the "conflict of interest" inherent in judging one's own actions. If we can no longer decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong and when we are justified in using force, perhaps this helpful, non-American body can tell us. Then no one could question our good faith.

This is the moral stance of the suicide case and the coward.

-- What is the bottom line here? You hear it quite often said that we suffer from a lack of civilizational confidence. That diagnosis is more accurate than many people realize.

We have learned, through painful experience, to distrust those who declaim of the "right" and the "good" with a martial gleam in their eyes. Such men are dangerous. There are always people jumping about claiming the right to do this or the right to do that. Society is, by and large, wise in ignoring them.

Too often we've been asked to fight the good fight only to find ulterior motives. Too many times in our history have cynical men used patriotism and nationalism to advance their own cause and not that of their people.

But to say that something is dangerous and inherently risky is not the same as saying that it is no longer required.

It may be dangerous for a man to declare, by himself and for himself, that something is *wrong* and, by God, he's going to stop it even if he has to kill people to get it to stop.

But that doesn't mean that sometimes that is what is necessary, what is right.

As a people, as a culture, we've become so obsessed with the danger of such men and such thoughts that we've made them politically unacceptable.

Being an adult means knowing that just because something is dangerous and all too easily prone to abuse does not excuse the obligation to exercise judgment. Judgment still must be made.

UPDATE:

I came across the following on an unimportant Canadian blog. I re-post it here only to point out that this captures *exactly* what the rest of the world is seeing here in the United States. This, naturally, includes our enemies. This is the bottom line, this is what people are noting, this is the lesson drawn. Excuse it all you will, it doesn't change a thing. We did the absolute worst thing a great power can do: we made a threat and did not follow through.

I fought the law and the law won

"The United States will not permit the worlds most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
--George W. Bush, 2001 State of the Union Address

"Ka-boom"
--North Korea, Sunday night

For The Record

I went to bed laughing last night, which, given the amazing amount of pain I'm in right now (no, I don't know what is wrong...seeing the doctor tonight) is pretty shocking....

Why the laughs?

Well, truth be told, they were bitter laughs. The kind that says "yeah, saw that coming." So, North Korea ignored our President's threat and set off a nuke. Big surprise.

The North Koreans, the Iranians and Islamists everywhere no doubt had their own laughs when Bush issued his threats. I can hear them now.

"What are they going to do? Adopt us? Build us schools?" Hahahahahaha!

"Oooo maybe they'll hold 14 of our guys at a POW camp and everyone will hate them for it!" Hahahahahhaha!

"Maybe they'll drop some more "tomahawk" missiles!" Hahahaha!

"Ooo,yeah, and if we'll get caught, they'll do to us what they did to Saddam!"

Seriously, if you look at it from a certain detached state of mind, it actually is quite funny.

One of the reasons I like Jonah Goldberg is that he is honest. Agree or disagree with the guy, he is standup. And in the increasingly fantastical world of National Review, you can count on him to call it like he sees it. This morning, Jonah writes:

Lots of folks think this nuke thing is good news for the GOP because it puts national security in play and diminishes the Foley stuff. As political analysis, I think that's probably right. But let's keep in mind that North Korea's nuke testing constitutes a failure of US policy. We can debate the details and the extenuating circumstances, but President Bush denounced the Axis of Evil five years ago and promised that he would do everything to keep its members from getting nukes. Well, North Korea just detonated one. Iran is well on its way to getting one. And Iraq, well, that's not quite the bright spot we hoped it would be.

Tell us again how that Bush Doctrine is alive and kicking, Norman.

The President took to his podium this morning:

THE PRESIDENT: Last night the government of North Korea proclaimed to the world that it had conducted a nuclear test. We're working to confirm North Korea's claim. Nonetheless, such a claim itself constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The United States condemns this provocative act. Once again North Korea has defied the will of the international community, and the international community will respond.

Who the hell elected Bush to represent the "international community," whatever that is? And who the hell is he to say they will respond, again assuming that such a thing exists?

This was confirmed this morning in conversations I had with leaders of China, and South Korea, Russia, and Japan. We reaffirmed our commitment to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, and all of us agreed that the proclaimed actions taken by North Korea are unacceptable and deserve an immediate response by the United Nations Security Council.

We then sang "We Are the World" and made cool lunch reservations in Manhattan!

The North Korean regime remains one of the world's leading proliferator of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria. The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable of the consequences of such action.

Yeah? You and what army? The army teaching the citizens of Tikrik how to stop poisoning each other for Ramadan and learn to live like Nebraskans?

The United States remains committed to diplomacy, and we will continue to protect ourselves and our interests. I reaffirmed to our allies in the region, including South Korea and Japan, that the United States will meet the full range of our deterrent and security commitments.

Cue bitter laughter. Quite a lot of that these days, isn't there?

Threats will not lead to a brighter future for the North Korean people, nor weaken the resolve of the United States and our allies to achieve the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Today's claim by North Korea serves only to raise tensions, while depriving the North Korean people of the increased prosperity and better relations with the world offered by the implementation of the joint statement of the six-party talks. The oppressed and impoverished people of North Korea deserve that brighter future.

Who gives a flying god-damn about the North Korean people? Who elected Bush their spokesman? Does he really believe that the Korean people look to him as their standard-bearer?

Who the hell *is* this moron and what is he doing in the Oval Office?