TONIGHT'S SUBJECT: North Korea has now acknowledged that it has a nuclear weapons program. This complicates everything. The administration has indicated that it wants to try to resolve this peacefully, and is consulting with the other nations in the region. At the same time, the U.S. is heading for war with Iraq because we think they may develop nuclear weapons in the near future. Now what?
To repeat myself, this complicates everything. Can the U.S. argue that war is the right response to Iraq trying to develop nuclear weapons, but we clearly do not want to go to war with North Korea? Can we argue that negotiations are the answer in one case, and war for the other? What about those nations, such as France and Russia, that do not favor military action against Iraq? Will this strengthen their opposition?
There are obvious differences between the two nations, but there are similarities too. North Korea has sold missile technology to other nations. They have weapons of mass destruction. And a war on the Korean peninsula would be devastating. All this comes as North Korea seemed to be reaching out to the world, admitting that it had kidnapped Japanese citizens, who are visiting Japan right now, under tight restrictions. The North Koreans apparently admitted to having a nuclear weapons program on Oct.4, but the administration did not acknowledge it until last night.
Now President Bush had included North Korea in his "axis of evil." This latest revelation certainly supports that. So what should this country do? Can we treat the two countries in very different ways? Bottom line, it comes down to this. Can we justify a war against Iraq to remove their weapons programs, but stay engaged with North Korea in an effort to find a solution through negotiations? I would not expect our allies, especially in the Arab world, who do not favor military action against Iraq, supporting such a policy. This gives them another reason to argue against war with Iraq.
So we'll see today how the administration responds to this. They have known about it for about two weeks, but I'm not sure that means they have a ready answer. John Donvan will lay out the dilemma, and we're still working out who Ted's guests will be. As if we didn't already know it, the world is a dangerous place, and it seems to be getting more dangerous all the time.
Thursday, October 17, 2002
Leroy Sievers and the Nightline Staff
Nightline Offices
Washington, D.C.
At a glance it would seem as if the warlords in the White House are as clueless as the frustrated police pursuing the shooter who has been rampaging through Washington's suburbs for the past 21/2 weeks.
George W. Bush, who had been doing a credible imitation of Alexander the Great conquering the known world, was stopped in his tracks by North Korea.
Yes, representatives of Pyongyang's demented leader told a State Department envoy, they are working on a nuclear bomb.
Iraq, Bush's obsession, has been six months away from a nuke for years, and Bush wants to bomb, invade and occupy it. But here's North Korea's Kim Jong Il, who fits perfectly Bush's description of Saddam Hussein as "a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction."
Bush doesn't want to raise a finger against him.
"We seek a peaceful solution," said he.
We do?
How come?
It is true that there is a difference between Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il. Hussein is power mad; Kim is mad -- certifiably so, which could make him even more dangerous. And his nuclear program -- aided and abetted by our principal ally in the war against terror, Pakistan -- is farther along than Iraq's. Moving into the broken-promises area, North Korea has been no piker: Hussein has broken more U.N. resolutions, but Kim violated the all-important 1994 agreement on nonproliferation.
As for mass murder of their own people, they are twins. The president has been telling us of the crimes of Hussein, the gassing of the Kurds and the cruelties toward his real and official family. Kim has chosen another means of exterminating his citizenry. In the wake of flood and drought, North Korea faced famine, and some think as many as 2 million died. Kim manipulated humanitarian aid programs and starved people he deemed nonessential.
Bush has no comment.
What has been drained off his crusade for sending the bombers over Baghdad is the moral imperative of regime change. If Hussein has to be removed because he is so loathsome, why not Kim? You had to go to the small tent city outside police headquarters in Rockville, where frustrated cops brief press from all over the world about what they don't know, to find a more flummoxed crew than the White House warlord. The most recent shooting was of a 47-year-old woman who had survived cancer; she was felled by a single shot as she and her husband loaded their car with Home Depot purchases. The horrible event was thought to have a redeeming feature -- a harvest of clues and eyewitness accounts. But it all vanished. Chagrined officers and officials said the cream-colored van, the olive-skinned man and the broken taillight were imagined and not seen.
Bush is moving fast these days. The commander in chief spends all his time waging war on Democrats. He should perhaps pause long enough to explain to those in Congress why he withheld the news about North Korea's nuclear program from them for 12 days, making sure that the war resolution was safely passed without any distracting revelations. Democrats who voted for the resolution, particularly those who railed against it while doing so, might find an explanation to mitigate their embarrassment. They were prodded to a roll call by Bush's hard sell about the importance of every minute; they were also being hammered on the right for being "appeasers." Democrat Paul Wellstone, despite a stiff Republican challenge, bucked the tide and voted against the war. He is so far not paying any price. Even pro-war voters have commended him for showing guts.
Voters have long been accustomed to living with a double standard from both parties in dealing with troublesome foreigners. Little Cuba is still caught in a 40-year-old embargo because of its Communist dictator, while humongous China, with its brazen human rights violations, religious persecution and ruthless repression, is a partner.
But as we barrel down the road to war with Iraq, maybe we ought to quiz our unilateralist president about why it is necessary for us to bomb, invade and occupy Iraq while North Korea gets the striped-pants treatment. Is it because North Korea has a million men under arms? Is it because Kim Jong Il never threatened to kill Bush's father, or because he has no oil, or is not a Muslim? Maybe we should ask the advocates who dreamed for 10 years of invading Iraq. Do Richard Perle, Richard Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz believe in equal opportunity for tyrants? Their leader seems to be pointing the other way.