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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (12968)	10/12/2006 9:15:19 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

The Best of the Web Today BY JAMES TARANTO Wednesday, October 11, 2006 2:33 p.m. EDT Bush Made Them Evil North Korea's putative nuclear test has prompted widespread denunciation . . . of President Bush . . . for a speech he delivered in 2002. It was in his State of the Union Address that year that the president characterized Pyongyang, along with the two Iras (n and q), as an "axis of evil." Now, according to a headline in the Washington Post, "Bush's 'Axis of Evil' Comes Back to Haunt United States": Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an "axis of evil" comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first nuclear test, Iran refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment program, and Iraq appears to be tipping into a civil war 3 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion. The story doesn't quite come out and say what the headline implies: that Bush's speech caused the evil acts of North Korea, Iran and the enemy in Iraq. But Jimmy Carter does, in a New York Times op-ed: Beginning in 2002, the United States branded North Korea as part of an axis of evil, threatened military action, ended the shipments of fuel oil and the construction of nuclear power plants and refused to consider further bilateral talks. In their discussions with me at this time, North Korean spokesmen seemed convinced that the American positions posed a serious danger to their country and to its political regime. Responding in its ill-advised but predictable way, Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, expelled atomic energy agency inspectors, resumed processing fuel rods and began developing nuclear explosive devices. Carter concludes by urging the Bush administration to hold bilateral talks with the North Koreans, as they have demanded. He quotes Jim Baker, secretary of state in the president's father's administration: "It's not appeasement to talk to your enemies." Baker's statement is true in one sense, false in another. It's not necessarily appeasement to talk to one's enemies. But it's not necessarily true that talking to one's enemies is not appeasement. In this case, what Carter is urging plainly is a policy of appeasement. ... opinionjournal.com