What next?

Now that Hamden is handed down, and I am extremely pleased that 5 Justices have taken substantially the positions I set forth in my previous posts in the subject matter (you can still read them here). No more need to be said for now, until we see how the Republican Congress get Dick Cheney what he wants but so miserably bungled.

At any rate, I have been somewhat amused by the reactions around the country about the missile tests conducted by North Korea. There are people who think that the North Koreans are led by a bumbling idiot and the fact that their long range missile test "appeared to have failed" vindicates the administration's policy.

I am not convinced.

Let's review the history in sequence about what we know.

1. Some time after 2001, the President named North Korea, along with Iran and Iraq, a member of the Axis of Evil.

2. Some time at the height of our war-drumming against Iraq and before our invasion, the North Korean "let slipped" information about the existence of their nuclear arsenal and that they were going to get more raw material to increase it by reprocessing the spent fuel in a South Korea-financed nuclear reactor. To stop them from that behavior, the North Korean told us that we must promise not to move militarily against them.

3. The administration scoffed, told them to pound sand or talk to China.

4. We invaded Iraq to disarm Saddam Hussein.

5. The North Korean went forward to reprocess the spent fuel.

6. The Administration scoffed, told them to pound sand or talk to China.

7. The Iraqi war was getting a little quadmirish for us.

8. The North Korean tested a medium-range missile that fell a little short of Japan.

9. The Administration scoffed, told them to pound sand or talk to China, Japan, S. Korea and a couple of others.

10. The Iraqi war was really getting quadmirish for us.

11. The North Korean met the guys we told them to meet, talked, smoked cigars, made nice and went home.

12. The North Koreans complained that they were getting nowhere without the U.S. promise not beat them up militarily.

13. The Administration scoff, told them to pound sand or talk to China, Japan, S. Korea and a couple of others.

12. The North Koreans said, been there, done that, and fired 7 missiles, "unsuccessfully."

14. The Administration scoffed, told them to pound sand or talk to China, Japan, S. Korea and a couple of others.

I think this has become so entirely predictable.

So, my question is, "Are we stupid or are they stupid?"

Here's my version of Evil North Koreans:

1. In 2002-2003, they saw what our fearless leader was determined to do to Iraq. They knew they were next if our fearless leader was successful in Iraq. They saw that our fearless leader was determined to change the regime of their dearest leader, regardless of whether or not they have weapons of mass destruction, or whether or not they have done any kind (and they have done quite a few) of dasdardly deeds. The U.S. can strong-arm the world to make other countries form "coalitions of the willing."


2. They also observed that, with our fearless leader, if they got the U.S. to commit to a position -- even a ridiculously mistaken position -- they could make the U.S. stuck in that position. Our fearless leader cannot do wrong.

3. When we went over the cliff of no-return on Iraq (after Powell's fateful speech on February 5, 2003), the North Koreans saw a window of opportunity -- a chance to turn nuclear before the U.S. completes its tour of Iraq. They correctly observed that they would be safe militarily for at least a couple years. They concluded that our fearless leader could invade Iraq willy-nilly precisely because Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction (Iran concluded the same). (How could anybody believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? They were the most scrutinized country by the U.S. ever since the Gulf War. They couldn't bake a cake without the U.S. spy agencies write reports about the recipe and where they get the sugar from.)

4. While the military option was not available to the U.S., they took a gamble. They told the world about their nuclear ambition. The gamble was that our fearless leader would want to keep up his tough guy image and not negotiate -- and thereby give them time to actually obtain the nuclear capability -- or if the U.S. called their bluff and actually negotiated, the ensuing concilatory atmosphere would make it impossible for the U.S. to invade, and perhaps the not-so-outside chance of bringing a billion or two dollars of foreign aid that the S. Koreans and the Japanese would gladly chip in. Things could go wrong, of course. But the monumental golden opportunity does not come very often and the risk was minimal.

5. The gamble paid off, and the formula worked like a charm: to keep the game going, the North Koreans would do something measuredly naughty from time to time -- "measuredly" because they don't really want to the other guys in the region, including their friends in China, to react too strongly, but enought to get the U.S. President (Condi Rice, we love her face) to run into high gear on "we won't reward bad behavior", thereby giving the North Koreans another six months or so of world handwringing, while they make further headway to develop their weapon. Without these periodical naughtiness, somebody else may actually suggest a practical alternative solution to the "crisis". This game can go on indefinitely, so long as the North Korean can keep up a credible but not dead serious threat and our fearless leader doesn't have another born-again experience to make him repent of his ways.

So, was the long-range missile test a failure, as our Defense Department says in public?

I don't know, and it is irrelevant, so far as the North Koreans are concerned, according to this conspiracy theory: once the last rocket of this multistage missile is fired, Newton's laws would take over to decide where the missile would land. You only need to know where it is at the end of the last stage rocket firing to know if it works or not. They had 47 seconds worth of data before they aborted. That should be just enough time to test a few things except the last stage rocket firing. But the last stage rocket firing must not happen. If the last stage is fired, the world will know the real capability of the Korean missile. If it is good, regardless of what Dick Cheney may say, we will not be able to tell them to pound sand any more, some people may find fault when they see that our policy could not actually stop bad behaviors. It would be too apparent that sometimes ignoring bad behaviors may not lead to good results. In other words, such a result would ruin the game the Koreans were playing. If the missile test is allowed to go its course and failed, that is not good either. The North Korean will be much less credible going forward. We may actually think about disarming them when the U.S. brings it troops back and needed something to distract the people from the obvious defeat. Therefore, the North Koreans must design its missile to fail before firing the last stage rocket, whether or not the last stage firing actually might fail.

I think the North Korean government is led by an idiot, but it is not run by idiots.