Eastasia Next

Undersecretary of State (and Fred Goldman lookalike) John Bolton tells Ariel Sharon that Syria, Iran and North Korea will be next after Iraq has been put away. This seems to be a departure from the State of the Union address, where President Bush suggested that, given time, Iran could collapse under its own weight.

Comments

[Evilcor]

Why the Hell not? Hey, why not Japan? or India? Come to think of it, Bhutan has been pissing me off lately. . .

[James Joyner]

"Dealt with" and "invaded" aren't necessarily the same thing. I actually think it's HIGHLY unlikely we'll use military force in any of those places.

[madman]

Exactly! Knee-Jerk idiots always have the same response...

[Steve]

Lefty:

Ya can't have it both ways. Either we ARE "Policeman to the World" via your esteemed United Nations....or we aren't. Make up my mind.

[Dan]

"Eastasia" is sort of a silly reference, isn't it? Takedowns of North Korea and Iran have been openly on the US agenda for over a year. The only new addition is Syria, a nation whose name probably translates to "The Club Med of Terrorism" in English. Not exactly Orwell's faceless and interchangeable enemies. Now if we suddenly declared Iraq a partner in the War on Terror and jointly invaded France, then it'd be time for the Eastasia remark. 🙂

Anyway, the article doesn't mention military action against Iran. I think we are hoping for internally-generated regime change, there. But we'll probably take matters into our own hands eventually, I think, if the Iranians themselves don't. We have North Korea to (somehow) deal with next.

[Lefty]

I'm a bit like North Korea and the other nuked up nations. I can have it any way I want and there's not a thing you can do about it.

[Steve]

Touche'

[Omnibus Bill]

The comparisons of Israel to North Korea, vis a vis WMD, are inapt to the point of irrelevance. The comparison is between a more or less western, liberal democracy that deals with friend and foe alike with remarkable restraint, and an insane police state led by a crazed little degenerate maximum ruler with an awful, awful haircut.

To illustrate the difference: Assume that your neighbor Dr. Smith, who is more or less a pillar of the community, an avid duck hunter and a dedicated rotarian, owns a shotgun. You've had some arguments over who shovels the walk, where your flower garden ends, etc -- but he's never whipped out the gun or threatened you with it. Do you have any problem with him having a gun?

How 'bout your other neighbor, Cletus the slack jawed yokel? Cletus recently got out of the clink for beating his wife, he is generally jacked up on Oxycontin, and he has indicated that he would beat his kids a lot more often -- except he's usually too busy getting stoned or firing said the shotgun into the old car in his front yard. Cletus has threatened to shotgun you if your dog pees in his yard again, if you call the cops on him for wifebeating again, or if you so much as look at him funny. Do you have any problems with Cletus having a shotgun?

That's essentially the difference between North Korea having nukes, and Israel having nukes.

[Lefty]

Here's a little better article: http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=263941

There is no doubt Sharon is talking in military terms. It's also significant that Bolton met with Netanyahu but nobody from the Labor party.

Sharon is the only world leader Bush listens to; he just uses Blaire. Get ready for a long stay in the desert.

[Lefty]

Here's an interesting quote from that article.

"Bolton, who is undersecretary for arms control and international security, is in Israel for meetings on preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

Israel is not a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty and is fully nuked up, with assistance from the US, in violation of it if they would have signed.

[Dan]

I seem to recall that a few years back Saddam Hussein AND Osama Bin Laden were pretty tight allies.

I'm not responsible for what you think you remember.

Saddam Hussein was never a "pretty tight ally". We both wanted Iran taken out, so we gave him weapons -- end of "alliance".

Osama bin Laden was never an ally of the United States. We were supporters of a group he belonged to, yes -- because they were fighting the Soviet Union. If we had it all to do over again, we'd support them again. The USSR was worse than al Qaeda and Iraq could collectively ever hope to be.

Furthermore, as you'd know if you'd actually read 1984, the point of "Eastasia" and "Eurasia" was that they were arbitrary entities being fought to keep the people distracted. It takes a special kind of stupidity to think that's why we fought the USSR, or why we're chasing terrorists now.

[Steve]

Hey, Lefty...I know this sounds totally absurd to you, but if you don't sign an agreement, you can't be held accountable to it. What a concept, huh?

[Dan]

Oh, one other thing -- by what stretch of the imagination is Russia our "bestest buddy" now? I don't see their troops helping us in Iraq, although I do notice their diplomats opposing us in the UN. They didn't help in Afghanistan. They gave us a lot of grief about Bosnia. Where, exactly, is this "bestest buddyness" manifesting itself?

They act friendly when they need us to send another few billion dollars of handouts their way. Other than that, we're basically neutral to each other. And in case you were sleeping or stoned for the last two decades, the reason for that neutrality is that he United States WON THE COLD WAR. In other words, the "eternal war" of the 1984 world ended -- in victory, for the forces of democracy and capitalism. Who are currently getting attacked by Koran-thumping nutjobs. 🙂

[The Mountain Goat]

"Syria, Iran, and North Korea"? What, North Korea is now in fourth? Can't a guy get any serious disrepect around here?
Next thing we'll see North Korea will get passed by Pakistan, and we'll never get around to dealing with them.

[Evilcor]

Hey, Dan:
I seem to recall that a few years back Saddam Hussein AND Osama Bin Laden were pretty tight allies. Who was the enemy then? Russia? Our bestest buddy in the world now? Oh.

[Lefty]

Yeah, Steve, you're not bound by an agreement you didn't sign. You also don't get to be a policeman for other countries who did.

[Floyd McWilliams]

Yeah, real hypocritical of the US to be friends with Russia now. It's not like the Soviet -- I mean Russian -- government has changed in the last 15 years.

I wonder if people like evilcor want Japan to get nuked twice every August, just for consistency.

[fyodor]

If Lefty is saying that our concern with WMD proliferation is selective to those whom we distrust, I would have to agree.

Still, just because Sharon was speaking militarily doesn't mean Bolton was.
While I am against a first strike attack on Iraq, I would feel rather uncomfortable claiming some sort of slippy slope of aggression as a reason. I'm concerned with what our government has in mind, but let's not jump to conclusions either. We've expended so much time and energy trying to convince other countries to go along with our Iraq war, just imagine how much harder it would be for attacking any of those other countries! But either way, only time will tell....

[Evilcor]

Ok, this will be my last word on a very stupid subject.
First off, yes we WERE tight with Hussein; insofar as we were financing his war and turning a blind eye to his atrocities. This is the definition (in the 20th century) of 'alliance'.
Second, we ARE tight with Russia now. More to the point, we and they both would like to break OPEC. It is for this reason we finance their disaterous domestic policies and turn a blind eye to Chechen atrocities.
Third, if you seriously think there are different people in charge of Russia now than have run it for eighty-odd years, you are a child.
Finally, you can take that A-Bomb reference and shove it up your ass. It is this needless and deliberate caricaturing of an opponent which gives arguments a bad name.

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