Huffing and Puffing
KRISTOL, WILLIAM
EDITORIAL Huffing and Puffing On October 11, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke— and it became clear just how bad things are. Interviewed by the San...
...sailors aboard the USS Cole...
...to insist on real sanctions and pressure on Iran, backed by the threat of force...
...and generally to stop huffing and puffing about what is unacceptable and intolerable—only to then accept the unacceptable and tolerate the intolerable...
...It's the right course, and the task is to marshal that support from the international community...
...Like counternarcotics, proliferation—it requires the cooperation of a great many countries, and this, of course, is the path that President Bush is on...
...Interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle's Debra Saunders, Rice praised the U.N...
...Second, their programs point to increasing risks of lethal weapons possibly ending up in the hands of non-state entities, folks that, unlike a nation, tend not to be deterred the way a nation-state would because they don't have to worry about protecting real estate, population, and leadership...
...Each of these resolutions (except possibly Lebanon) has been ineffectual...
...First, those nations are known proliferators...
...We recently saw an example of the latter in the case of Iran supplying Hezbollah...
...Another concern is that as a result of these trends, it's possible at least that some other nations in the world might decide that they can no longer avoid developing their own nuclear weapons...
...Clearly, it's a problem that no one country is able to deal with alone...
...But the international community has put together a resolution on Darfur to get troops into Darfur...
...Those dangers would be amplified geometrically should terrorists be able to obtain weapons of mass destruction...
...It turns on direct or indirect negotiations with Ahmadinejad—as if he were willing to negotiate away his nuclear program...
...The result in the 1990s was fecklessness and failure in Rwanda and Afghanistan and North Korea and the Middle East...
...The difference between the Bush administration and its Democratic critics now amounts to six-party talks or two-party talks with North Korea—as if talking would stop Kim Jong Il...
...That attack, which was really less than a year before the September 11, 2001, attacks, was a fresh demonstration to the world of the dangers that are posed by violent extremists...
...But it is getting late...
...Rumsfeld is gloomier than Rice...
...The task is to marshal sufficient leverage so that Iran and North Korea and other countries can be dissuaded from their current course...
...So the lesson Rumsfeld takes from the USS Cole, and all that's happened since, is this: We're dependent on "the international community," and we need to cooperate with others...
...It's about to get a resolution on the North Korean nuclear test...
...But on the sixth anniversary of the attack on the USS Cole, what are we doing about these threats and trends...
...All the activity in the Security Council can't mask our weakness...
...The nuclear threshold as a result would be lower in the years ahead...
...The price will be even greater today...
...Hezbollah retains its arms...
...If this trend continues, there would be an increase in the number of countries with nuclear weapons, not just Iran and Korea, but possibly others...
...None has stopped bad behavior or punished the guilty...
...Security Council for "a good year": In the month of July it got a resolution on Iran and a resolution on the North Korean missile test...
...Seeing Iran and North Korea on a path towards nuclear weapons brings up several issues of concern...
...to institute an interdiction regime around that country...
...North Korea is crossing "red lines" with virtual impunity...
...It's been a "good year"—except we're losing and dangers are increasing...
...I mention that because obviously it points out the critical importance of cooperation among the international community...
...But we're not doing better in the real world...
...His is a somber picture...
...So we're doing better in the Security Council...
...In recent days, the world's been concerned as North Korea announced a test of its nuclear capability, having previously announced that they had nuclear weapons...
...Bush has two more years...
...And we've also seen Iran continue with its nuclear program over the objections of much of the international community...
...And the rogue states aren't fooled...
...They've proliferated to other nation-states as well as to non-nation entities...
...So we are...
...Later that day, Rumsfeld spoke at the Pentagon: Tomorrow will mark the sixth anniversary of a terrorist attack that killed 17 U.S...
...William Kristol...
...to work with Japan, rather than kowtowing to China, on North Korea...
...Iran's nuclear program is chugging ahead...
...to act with a coalition of the willing to bomb airfields and aircraft assisting genocide in Sudan...
...Here is the rest of Rumsfeld's statement: Now, none of those outcomes are in the interests of the international community...
...With the exception of Bush's commendable steadfastness in Iraq—combined, however, with debilitating stubbornness on troop levels and strategy—and his support for Israel, Bush's foreign policy is now Clintonian in its combination of weakness and wishful thinking...
...Whatever happens in November's elections, the country cannot afford his all-U.N.-all-the-time defensive crouch...
...It is not too late to increase the size of the military...
...to help the democrats in and near Russia...
...It ended a war in Lebanon, not without a lot of American involvement in actually putting together the cease-fire...
...Sudan is committing genocide...
Vol. 12 • October 2006 • No. 6
