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I've put a lot of thought into this whole North Korea situation, and I've got the solution. I haven't changed my mind on removing our troops from South Korea. But for those who argue that this would be a destabilizing disengagement from the region, we replace those troops with something else.

We send 37,000 environmentalists to North Korea. This is a plan with so many wins and positive side effects that it is an absolute no brainer. UN inspections are notoriously incapable of stopping nuclear weapons development programs. Under the UN inspection regime, Pakistan and North Korea have become nuclear powers, and Iraq pretty darn close - twice. But in the United States, environmentalists have been totally effective at shutting down development of new nuclear power plants (we haven't put a new reactor on-line in over a dozen years), as well as shut down all US plutonium processing for at least a decade. They have a real track record of success.

Additionally, we could significantly reduce the number of tree sitters and trashcan-through-the-window-of-Starbucks throwers during the World Bank meetings. And these guys will get a true taste of living in a Stalinist hellhole Worker's Paradise. This could be a real Kumbayah Brigade, and be a "national service" project for the youth. And if they don't get 37,000 volunteers, Charlie Rangel could draft the graduating classes of UC Berkeley and Stanford and move on through the Ivies until the Brigade is fully rounded out. Then we'd for sure have some rich kids with some skin in the game.

What's not to like?

UPDATE: This post over at Cold Fury points out another positive side effect - the North Koreans can be reminded that all that fuel oil they want supports terrorism, so they can just drop that demand too!

If you write something stupid, don't leave it where Misha can find it.

I don't get why people think appeasement works. It just doesn't. It never does. And if you don't believe that is a universal truth, believe it about North Korea. The empirical evidence is there.

Steven den Beste has a good post on North Korea and how the last go-round of appeasement went. In 2 words - not well:

Part of what we're reaping here comes from the fact that in the past this kind of grandstanding by North Korea did indeed result in us buying them off. (That's what the 1994 agreement amounted to.) It's important for us to break with that precedent, not only in regards to our specific situation with North Korea, but also for more global reasons.

We did everything the North Koreans demanded, bowing to their nuclear blackmail. And what did they do? Immediately start breaking their agreement. Sure, Nyongbyon was closed, and plutonium processing stopped. But they started enriching uranium - another fissile material for making nuclear weapons. Again, noone was identifying them as part of an Axis of Evil then, the United States was meeting all - not some - all of their demands.

We can stop sending them fuel oil and building the nuclear plants - we did. But we'll never get the dollars out of the pit we just threw them down. And we'll never get a chance to make up for the joint training we've missed with South Korea. And, if we removed nuclear weapons from South Korea as part of that agreement, we'll never get them back in. We gave up tangibles for intangibles. We surrendered money and defense readiness in exchange for a promise to not do bad things. Which they failed to keep.

And now people suggest we do it again. Give up the tangibles in exchange for the intangibles. Like Bill Cohen says, give in to some of their demands, in exchange for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. Hell, isn't that what we did before, except last time we met all, not some of the demands? Why would it work out any differently this time?

And here is the worst part - if North Korea had been dealt with, seriously, 9 years ago, instead of appeased, we wouldn't have them popping up now when we already have a plateful of crisis.

JoeUser says "Time to wash our hands of Korea."

Critics of the US bitch and moan about the US being unilateral. Fine. Here’s their big chance to solve problems. Let’s exit stage left on this and let the “diplomats” handle this. I don’t want my country to have anything to do with North Korea or in defending South Korea.

If everyone would just listen to Andrea Harris.

There are plenty of people out there who are worried we don't have the will to win what is now called the War on Terror, but likely will earn the name World War III. Bill Quick, the Daily Pundit, Michael Ledeen at NRO, Kim du Toit, and Mike at Cold Fury to name a few. And their doubts are not irrational - it's not like any of these guys have some ideological bone to pick with the President, thinking he is some moronic baboon who cheated his way into the Presidency. Instead, there have to be real doubts about a country that not only is not going to protect its borders when it is being infiltrated, but seems to be inviting people to infiltrate. A place where people are having heebie-jeebies because a terrorist captured in a battle doesn't get a lawyer. A place where France and some guy with the improbable name Hans Blix have the power to direct the US military. Where even the UN says our "good friends" the Saudis are still supporting terrorists. A place where daily we are confronted with all the "small stuff" that we figured was out the window because "after 9/11, everything changed"

I have noticed something about President Bush, though. He has shown that he has sense of timing that does not focus on "news cycles." It may be hard to remember those days after 9/11, those achingly long days while we waited for the President to start kicking the crap out of the people who had done us such grievous damage. The mighty display of unity we had started to fray along the edges like the Chinese-made American flags mounted on the car windows. A little dissent started coming from those naturally suspicious and on auto-pilot to oppose. And we grew restless - three weeks later and still nothing, just some verbal jousting via CNN about how "negotiations" should be conducted. Four weeks, and despair set in. And then, we rolled. And shortly after we rolled, the "quagmire" columns and all of that started. And soon enough, we had triumphed - winning in the Afghanistan that had humbled the Soviet and British empires, and managed to get away with less than 2 dozen of our guys killed.

The drum has been beating on Iraq now for almost a year. We all know that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in charge of anything. Even the French know it. We have been building up the rhetoric, and the troops, and the President got authority from the Congress, and then from the UN, and still...nothing. While at the same time, North Korea throws its own nuclear monkey wrench into the works. It seems like the democracies of the world, the West in particular, and worse yet, even the United States, has other priorities than fighting for its survival, because make no mistake, that's what we are doing. What we have to do.

Despair is growing. And, again, the criticism doesn't just come from those who are on auto-pilot when it comes to criticism of the President. His supporters are wondering, too. Does he have the will to do what has to be done? I think (I hope, I pray) he does, though my despair meter pegs on January 31. I have faith that he'll pull through. For ourselves and our posterity.

I just wish he didn't have to take us so close to the brink of despair to pull us through to victory.

The Instapundit has a link to the Quasipundit who thinks it would be wrong to abandon South Korea, and favorably quotes the William Cohen op-ed which advocates appeasement.

Plus he's "been there" to South Korea, so he knows way more than anyone else. And while he does think the South Koreans are wrong, guess whose fault that is:

I think the South Korean younguns are wanting the wrong solution and blaming the wrong people, but I do know whence comes their angst...

Update - the Quasipundit takes exception to my characterization of his post, and invites me to respond.

Let's start with "How many of us have been to South Korea? I have, and so I feel a little bit like I need to knock the burr off some of the "they need to do more for themselves" rhetoric." Quasipundit's knowledge > Knowledge of rhetoric makers: Said, or implied? You make the call.

But this is batting at a straw man. I have yet to see (and check the blog - I've been documenting the "letting South Korea try its wings" movement) a critique that says South Korea should be doing more for themselves as if they were doing nothing, or not enough, for themselves already. The problem is that South Korea owes its very existence to a US presence they no longer want, and at the same time, removing that presence is in our interests. South Korea is a grown up - if ungrateful - nation. Let's let them live with their choices.

But it does look like I misread part of the post - where he wrote "costs to liberty," I read "costs of liberty," which are 2 very different things. But I disagree that the angst of the younger generation is from the costs to liberty, as they have been experiencing a broadening of freedom since martial law was suspended in 1981.

Finally, though, the problem remains that it is still a vote for appeasement. William Cohen explicitly writes that we are going to have to meet at least some of North Korea's demands. Appeasement only moved the problem off of the plate of the administration that he worked for. It certainly didn't achieve what it intended. And now, with the world in a much worse place due to global terrorism, North Korea is gumming up the works. Appeasement doesn't work, ever. One day we'll learn that.

PS - thank you for your service to our country.

Update II - where I respond to his response to my response to his response of my original post about his post. Got that? (This post is being served with 3 shots of vodka - so cache this page, in case I come back tomorrow and wonder what the heck I was doing. Sean Penn is a dope, but Spiccoli was wise - people on 'ludes shouldn't drive.) And this time, we'll do it intralinearly, fisky style.

On "batting at the straw man", blaster makes no sense. I was drawing a comparison between U.S. troop levels and ROK troop levels in order to put the level of committment into perspective.

Of course you were. But noone is making the point that we are bearing a heavy load relative to the South Koreans. Really. I've got all the "drop Korea" arguments on the web linked here somewhere. And not one is arguing that our support should be dropped because they are not pulling their weight in providing troops.

It's bit of data that's glossed over when blaster says "South Korea owes its very existence to a US presence they no longer want" without noting that lots of ROK troops gave their lives defending their country, and are still willing to notwithstanding what we hear of public sentiment. How about South Korea owing its existince to those guys, too.

Bottom line - without American intervention, this argument wouldn't be happening. It wouldn't be North and South Korea, it would just be Korea. Instead of 3/4 of the population of the Peninsula living in freedom and prosperity, all would be living in a Stalinist police state where rice is a luxury item, not a staple. Brave they may have been - winners they were not. And beyond the Korean War, the US presence (and, truthfully, nuclear deterrence) kept the million North Koreans under arms on their side of the line. And, if the South Korean's can handle their own defense, we shouldn't be there, especially when we have other pressing issues to attend to.

I certainly never addressed "a critique that says South Korea should be doing more for themselves as if they were doing nothing...", so why is that there? Is blaster "batting at a straw man"[you decide]. The sentence concludes "or not enough, for themselves already", and he even takes exception with that. Why? I don't know — there is a "they need to do more for themselves" argument vis a vis the security of the region, and there's validity to that argument.

Well, no, but you were trying to knock the burr off of something that noone has said - hence, batting at a straw man. You wanted to set right the concept that South Korea wasn't pulling their weight. But noone is saying that is the problem. Noone is arguing that if South Korea doesn't pony up more troops, we should leave. The argument is that if they don't see the need for American forces in their security, then maybe we should put them somewhere else. Plus, you should get a 15 yard penalty for clipping, cutting my sentence in half like that. You pick up the remainder, but separated, they aren't in the same context, which is where they belong.

[snip a quote of me] He asserts that South Korea isn't committed at all to its own defense: i.e. If they want our help, then "they need to do more for themselves".

Inappropriate quote marks, because it isn't a quote. The point isn't that if they want our help, they should do more for themselves, but that if they don't want our help, why should we foist it upon them?

On the "costs to liberty", he's correct...

1987 was a key year - they held their first real elections in 16 years, and adopted a new constitution. But I already owned up to misreading a word in your post, and so, no, you weren't ever saying that their angst came from us. But their angst is aimed at us.

The real objection from blaster is on "appeasement",

Aye, laddie, that it is. And since this is already the longest post in the world, I am going to do a new post on appeasement entirely from scratch.

Victor Davis Hanson writing in NRO today has a column that covers the whole of the North Korea issue, from why Iraq and North Korea are different, to how we got here, to what we ought to do. And tweaks Bush I a little along the way.

South Koreans take heed:

Third, have some tough discussions about the "German disease" with the South Koreans, and point out that their recent anti-Americanism and inane talk of a third way have only emboldened their enemies. We must remonstrate — given South Korea's far larger population and gross national product — that there is not necessarily a need for American troops to defend a wealthy nation when they are not wanted. South Koreans can be resolute allies or erstwhile friends, but not something in between when it may be a matter of facing down a truly evil and crazy nuclear rogue state. If they really wish to pay bribe money and accede to blackmail, then they can leave nearly 40,000 Americans out of their calculus of appeasement.

Fifth, strategically it makes more sense to confront the less-formidable power first, much as we invaded Italy before Germany. If it eventually comes to a shooting war with Korea, it would be better for U.S. troops to have come off a victory against Iraq, rather than to know that after a brutal war against Pyongyang, more fighting looms in the Middle East. And psychologically, we might also gain some deterrence by previous success in Iraq, which the Americans at least associate with Middle Eastern terrorism in a way they do not with North Korea.

...

Lately, following resolute victories in Kosovo and Afghanistan, we have just begun to regain a sense of deterrence after a decade of appeasement. But it is a long, slow process and we cannot stop now, when for the foreseeable future the dangers of complacency will continue to dwarf those of action.

You remember Professor Kirstein, from St. Xavier University? That dustup over the email he sent to the Air Force Academy cadet? Well, the Instapundit was one of the outlets that publicized that event. And Professor Kirstein sent him an email regarding it, which is posted now - here is a bit:

With regard to another person’s critique of my antiwar activism when I was a graduate student, I would only say this. Buffoonery comes in many forms. I don’t believe the Vietnam antiwar movement, which may have shortened the war and saved the deaths of many precious Americans, who were not able to escape the draft, was particularly humorous or symptomatic of a lack of determination and seriousness. It was an epochal event that was a defining moment in American history that represented a high tide of student idealism and commitment to peace and conflict resolution. I stand by my role as a university-student leader in that era.

I'm going to add insult to injury, though. Yes, a picture is worth a 1000 words.

North Korea has denounced the latest James Bond film again - this time saying it proves our hostile intentions toward their country.

If we are using the movies to telegraph our foreign policy, Cuba ought to be happy. According to Die Another Day, Cuba is a happy tropical paradise where the people are dancing and singing in the streets, parades of 1950's cars in concours condition drive up and down the street, and, of course, they have the most advanced medicine in the world.

Arianna Huffington says that if you drive an SUV, you are supporting terrorists. Obviously, then, if you aren't driving an SUV, you are supporting the war on terrorists. So in order to do my part, I'm going to get one of these:

Plenty + more = enough!

Michael Ledeen has a warning - How We Could Lose:

If we were serious about waging this war, we would, at an absolute minimum, support the Iranian people's brave campaign against their tyrants, declare Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and recognize an Iraqi government in exile in the "no fly" zones we control, shut down the network of fanatical schools and mosques run by the Saudis all over the world, and plan seriously for action against North Korea. If we don't, we may well find ourselves facing a far bigger problem than Saddam alone. Iran, Iraq, and Syria are busy arming Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas for action against our troops, and the leaders of the Hermit Kingdom in North Korea may well try to divide our strength by attacking the South — or issuing a nuclear ultimatum — as soon as we start our Iraqi campaign. All this would likely be combined with further attacks on American soil.

Stanley Kurtz at NRO says that Congressman Rangel's concerns can be addressed by making sure we have Junior ROTC in all of the high schools, getting ROTC back into the elite schools.

Generally, this is a good idea. Seems that a school that isn't too proud to take military money shouldn't be allowed to turn the ROTC off campus. In the back of my mind, when I was applying for colleges back in the 80's, Princeton had no problem taking an ROTC scholarship, but you had to go somewhere else to attend the ROTC classes. Maybe my recollection is wrong, but it is certainly that way today at Harvard.

However, this approach won't solve Rangel's problem, because ROTC is for officers, where African Americans make up 8% or so of the force, and he is talking about the enlisted ranks, where it's more like 22%. This would make competition for active duty military slots even harder, and additional commissions from the Ivy League schools are going to take away from opportunities at places like South Carolina State University, with a strong tradition of ROTC participation. If Rangel is right and the reason that African Americans are going into the service is because they can't get jobs in the civilian sector, then these people are going to be left out entirely.

Kurtz does, however, propose an increase in the size of the military, even though the New Democrat program he praises for working on the "shared sacrifice" angle doesn't.

Kurtz only mentions 2 of Rangel's purposes in proposing draft legislation - the shared sacrifice/racial equity argument and the make Congresspersons think twice argument. He misses entirely, though, the "it will cause riots and protests, and stir up the anti-war movement more" angle. NRO has that covered, though. James Robbins completely blows away that and all of Rangel's other arguments. A great paragraph:

President Nixon instituted the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in July 1973, and after a shaky start during the post-Vietnam malaise, it has evolved into the finest fighting force in the world. Conservatives were in the philosophical vanguard of the movement to do away with conscription. After all, nothing says "Big Government" quite like forced servitude to the state. Barry Goldwater shot a prophetic campaign commercial in 1964 in which he laid out his opposition to the "wasteful and unfair" draft, and called for a new volunteer military, "a good professional core which has real pride in its service to the cause of peace and freedom." Goldwater predicted what we have since come to know as fact, namely that a smaller military comprised of volunteers serving under a long-serving professional officer corps will be a more-effective, more-spirited, and better fighting force. In the three decades since its inception, the AVF has produced an impressive group of committed professionals who have established a habit of winning.

So I found this over at globalsecurity.org. Seems to be the transcript of a news clip, doesn't list the source, but I googled Maura Farrelly and I think its from a piece on Voice of America. Anyway, it is on the draft, and there is tape from Congressman Rangel:

TAPE: Cut Two: Rangel

Most of the young men that are volunteering for the service, it's because they don't find opportunities in the private sector. And, unfortunately, minorities do make up more proportionately of that group. (0:14)

If that was the intent, wouldn't it just be easier to draft them?

Doctors say men should drink every day.

It has been a few days since the British caught some folks making ricin, a deadly poison, in their flat in London. There have been some number of people pooh poohing this since ricin is highly toxic, but hard to weaponize. But that's a problem with almost all chemical agents - they are really hazrdous, but difficult to deliver.

The problem isn't the mechanism that these guys chose, but rather the fact that they were doing it at all. Here was a group of people that were trying to make something to kill people - whether that plan would have been effective or not is irrelevant.

And who were these people? At first, the British didn't want to say, but, imagine that, it turns out they were "North Africans." And it gets worse. It turns out that 2 of the young men (all of them young men from North Africa...hmmm), were asylum seekers. They are using the West's generosity against them. Against us.

We are going to have to get serious here.

I missed this in the Post yesterday, but of couse the Instapundit didn't. Howard Kurtz's column has this headline, but it isn't really a study of that question, but his media critique of what people are saying about it. Kurtz says that the idea to abandon South Korea is an idea held by conservatives, but Democrats may soon pick up on it.

Kurtz never quite seems to "get" conservatives. First, he lumps Bill O'Reilly in with conservative commentators - I guess since he's on Fox. And then he writes that the the reason for dropping South Korea is because they are ingrates - he got that part right - and that conservatives think, "How dare they criticize us?" Anti-Americanism is more than just criticism. Seeking a change in the security arrangement is not just criticism. This is a real difference of opinion between the two countries - the question of whether South Korea should be defended against North Korea. The South Koreans have evidently decided the answer is no. Absent a threat to the US and the rest of the world, we should let their decision abide. The Korean peninsula limits North Korean expansion, and so does China.

No doubt someone somewhere will use this to try to say Jimmy Carter was right after all. But he wasn't. He wanted to remove the US troops in a major Cold War hot spot at the height of the Cold War. The Cold War is over, and our presence there is a relic of that era. But we need those troops for the current war, and as Kurtz points out, our troops in proximity to the Korean border actally limits our options there. We need to be, as William Cohen fears, prepared to destroy North Korea without the loss of pools of American blood.

UPDATE: Brushing up on my reading skills, the Instapundit seems to agree:

On the other hand, North Korea is mostly inward-looking, and I don't think it's a big, direct threat. And, long-term, there's a lot to be gained by reminding our triangulating allies that American love, and American forgiveness, are not to be taken for granted either. That's a lesson we keep ramming home to the Germans. And the Koreans need to learn it too.

So now it seems that they should like us to go. Perhaps we should. Their country is quite grown-up. They believe they can cope and perhaps we are now letting them have a go.

I would wish them the very best of luck. Two generations serving a tour in Korea is quite enough.

Read the rest at the Daily Briefing.

If you came in from Misha's link, howdy! And if you came in from somewhere else, howdy!

From globalsecurity.org - the Korean peninsula, from satellite, by night:

Then go to helpcombatterrorism.com. They have a client program that is like the SETI screensaver and other massively parallel projects. Though it has a particularly specific approach - searching for and cracking terrorist communications that are hidden with steganography.

Of course, it seems a lot of their communication is carried out in the open. Maybe we should focus on tracking that.

According to this article I found through defensetech.org,

other counties such as Libya, Syria and possibly Sudan are quietly trying to acquire or expand secret arsenals of weapons of mass destruction

<David Spade as executive assistant>This surprises us becaaauuuusssseee...?</David Spade as executive assistant>

More for the list. We are going to have to roll these guys up, from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Archipelago of Indonesia.

Okay, this readymade blogspot template is better than the last one with the color cycling, but I'm going to have to do some work on it to make it all work. Like that little teeny tiny font. You'll see some changes over the next few days.

According to Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

At the White House and among Republicans on Capitol Hill there is increasingly serious talk of pulling out the 37,000 troops which the US has garrisoned along the DMZ for about a half century. (Henry Hyde's International Relations Committee is apparently preparing hearings about a possible unilateral withdrawal of American troops.)

If you showed up here through a busted link, I changed the templates I was using and blogger changed some other things in response. My bad.

According to the Washington Post. Of course some means Rangel and Conyers.

No mention of Conyers support of the House Resolution against the draft, though.

I ponied up the bucks and got rid of the ad. And now I can do more stuff. Enjoy!

This paragraph ticks me off:

Some prominent political commentators argue that we should reduce our risks and pull all our forces out of South Korea. This would have the effect of telling the South Korean people that they're on their own, while at the same time hinting to the North Koreans that we are prepared to destroy them from a distance without sacrificing large pools of American blood.

Someday, someone will record how our years with the Clinton administration were a near thing...

UPDATE: This is what he is up to now.

Here, evidently. They not only think the draft is a bad idea, but Rangel is just trying to score points:

we cannot support risking the lives of this country's youth to make a political point. They should not be used as pawns in the war debate.

"Expressing the sense of Congress that reinstating the military draft or implementing any other form of compulsory military service in the United States would be detrimental to the long-term military interests of the United States, violative of individual liberties protected by the Constitution, and inconsistent with the values underlying a free society as expressed in the Declaration of Independence."