Thursday, April 12, 2012

Epic Failure: North Korea, President Obama

Some North Korea rocket scientists will not be sleeping well tonight as North Korea launched a 3 stage long range rocket and it failed a minute or two into it's epic failure flight.
And just as much a failure was President Obama's appeasement policy toward North Korea.
From Foreign Policy.com: North Korea's apparently unsuccessful launch of an Unha-3 rocket with a "satellite" attached marks not only the 100th birthday of the country's founder Kim Il Sung, but also the end of the Obama administration's year-long effort to open up a new path for negotiations with the Hermit Kingdom.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned earlier Thursday that the promised launch by North Korea would scuttle the deal the Obama administration negotiated with Pyongyang and announced on Leap Day Feb. 29, which would have provided North Korea with 240,000 tons of U.S. food assistance over the next year. She lamented that the North Koreans had thrown away the progress made.
"If Pyongyang goes forward, we will all be back in the Security Council to take further action.  And it is regrettable because, as you know, we had worked through an agreement that would have benefited the North Korean people with the provision of food aid," she said. "But in the current atmosphere, we would not be able to go forward with that, and other actions that other countries had been considering would also be on hold."
The Obama administration worked behind the scenes for months on the deal, and had been set to announce it last December, but North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died the day before the announcement was set to be made. In February, administration officials traveled to Beijing to try again and proudly announced on Feb. 29 that Pyongyang had agreed to a host of concessions, including a missile-test moratorium.
Since then, there has been much debate in Washington over whether or not the administration knew that the North Koreans planned all along to go ahead with their "satellite" launch, which had been scheduled before Kim Jong Il's death. The fact that the two sides issued separate statements on Feb. 29, neither of which addressed the issue of a satellite launch, led many close observers to believe the administration erred by not getting Pyongyang to commit to canceling the launch in writing.
Arms Control expert Jeffrey Lewis explained at length how U.S. negotiators Glyn Davies and Clifford Hart might have flubbed the negotiations by assuming that telling the North Koreans a satellite launch would scuttle the deal and hearing the North Koreans acknowledge the U.S. position was tantamount to an agreement.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/04/12/north_korean_missile_launch_torpedoes_obama_s_engagement_strategy
I do not know why people think they can appease North Korea and that nations and presidents can trust North Korea.  Bill Clinton failed miserably.  Jimmy Carter tried and failed.  And now President Obama has felt the agony of defeat.
There are some people and countries you just cannot trust and nothing will change that.  North Korea is one of those countries.  They don't care about their citizens in North Korea, so what makes you think the leaders of North Korea will care what the United States will say or do?   North Korea would rather let their people starve than reign in their missile program.
I don't know how you will deal with North Korea other than to contain them and let them throw their little temper tantrums.  But appeasing North Korea like Obama has tried will not work and it will never work unless the North Korean people find the guts and overthrow their dictator and that probably will not happen anytime soon.

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