Dangerous betrayal in Korea.(The Last Word)

Like the Clinton administration before it, the Bush administration is setting us up for another negotiated fiasco with North Korea. The recent six-nation summit on Korea hosted by Beijing is preparing the way for another decade of extortion payments to Kill Jong Il's totalitarian terror state. On the table are billions of dollars in loans, food, oil, and technology--courtesy (mostly) of U.S. taxpayers--to bribe Supreme Leader Kim to stop acting like the tyrannical megalomaniac he is.

While media headlines focused on continuing military actions in Iraq and the MTV music awards, the dangerous policies developing at the August 27th-29th Beijing conference received scant attention. The relatively little coverage the summit did receive was predictable: near-universal optimism and praise for negotiations that will lead to more aid, trade, and concessions for North Korea, in exchange for Kim Jong Il's promises that the Pyongyang terror regime will abandon its nuclear weapons program.

Even before the conference began, the pro-extortion party line was being laid out and reinforced by, naturally, the Council on Foreign Relations, which the Washington Post's Richard Harwood once accurately described as "the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States." This was apparent, for example, in an August 17th Boston Globe column, entitled "Date With a Dictator: Negotiating with North Korea is an unattractive option--but the only good one," by Lee Feinstein, the CFR's director for strategic policy.

"Last week the Bush administration achieved a diplomatic victory when it succeeded in bringing North Korea to the negotiating table on its own terms," proclaimed Mr. Feinstein, who happens to be one of the Team Clinton State Department hacks who put a smiley face on our earlier North Korea aid and trade debacle. That he is now cheering Team Bush's Korea game plan should give pause to the GOP faithful who still believe we got a total regime change when Bill and Hillary vacated the Oval Office.

What great "diplomatic victory" was achieved by bringing North Korea to the table? According to Feinstein and the usual CFR chorus, the mere fact that Pyongyang dropped its demands for one-on-one meetings with the U.S. and accepted the six-way talks is itself an earth-shaking development. How so? Look at the other participants: China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea. China and Russia are North Korea's main sponsors, suppliers, trading partners, and political supporters. And thanks, largely, to impetus from past U.S. administrations, Japan and South Korea also have become big trading partners with dictator Kim and have adopted suicidal policies ...