Dealing with Dear Leader the pygmy tyrant.

Billmon is brilliant as always here


Amazingly he has something (relatively) positive to say about the Bush administration.

"Appeasing North Korea

[snip]

Even if Son of the Agreed Framework didn't eliminate Kim's nuclear arsenal, it would at least help contain it, while the presence of inspectors on the ground would make it more difficult for the North Koreans to refine any remaining warheads and the missile technology needed to deliver them."

I have one suggestion. I think that the phrase "son of" is offensive to Kim Jong Il who doesn't like to be reminded that he was once the worlds first (and I hope last)communist crown prince. I think it would be more diplomatic to refer to the new "let's see" if it's an agreement as

Dear Framework

Billmon discusses the similarity of the Neo Cons and the underpants gnomes. This has become a common refrain on the web. Kindly he links to an explanation of what said gnomes are.

"The Underpants Gnomes have a three-phase business plan, consisting of:

1. Collect underpants
2. ???
3. Profit!

None of the gnomes actually know what the second phase is, and all of them assume that someone else within the organization does."

Indeed this sounds like the NeoCons approach to dealing with evil dictatorships

1. Declare that Regime change is our aim
2. ???
3. Take credit for the spread of Freedom and Democracy


I have been wondering about how the underpants gnomes took over our foreign policy.
To me the strangest episode was in late 2002 when the Bush administration declared that disarmament of Iraq was regime change. At the time, I hoped this was an extraordinarily clumsy climb down (jump down, fall down, collape, cave in). I think others hoped so too and that this prevented much discussion of the total weirdness of the statement.

In "Plan of Attack" which is useful enough to justify all the fluff in "Bush at War" which was required to obtain total access, Bob Woodward explains that Bush really meant it. That he had this idea that disarmament and UN inspections would humiliate Iraqi generals enough that they would overthrow Saddam. Or maybe that Saddam backing down would puncture his aura of invincibility (based on his unbroken record of defeats) so he would be overthrown.

I took this to be simply further proof the Bush is not a grown up and ought not to be allowed around sharp knives or pointed scissors.

I now see a connection with the NeoCon fantasy.

The idea seems to be that firmness, refusal to negotiate and vocal denunciation will cause a totalitarian regime to collapse. How could they convince themselves of such a silly idea ?

They are old cold warriors. The main event in their lives is the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is highly problematice to the committee on the present danger, team B, Richard Pipes et al hawks, because they were arguing up to the last minute that the USSR was much stronger than generally perceived when in fact it was much weaker. They also denounced more than just about anything the idea that there were "moderates in the Kremlin". The utter disconnect between their confident assertions and reality should have ended their careers.

Instead they were triumphant, because it began to happen while Reagan was in office.
To claim credit and to explain the total utter failure of all of their predictions, they had to conclude that the collapse was the result of Reagan's policies. Of course the did. It is also clear in retrospect that the key event was the election of Gorbachev as general secretary in 1985. Thus either the neocons were totally wrong about everything or a few years of calling the USSR an evil empire caused it to change fundamentally.

This fantasyworld interpretation of the period 81 to 85 is politically, intellectually and psychologically necessary for the people who were running US foreign policy until at the latest yesterday. They have to believe in the miracolous powers of "resolve" and rhetoric, because the only alternative is to recognise that everything they ever argued was false.

If you imagine that the USSR would have continued on the path forecast by neocons in 1979 if Reagan had not been elected, then you have to believe in miracles. The argument over credit for the democratic transition of the ex soviet bloc is not just a matter of vanity. It also involves the effort to maintain sanity.