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Article: Facing the realities in North Korea: When nuts get nukes, the world becomes perilous
- Article from:
- Charleston Daily Mail
- Article date:
- January 11, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2003 Charleston Daily Mail. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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ON North Korea, the conventional wisdom in Washington, which
happens to be the same as the conventional wisdom in Pyongyang, goes
roughly like this:
George W. Bush triggered the crisis by excessive hardening-of-
line and axis-of-evil-calling; Bush is compounding his hard-lining
error by irresponsibly refusing to negotiate with Pyongyang; and,
paradoxically, Bush is guilty of foreign-policy incoherence or worse
in adopting a harder line toward Saddam Hussein than Kim Jong Il.
Conventional wisdom tends by its nature to get things wrong, but
seldom this wrong and seldom this dangerously wrong. This is wrong to
the point of divorce from reality.