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Friday, July 07, 2006
Rich Galen :: Townhall.com Columnist
Appeasement
by Rich Galen
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Enroute Home

  • From the BBC's Timeline on North Korea:
    1994 - North Korea agrees to freeze nuclear programme in return for $5bn worth of free fuel and two nuclear reactors.

    2003 - Pyongyang claims that it has produced enough plutonium to start making nuclear bombs.

  • From Neville Chamberlain's speech in October 1938 after signing the Munich Agreement which gave Hitler the Sudetanland in return for his promise not to take any more territory:
    We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and … thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.

  • From PBS' Newshour with Jim Lehrer, October 30, 2000. Lehrer asks Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who has just returned from a visit with North Korea's Kim Jong-il to discuss the growing threat of offensive missiles, what she found out:
    Well, he's basically prepared to look at some kind of an exchange in terms of this idea that he actually originally had raised with [Russian] President Putin about if we would launch some peaceful satellites for him instead. But he basically, I think, is prepared to take some important steps.

  • From the BBC's "On This Day" website for September 1:
    1939: Germany invades Poland; German forces have invaded Poland and its planes have bombed Polish cities, including the capital, Warsaw.

  • From the LA Times, Wednesday, July 5, 2006:
    Defying broad international pressure, North Korea test-fired at least six missiles into the Sea of Japan today, including a long-range Taepodong 2 that has been the focus of tension because of its purported ability to reach U.S. territory.

  • Chamberlain 1938: I believe it is peace for our time.

  • Albright 2000: Kim Jong-il is "prepared to take some important steps."

  • January 29, 2002: George W. Bush in the State of the Union address North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, "constitute an axis of evil."

  • Albright, quoted by the BBC, "called Mr. Bush's comments 'a big mistake'".

  • If we've learned anything over the past century it is this: You cannot make a deal with a madman.

  • You can make a deal with a madman but you can't then feign surprise or disappointment when the madman pays no attention to the deal you believed you had cut.

  • Madmen, in history, have had some trouble grasping the underlying meaning of deliberations, agreements, and communiqués.

  • Leaving Hitler with his army in 1938 was like leaving a tiger in a cage with a lamb. Leaving Jong-il with his missiles was like leaving Hitler with his army.

  • If they have them. They are going to use them.

  • Reuters reported Wednesday that Venezuela President Hugo Chavez showed off the "Russian fighter jets his government is planning to buy…"

  • If he has them. He's going to use them.

  • Iran and nuclear weapons? Same thing.

  • We are now just about four months away from the mid-term elections in the US. Every politician running for office will be attempting to calibrate a response to these events.

  • Listen carefully to the Members of Congress and Senators running in your area. History has proven that politicians who clamor for appeasement are, sooner or later, proven wrong.

  • And the cost of their mistakes is, always much, much higher than the price they were trying to avoid in the first place.

  • On the Secret Decoder Ring Page today: Links to the BBC, PBS, and the LA Times; a Mullfoto-Traveler's-Tip; and a Catchy Caption of the Day.
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    About The Author

    Rich Galen has been a press secretary to Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich. Rich Galen currently works as a journalist and writes at Mullings.com

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    Appeaser
    "Someone who feeds the crocodile in the hope of being eaten last." W. Churchill

    Madeline not so
    All the Clintonites are making the rounds of the talk shows and their new spin is the great deal postponed North Koreas development by 5 years. This is their great success. They actually have the nerve to say this deal was a success. Leading the charge is the worst Secy of State in history, Madeline not so. Even their own koolaid drinkers must cringe a little when they hear this crap. As Daniel Patrick Moynahan once said, " you are entitled to your own opinion but not your own set of facts." Now the dem heads are pushing for bilateral talks because George W. wants to stick with the regional talks. Yeah, that worked well last time. Here's a clue, it doesn't matter what deal you make bilaterally if China isn't on board and willing to guarantee enforcement.

    Why don't the Dems...
    ... who are out of power -- and by that I mean specifically Jimmy Carter, Bill Drop Trou, and Madeline Notsobright -- just keep their bloody yaps shut?

    These people are like a case of AIDS; once you've got them you can't get rid of them.


    Appeasers
    Churchill said it most pithily, and it can't be too strongly emphasized that Kimmie has nuclear weapons largely because of Clinton and his gang.

    History
    Who was it that said the famous line – Those who can’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.

    I can’t remember, can’t even remember if I got the quote exactly right.

    I freely admit I am not too smart.

    But I have learned some life lessons that seem to escape liberals.

    You can’t appease the school bully. You can’t appease a psychopath or sociopath. Neville Chamberlain couldn’t appease Hitler. Almost the entire world trying to appease Sadaam didn’t seem to be doing much good. Those suggesting we continue to try and appease North Korea and Iran, with the unbalanced leaders there, not only should be kicked out of any position of responsibility, but should be required to report for psychiatric evaluation.

    It is a good thing Billy and Madelaine and the gang weren’t running the country in December 1941. They probably would have sent the Emperor of Japan a bowl of fruit, in hopes that after this appeasement, he would recognize what nice people we were and not bomb us anymore.

    Prophecy of the coming nuclear attack
    It was some time in 1983 I recieved a prophetic vision from God in a dream.

    I was working as a construction service worker in a Department of Water and Power yard in Van Nuys California in 1983. One night I had a dream that I had arived at work to start my mid afternoon shift to go on my rounds with the depts. fuel truck to refuel the yards trucks and equipment.

    As I was heading out of the south facing garage I heard this very loud ear percing wistel that came from the sky, I looked up and I saw hurtling torward earth a red hot bullet shapped object which hit the ground around the chatsworth area, whereupon it detonated into a nuclear explosion.

    As I whatched with absolute horror I exclaimed I can't believe they actualy did it, they actually did it. Then as I whatched as this wave of radiation came rolling torward me and then hit me I immediatly became violently ill and every muscle in my body contracted and I could barely move and all I could think off was to try and make it back to the garage to find something I could kill myself with I stuggled to get there and found a ball pean hammer and began hitting myself over the head with it but all I got was a head ach on top of everthing else then the ground underneith my feet began to rumble violantly and I looked out of the garage and I could see that it began raining boulders and rockes of verious sizes many as big as the trucks in the yard and they were pulverizing everything and the garage was crumbuling around me and then suddenly I felt a boulder hit my shoulder and then everything went black.

    The next thing I know I am sticking half way out of a mound of rubble and dirt and all I see is a big hole in the ground at ground zero, and around that was nothing but rubble, and everything around that was on fire.

    Thats when I woke up. And I was soaked with my own sweat as thou some one had dumped a full bucket of sweat on me.

    And then I turned over and put my head in my hands and I said to myself why would I dream such a thing? And then thats when God spoke up and said in a loud audible voice " The vision of your sleep shall come to pass!"

    Stam: repeating history
    That was Santayana.

    We all know that Kim Il Jong has missles and the means to produce plutonium. What he does not have is the means to feed the 27+ million people living under his tyranny. The best way to handle this would be impose complete and total embargo's on his country and deny them all manner and means of sustinance.
    But alas, this will never happen because we need the cooperation of China and Russia. Old habits die hard. One of them is over the course of our 80 year relationship with Russia, starting when it was the Soviet Union and 60 years with China starting when it was the People's Republic-which it still is- is their almost immediate gumming up the works. This comes as almost habitual as Pavlov's dog salivating.
    I also find it hard to work up any sympathy for the two most affected parties in this whole situation; South Korea and Japan.
    South Korea has made it blatantly clear over the past decade or so they don't want us in their country. We delivered them from tyranny over 50 years ago and in the past 30 years as their economy grew, they adopted a get-the-hell-outta here attitude."Who needs ya'."
    I also find it hard to muster any passion for helping Japan, a country who now, today, still teaches it schoolchildren almost three generations later that the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent war was something we pushed them into. Also, it wasn't that long ago where their economy took off at the expense of our's and they didn't take their foot off our throats for a minute.
    The liberal MSM has not told us what they think of all of this.What action we or they think should be taken. I guess this is one of the "good fights" where we should pick up the standard and lead the forces of good. It is also bitterly ironic that the people most responsible for the events of the past several weeks, the Clintonista's, are calling for a first strike. Chief among them, his Secretary of Defense, William Cohen.Weren't they among the first and the loudest to cry,"No WMD's" "Bush lied. Kids died." "No blood for oil," etc., etc.
    Sorry readers, I'm not going for this one. We are already in a struggle with bloodthirsty savages intent on killing our soldiers, destroying our economy and our way of life. That coupled with a radical left wing in this country that is doing everything it can to hamstring the ways and means to combat it so they can once again take power and impose it's looney socialism on us.Speaking of old habits
    why is it that the MSM as well as our own government has gotten into a tether every time Kim Jong Il or his father, Kim Il Sung passes wind? I guess this gets back to what I said about the "good fight."
    We have enough on our plate. Until this maniac has weapons that we know definitively can affect us, let the little SOB shoot his missles.
    Let that Tower of Hypocrisy, The United Nations as well as South Korea and Japan handle it. We have heard from the very outset that the Iraqi people "don't want us there." Well guess what? The South Koreans, the Japanese, THEY DON'T WANT US THERE!!!! We should continue to do what
    we have been doing. Nothing.
    Let's send them and the United Nations off to deal with this problem and watch them look back over their shoulders like the little boy going into the ocean from the beach for the first time watching over their shoulder for the reassuring look from his father.
    Oh, by the way. Less than 25 miles from my home a plot was foiled to destroy the Holland Tunnel leading into Manhattan. Know how they did it?
    THEY FOLLOWED THE MONEY!!!!Thanks New York Times.

    One doesn't change.
    Maybe Ms Halfbight is just overwhelmed with Kim Jong-Il's hair-do and platform boots. It, I could hardly call Kim human, appears to be a mix between a French Poodle and Yoko Ono.

    North Korea's A Tough Nut
    Which of course, is why they're still there. For all the talk of nukes and missiles, the real reason that North Korea can do what it does lies in the thousands of conventional artillery pieces in hardened sites situated on the DMZ within easy range of Seoul. Any military action would result in that artillery opening fire on the city resulting in hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilian deaths.

    That's quite a deterrent. Those sites are mostly impervious to normal bombing and even a bunker buster nuke would probably not eliminate all of them. This is something that colors the actions of both the U.S and South Korea.

    Kim Il Nutcase had us by the short hairs long before the development of nukes, and he knew it. The question is how to counter him without causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. We care. He doesn’t. That is his strength.

    My Visit
    In January 2005 I stood on the DMZ and was briefed by a military briefer on the current situation there. Here are the facts--North Korea has 22 million people living in or near poverty, they have a GNP about 1/1000 of South Korea's. South Korea has 48 million people and Seoul is the 2nd most expensive city on the planet. South Korea is under constant construction, buildings, bridges, and interstate highways-large construction cranes are in evidence everywhere. The South Korean economy is on fire, their cars are taking market share away from Japan, and their food took all the taste buds off my tongue(a little levity). My point--we are not needed there, we are wasting money there, South Korea has all it needs to defend itself, except resolve. South Korea has the money and technology to develop a military machine that would render North Korea ineffective and if developed, probably would end the North Korean adventurism. South Korea is hiding behind a US presence that cannot stop North Korea without using nuclear weapons and our Army has none. Our Air Force may have a few on the peninsula but they would probably be over run before a decision could or would be made to use them. We should leave enmass and make South Korea defend themselves or perish.
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