Also this issue:

Protection From Abuse?
Are protection orders aggravating the problem they're supposed to combat?
-Esq. Gerald K. McOscar

Letters to the Editor

January 9-15, 2003

pretzel logic

Double Standard

by Howard Altman

Poor George.

There he was, all set to see the troops off to Baghdad when the Pyongyang hotline buzzed.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il -- a man Bush once referred to as a "pygmy" -- was firing up his nascent nuclear arms machinery, in violation of prior agreements with the U.S. Kim, whose government has exported nearly 10 times the arms that Iraq has since 1980 and who makes Saddam Hussein seem benevolent by comparison, was once again wreaking havoc, complicating Bush's Iraq invasion plans.

I would pay big money to view White House video surveillance tapes showing the deer-in-headlights vacant glare on Bush's face when either Dick Cheney or Condi Rice explained to him just how bad Kim is making him look.

The hypocrisy here would be hilarious if the world weren't about to blow up.

North Korea routinely sells arms to such bastions of democracy as Zimbabwe, Uganda and Syria, not to mention fellow Axis of Evil members Iraq and Iran. It already has nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that can take out Seoul and Tokyo. Still, North Korea gets the soft shoe. Iraq, with no known nuclear arms and little proof that it possesses weaponized chemical or biological arms, is about to get the swift boot.

North Korea, technically still at war with the U.S., gets diplomacy despite violating the Clinton doctrine that called for an attack if Pyongyang resumed its nuke program -- while Iraq, despite so-far inconclusive U.N. inspections, is about to be leveled.

Adding to the ridiculousness of Bush's dilemma, Kim is bellowing that were the U.S. to impose sanctions like those placed on Iraq, he would consider such a move an act of war.

The Bush administration is offering two reasons for its radically differing approaches to Kim and Hussein.

The first is that Hussein is a very bad man who has waged chemical war on his own people and who has twice invaded his neighbors, acts of belligerence unlike anything Kim has perpetrated -- even though millions of his own people have starved to death while he funnels nearly a third of North Korea's funds into his war machine.

The second is that while there is still something to talk about with Pyongyang, diplomacy with Baghdad is pointless.

There is some basis of truth to Bush's argument.

Clearly, Saddam Hussein is a vile, dangerous despot worthy of neither pity nor quarter who, even though we created him, can never be trusted. And just as clearly, while Kim Jong Il is playing a game of nuclear blackmail, it remains likely that, despite his bluster, he can be talked off the ledge.

But the real reasons for the separate approaches to Pyongyang and Baghdad are far more cynical and Machiavellian.

There's no oil in North Korea. And the Stalinist nation can put a major hurt on us in a war, far worse than what they inflicted on us 50 years ago and well beyond Hussein's wildest dreams.

This week, The New York Times reported that Bush's national security team is calling for "a quick takeover of [Iraq's] oil fields to pay for reconstruction." While the Times reports that the administration is publicly mouthing platitudes about how "Iraqi oil would remain what one senior official calls Œthe patrimony of the Iraqi people,''' the administration is debating "how an occupied Iraq would be represented at" OPEC.

It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to imagine that an occupied Iraq will mean lower prices at your neighborhood pumps and greater riches for the Bush clan and their oil-soaked cronies.

As for who will put up a greater fight, it's not even close.

Iraq is even weaker than it was during the Gulf War, though in the coming conflict Hussein's military will probably inflict far more casualties, if for no other reason than urban warfare and occupation is far bloodier for attackers than blasting tanks in the sand. But the number of U.S. coalition troops who will die in Iraq is a small fraction of those who would perish in any conflict with North Korea. Kim has at his disposal a million soldiers and hundreds of missiles (many armed with chemical and biological weapons) capable of hitting targets in South Korea (including 37,000 U.S. troops) as well as civilian and military targets in Japan. Throw into this equation the Chinese wildcard -- Beijing has long been Pyongyang's prime benefactor -- and it becomes quite apparent why Bush wants to smack Hussein while stroking Kim.

This duality may be fine with Bush, but it will be increasingly hard for him to convince the rest of the world that we have a just reason to invade Iraq -- something that, Kim or no Kim, Bush has so far failed to do.