I've got a bad feeling about this. Not just because it's a Very Very Bad Thing in itself for North Korea to be a nuclear power (which I think it is), but because I think it could be a gift for the Republicans. Yes, it's a tremendous policy failure for the Bush administration...but Bush's national security failures have a perverse tendency to help the Republicans. The problem is that fear reinforces authoritarian tendencies in the public...and whatever the Glibertarians say, the Republicans are the Party of Authoritarianism.
Josh Marshall highlights part of the WaPo story in which administration officials
said privately that they would welcome a North Korean test, regarding it as a clarifying event that would forever end the debate within the Bush administration about whether to solve the problem through diplomacy or through tough actions...I imagine they also welcome it because anything that says 'it's a scary scary world' helps the Republicans...even if it's all their own damn fault. I could be wrong; it's possible that people will see this for the catastrophic failure it is. I'm not optimistic.
[That's all, folks]
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