While Senator Kerry has never told us in which Washington restaurants he me all of those “foreign leaders” who yearn for him to become President, some such persons certainly exist: Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, to name a few. So perhaps it’s worth noting that the Prime Minister of the world’s second biggest economic power, Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, has openly endorsed President Bush. One of his advisors explains why:
Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe said Friday there will be trouble if Democratic challenger John Kerry beats incumbent George W. Bush in the U.S. presidential election.
Takebe, who is seen as a right-hand man of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, told a Nippon Broadcasting System radio program, referring to the Nov. 2 presidential election, “It would mean trouble if it is not President Bush. Mr. Kerry is trying to address the North Korean problem bilaterally. That is totally out of the question.”
In the first Presidential debate, Senator Kerry said that he would give in to North Korea’s demand for talks between Washington and Pyongyang without the participation of other nations. The flaw in that idea is that the U.S. has no effective way to apply pressure to the North without the assistance of neighboring countries, unless we are willing to threaten a thermonuclear attack (which we aren’t). All that we could do in bilateral negotiations is subsidize the dysfunctional North Korean economy in return for promises to abandon nuclear weapons building. We tried that approach under the Clinton Administration, and it failed. Senator Kerry’s plan is to resurrect failure and try it again. In fact, he seems to like the idea of offering bribes to tyrannical regimes, as that is the essence of his proposed approach to Iran’s development of nuclear capabilities.
Rudyard Kipling had the final word on international protection rackets:
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:
“We never pay anyone Danegeld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!”
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