Saturday, December 20, 2003

I guess they're gonna be hungry this Christmas

According to a Yonhap brief, the US still hasn't responded to the UN's WFP (World Food Program) "fresh appeal" for food assistance to North Korea.

Remember what KimcheeGI wrote? Expect more of this if Bush gets a second term. And I'll be agreeing with this course of action, inhumane as that sounds.

Think of the strange conundrum the "Sanctions don't work!" crowd was in re: Iraq. On the one hand, they wanted to argue that sanctions were doing nothing to loosen the government's grip on power. On the other hand, they wanted to argue that the cruelty of sanctions is probably what made our joyride to Baghdad so "easy." So... did sanctions weaken the government or not?

On the theory that sanctions did have an influence on how the Iraq war went, I'd gamble on applying similar pressure to North Korea in the confidence that, even if other nations try to step in with clandestine aid to NK (as France & Co. violated UN protocols during the sanctions period in Iraq), such aid won't be enough to strengthen the regime if we do decide to strike North Korea.

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