… eventually he’ll leave …
From a fellow Claremont classmate comes an instructive and familiar tale:
Paying off terrorists doesn’t work; it only encourages more terrorism. The same is true with nuclear proliferators. They tend to take the bribe and hide the program, and the next thing you know, they’re testing nuclear weapons. That was why so many nonproliferation experts welcomed the Bush administration’s repudiation of the 1994 “agreed framework” with North Korea. It is also why, after nearly five years of working on nonproliferation issues in the Bush administration, I chose to leave government.
It deserves a full read and a moment of reflection.
Either you’re serious about national security or you are not, and this is a clear reflection that at least in this case the administration is not. There are things you just don’t waste a lot of time on if you’re just going to go through the motions; like any program that involves “trust” and North Korea or a major peace effort in Palestine. Even the dimmest child knows that the fanciest sand castle is reclaimed in short order, but the façade of progress is apparently good enough for some.
Those who view such efforts in a more positive light would dare call such work “statesmanship” but this cheapens the word and insults those who actually led in the face of serious risk and in an environment of havoc and desperation; there is no such danger of when one’s endeavors are no more substantial than papier-mâché.
The weakness of such work is exposed at the first stressing, and the crafters of such faulty structures, if they think of it at all after the balloon goes up and they are safely sequestered in a mountain bunker, are sure to find fault in everything but their own obstinance.
