Way to Go Bill!

Ok, so I'm probably the only person who still liked Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky fiasco (I was one of the original Let's Move On posters on the NPR forums from which the MoveOn folk departed to form, well, MoveOn dot org). I always believed (and still do) that we don't deserve answers to questions we had no right to ask, and seriously folks, as the most investigated couple on the face of the earth, the only thing Bill Clinton was ever found guilty of was lying about having sex. Seriously.

Anyhoo. So Bill goes to North Korea, and less than a day later, Laura Ling and Euna Lee are FREE!! Way to go! Take that Republicans! They wanted to launch a few nukes, throw a few divisions of soldiers (although where exactly they expected to find them I'll never know) at them, and rattle a few other assorted sabers, somehow thinking that would make Kim Jong Il release the two journalists, but what it really needed, was a little level-headed diplomacy.

I expect that in the next few news cycles we'll see Fox News hosts and other assorted right-wing bloggers complaining about Obama's inability to exercise a strong foreign policy, or stand up to North Korea's so effective missile launches. They'll twist this and manipulate that and somehow make this a victory for Republicans and a misstep for Obama - how I cannot imagine - but they will certainly try. And fail. As usual.

But I say, way to go Bill! And welcome home Laura Ling and Euna Lee!

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k

Kristol Wants to Nuke North Korea

The last I heard, we have a new president. That being the case, the "Bush Doctrine" is no longer operable.

The Bush Doctrine touts preemptive war as the basis of our foreign policy - get them before they get us. We all know how well that worked out, or rather, some of us know how well that worked out.

On Fox New Sunday, Bill Kristol not realizing that he's an idiot, opined--in discussing North Korea's missile launch--that,

"I don't rule out the possibility of us deciding -- and I think it might be wise for us to decide -- to knock out a few. They're apparently rolling a long-term missile to a base to test another one, long-range missile to test another one. You know, it might be worth doing some targeted air strikes to show the North Koreans, instead of always talking about, 'Gee, there could be consequences,' to show that they can't simply keep going down this path."

Also on that same program, fellow conservative Brit Hume agreed with Kristol, but didn't think Obama would do it. This follows Newt Gingrich's demands since April to attack North Korea with lasers following their first attempted rocket launch.

Kristol didn't say why it would be wise to "knock out a few," and didn't discuss the consequences to South Korea, China, and Japan--not to mention future disarmament discussions. Newt still doesn't know that we don't have lasers of the type that he wants turned on North Korea, and none of them appear to have any faith in diplomacy, witness their snide comments about "Gee, there could be consequences."

It's real easy to sit there and tear something down, to idly discuss using nuclear weapons when it isn't their decision to make nor their consequence to bear. The continuing serial stupidity of the punditry.

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k