Right Wing Nut House

I particpated in this week’s Pundit Roundtable at Willisms. McCracken had some crackling good subjects to comment on:

Topic 1: North Korea tested seven missiles this week. What, if anything, can or should be done about Kim Jong-Il, his missiles, and his nuclear program?

Topic 3: What is your favorite place you have been to?

My responses:

Topic 1: There really isn’t that much more we can be doing about North Korea than what we are doing now. China is the key to Kim’s heart, being the only thing standing between the NoKo’s and total collapse. Beijing supplies Kim with the food and fuel his country needs to survive on a day to day basis. And even with China’s help, there are indications that thousands are starving to death every month.

But why should China pull our chestnuts out of the fire? We are currently in a full blown competition with them in east Asia and anything that ties us down is just fine with them. So China plays a very interesting and dangerous game; keeping the fires of crisis stoked at a low level while walking a tightrope with us on one side and the North Koreans on the other. They don’t want to appear too uncooperative in getting Kim to give up his nukes while at the same time, it is in their interest for Kim to be threatening Japan, South Korea, and us.

The solution will have to come with us putting a little more overt pressure on China. At the moment, China still needs us a little bit more than we need them. We must use that fact to our advantage and get both Russia and China to knock some sense into the North Korean dictator.

Kim, by the way, is not crazy - not in the sense that he hears voices or wears a lampshade to Politburo meetings. But his society is the most insular in the world and he really has no clue how his pronouncements or actions come off to the rest of us. Former Secretary of State Albright was struck by this fact when she visited in 1997. It’s like living on a different planet being in North Korea.

Topic 2: One of the really beautiful things about America is freedom of the press. Unlike Great Britain, we have no Official Secrets Act which makes our press free to publish anything it desires, using only its own conscience as a guide.

I’m not sure why Bill Keller and the Times went with the bank monitoring story. The program was by all accounts legal and that the publishing of it embarrassed people in Europe who were helping us at great personal risk to their own careers and position. My only speculation there is that the Times has decided to take an absolutist position on the Bill of Rights - or at least those portions they feel the Bush Administration is violating. Not an indefensible position but certainly troubling.

As for the leakers, it is past time that there be examples made of them. We need arrests, prosecutions, and jail time for people who flout their oaths and damage our security by circumventing the whistleblowing system we have already in place in our intel agencies and blabbing some of most closely held secrets to the Washington Post or New York Times. If their consciences are bothering them so much about a specific action, there are procedures they can take short of talking to the press that would address their concerns. There simply is no excuse for their actions which leads one to the conclusion that they have ulterior motives in leaking. But personal or partisan, their motivations are irrelevant when we are talking about breaking the law.

Topic 3: Glen Lake, Michigan. It doesn’t exist anymore, at least not as I remember it. But when I was a kid, it was as close to heaven as this suburban boy was ever likely to get. There were forests full of deer to explore. There were sailboats and rowboats and swimming all day. There was a picnicking. There was also no TV and no phone which made curling up next to a roaring fire to keep out the northwoods chill with Edgar Rice Burroughs or Alexander Dumas such an utter joy. There was the first kiss as well. The first time I drank coffee. The first time I smoked a cigarette. The last time I saw my grandfather.

When my family started to take vacations there 44 summers ago, there may have been 2 or 3 motor boats on the entire lake. Today, thanks to making the Sleeping Bear sand dunes a national park, there are dozens of developments around the lake, even a high rise hotel. It is no longer the place it was in my youth. But it still exists in my mind as a magical, carefree place where our family was oh so close and where many of the mysteries of growing up were asked and answered.

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Ken was also kind enough to ferret out a picture of Glen Lake as seen from directly across the lake from where we used to stay. I could almost see our big, rambling two story, 7 bedroom summer house where so many of my best memories from childhood played out.

Thanks for digging that up, Ken.