Death in the Neo-Con Family

Another member of the Axis of Evil expired today in the explosion of a North Korean nuclear cooling tower, and Washington mourners are taking it hard. Dick Cheney, inconsolable, has retreated into stony silence but John Bolton, voluble as ever, is carrying on about the "shameful" loss of another Neo-Con offspring.

The Vice President, grief-stricken at the terrorism de-listing of North Korea, reportedly left a meeting of foreign-policy experts after being asked about the news.

“I’m not going to be the one to announce this decision,” Cheney said, pointing at himself before departing. “You need to address your interest in this to the State Department.”

With Evil on life support in Iraq, the loss of another Conservative whipping boy leaves only Iran as a survivor of the triplets born during President Bush's State of the Union speech in January 2002.

If Israel makes good on Bolton's prediction of an attack on Tehran after our November elections, the Bush Administration may leave office in January childless, sloganwise.

John Bolton vs. George W. Bush

The man with the white walrus mustache is back in Washington after a European tour of touting war with Iran. He has a new book to promote and a new cause--rallying Republican Congressmen to oppose the nuclear agreement with North Korea by that left-wing softie, George W. Bush.

Last week he met with 42 GOP Neanderthals at the invitation of Iowa Rep. Steve King, whose main legislative goal is to abolish the income tax, and argued that “North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons voluntarily, and that it is only a matter of time before their cheating is exposed, at which point one hopes that Bush will repudiate this charade.”

Bolton’s new book is titled “Surrender Is Not an Option,” reflecting the unyielding bellicosity of the man who calls himself a Goldwater conservative, as opposed to those parvenu Neo-Cons he considers “liberals who’d been mugged by reality.”

If he had his way, Bolton would solve all our world problems by bombing and invading, in contrast to his youthful aversion to warfare.

"I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy," Bolton wrote in the 25th reunion book of his graduation from Yale about his decision to join the National Guard and go to law school. "I considered the war in Vietnam already lost."

Unlike the war in Iraq today and whatever new ones he can instigate tomorrow.

North Korea Without Nukes or Nuttiness?

From both sides of the ideological divide, Americans who pay attention to politics are in uncharted territory with the seeming remission of North Korea from the madness of Kim Jong-il.

After almost seven years of disdain for diplomacy, the Administration now needs judgment and skills that may have atrophied in a politicized State Department. Critics on their part will have to put aside reflexive Bush distrust and do some actual thinking about what is in the best interests of the U.S.

North Korea’s agreement this week to disclose nuclear programs and disable facilities in exchange for fuel oil or economic aid calls for a post-axis of evil policy.

It won’t be easy to get beyond slogans and do the diplomatic scut work of detailed tradeoffs, verification and policing that the Clinton experience showed are vital in dealing with one of the world’s most unreliable and capricious regimes.

Karl Rove is gone, but Dick Cheney’s warlike gnomes will still be an obstacle. John Bolton, their link to the outside world, has already decried agreements to take North Korea off the U.S. terrorism list and that of “enemy” nations forbidden from trading with us, warning that without “final” verification of nuclear disarmament, “the president will have embarrassed his administration in history.”

From the other direction, Democrats are wary too, with Rep. Edward Markey warning against being too trusting about removing sanctions against North Korea.

Although logic has never been his strong suit, Bush himself will have to reconcile cozying up with North Korea while threatening war with Iran. In public this week, he held up the former as an example to the latter of what would be possible if Iran agreed first to stop nuclear enrichment. Ahmadinejad won’t be leaping at the chance.

But as he enters a final year of lame-duckness, the most relentlessly warlike of recent presidents has the chance to undo a small fraction of the international damage done during his tenure. Will he take it, and will his friends and foes help him do it?

Mini-Cuban Missile Crisis in the Mideast

When George Bush goes literally dumb, something must be afoot. At yesterday’s news conference, he talked about Iraq, Iran and North Korea, but refused any comment on Israel’s bombing of possible nuclear targets in Syria.

Former Prime Minister, now Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed such a strike this week based on suspicions that North Korea was exporting weapons materials to Israel’s neighbor, much as Soviet Premier Khruschev did to Cuba in 1962.

The American response back then was a blockade (more politely, quarantine) of further shipments and intense diplomacy that resulted in the Soviet Union’s removal of the weapons.

Israel historically has opted for more direct action, bombing an Iraqi plant in 1981 and making clear it would consider possession of nuclear weapons by Iran a threat to its existence.

Bush’s refusal to comment is understandable, but more puzzling is the continuing drumbeat by Cheney and his disciples for preemptive action against Iran by the U.S.

Don’t they trust Israel to do that particular dirty work for them?

Warriors for Peace

Children are supposed to be guileless enough to speak truths that adults are too compromised to tell. But on going to war with Iran, retired soldiers are taking the lead.

Last weekend, Gen. Wesley Clark wrote a Washington Post OpEd warning against the folly of attacking Iran, as the Bush Administration is clearly preparing to do.

Now another retired military leader, Gen. John Abizaid, who headed Central Command for almost four years, speaks out.

"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid yesterday told the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

The General was referring to such countries as “axis of evil” member North Korea and unstable ally Pakistan. But the Bush-Cheney Neo-Cons are beating the drums for an urgent war against Iran just as they did against Iraq five years ago.

Some years ago, someone I knew was planning a picture book titled “They Must Know What They’re Doing or They Wouldn’t Be Where They Are,” featuring the designer of the Edsel, LBJ directing the war in Vietnam and other perpetrators of huge follies.

The Bushies have earned their place in that volume and, before they can repeat their performance in Iran, Gen. Abizaid has some common sense to impart:

“I believe the United States, with our great military power, can contain Iran...can deliver clear messages to the Iranians that...while they may develop one or two nuclear weapons they'll never be able to compete with us in our true military might and power.”

What we need now are politicians who are as dedicated to peacekeeping as the men who were trained to make war.