David Frum Is Nuts:
The Rude Pundit has often wondered, especially as the cost of the Iraq war approaches the half-trillion mark, how much it would have cost to just buy Saddam Hussein out of power. Really. If Saddam had said, "Okay, you know what? Howzabout $10 billion for me and $1 billion each for my two sons and here's a list of about 100 people who get ten million each," would it have been so wrong to write the checks, maybe even have spread it out over time, like some lottery winnings, so that the vicious bastard couldn't back out? At the time it would have seemed outrageous, but history is a cruel bitch, and it now seems like a fuckin' bargain. Sure, sure, you could argue, it sets a bad precedent, others will blackmail the United States, we shouldn't be in the business of "rewarding" dictators, and blah, blah, fuckin' blah. 'Cause you could also argue, perhaps more effectively, that it sets a bad precedent to start a war based on a lie that's on the fast track to 3000 Americans and untold tens of thousands of Iraqis, with no plan to secure the peace. If you'd bought Hussein out of office, all you'd've had to worry about was keeping the peace. Hell, Bush would have fucked it up anyways.

Now, Kim Jong-Il's pissant nuke is, among other scarier things, a cry for help. Not just mental health help for a nutzoid dictator of a decimated country, a pathetic monomaniacal boy who is so overcompensating for his lack of stature that he has to show everyone in the area his little missle so we can all be so fucking impressed. No, it's also a cry for attention. And, like a toddler holding a butcher knife to his own throat, we probably oughta be gentle and bribe it away from him. Start by, oh, fuck, why not bilateral talks. Just for the fuck of it. Just to see if it works. Then start talkin' the cash money. Naive? Yeah, but the sophistication of bombs and bullying has worked so well in the last few years.

Like the fuckin' right wing, though, man. They're so caught up in the idea of punishing those who are less privileged than them that they wanna fuck up North Korea (and try to fuck with China). Take David Frum, he of the National Review, he who co-wrote with Richard Perle a book about how to crush the world and re-shape it, he who said in January 2004 on the Today show, "Afghanistan was a success. Iraq was a success," he who opined to Bill O'Reilly that same month, "At every decisive moment in this war, President Bush has made the right calls." He now has set his beady eyes on North Korea and declared that it's time to fuck some shit up.

Writing in the New York Times today, Frum says that a nukey North Korea means it's time to "end humanitarian aid" to that starving nation, to ramp up the Star Wars missle "defense" production, and to let Japan become nukey 'cause that'll fuck with the minds of the Chinese, who deserve, Frum goes on, to be pimp-slapped for the North Korean nukiness.

Frum concludes, "Countries like North Korea and Iran seek nuclear weapons because they imagine that those weapons will enhance their security and power...when negotiation fails, as it has failed in North Korea and is failing in Iran, rogue regimes must be made to suffer for their dangerous nuclear ambitions." 'Cause, you know, pissing off the entire Muslim world ain't enough for these idiot utopian neocons. And where in the annals of bugfuck insanity has starving a starving people actually led to the desired effect? Iraq?

Fuck David Frum, who with Iraq joyfully bounced like the head cheerleader getting fucked doggie style behind the bleachers by the high school quarterback, so full of himself even when he was proved objectively wrong in virtually everything he said about Iraq, shit like "The shooting should be over within just a very few days from when it starts," which he wrote in the February 24, 2003 National Review , or this, from an Australian television interview in August 2005, "I know Ahmed Chalabi not well but reasonably well. He is not a perfect man. But in a country full of very, very imperfect people, I think he is and always has been our best hope as somebody who shares democratic ideals, has political effectiveness, understands the system, is committed to a united and democratic Iraq."

Listening to David Frum talk about foreign policy is like listening to Jeffrey Dahmer talk about cooking. He may be some kind of expert in making what's in the pot, but would you dare eat it?