The Feld-Blog

Wow. Just wow. Big Bad North Korea, one third of Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil,’ wants to scare America. Yet Kim Jung Il’s supposedly transcontinental ballistic missile fizzled out in the sea of Japan – just next door. Ok. They failed. Good. But we can’t be lulled into a sense of complacency. Simply the audacity for a tiny autocratic regime – at least in relation to the US – to threaten a world power with missile tests and nuclear programs should be of great concern to all of us sitting in our comfortable living rooms. Failed or not, when you see a little David standing up to a Goliath, often times, the little guy knows something the big guy doesn’t.

With our American President spouting off such inflammatory rhetoric as “we’ll fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here” America has all but begged the anti-western, autocratic regimes to grandstand. Bush has declared, for just about the first time in modern history, moral superiority for ‘attack first and ask questions later.’ If this isn’t an invitation for North Korea to plan transcontinental missile tests and for Iran to grandstand its nuclear program, I am not sure what is.

And what happens when a bully provokes a little kid for his lunch money day after day after day? Eventually that little kid will fight back – maybe with friends and maybe alone, and the overwhelming odds are that the little kid will lose, but the fact remains that at some point he will fight back. Now if the manifestation of this fight is just a few scratches on the bully’s face, that’s all well and good. But when the kid is North Korea and the Bully is America, a few scratches translate into a few hundred or a few thousand American lives lost. Right now North Korea is telling its friends on the playground what it plans to do to the bully and without much effect. But when a little skirmish means losing American lives, our government has a responsibility to shut up and make nice to prevent those scratches.

This is not a cost-benefit analysis. Our Government has a responsibility to protect American lives. Any foreign policy that risks civilian American lives is irresponsible. Some in the administration want to paint these failures of our enemies as victories for us. Progressives have a responsibility to tell the world what it really means: an increased audacity in nations that may not be able to wipe us off the planet, but who can inflict some serious harm. This is not a victory. This is simply evidence of growing tension around the world – a growing coalition of anti-American forces. We can’t afford it and our foreign policy needs a progressive overhaul to really protect this country.