Kim Jong-Il, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Clinton Administration

The fruits of Bill Clinton's intern-screwing fecklessness are now ripened:

Korean bombs, missiles, and expertise will sail, fly, run, and walk to the Middle East. Were Saddam still in charge, he would have been first in line at North Korea’s nuclear supermarket. And all the reverberating regional and worldwide consequences of Korea’s nuclear breakout will be replayed, with even more dangerous effect, once Iran gets a bomb of its own. Just as Japan will now arm in preparation for a possible preemptive strike against North Korea, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia will shortly arm themselves with nuclear weapons against Iran. Sanctions regimes and confrontations on the high seas in East Asia risk escalating to war, as will the proxy terror strikes against the world’s Persian Gulf oil jugular sponsored by a newly nuclear Iran. And as the sheer number of nuclear states increases, it will become impossible to trace the state supplier of a nuclear terror strike. That, in turn, will free up rogue elements in Muslim states to hand off a bomb to al Qaeda or Hezbollah.

The failure to find WMDs in Iraq, the shrieking of America’s doves, and the constraints of international diplomacy have all prevented the Bush administration from speaking honestly and openly to the American people about the true nature of the threat we face. And pretty much everyone else has taken their eyes off the ball. Iraqi WMDs? Not nearly as important as what Saddam could and would have bought and built with the help of North Korea and A. Q. Kahn. Troubles in Iraq? Not nearly as important as the deterrent effect of an America willing to brave 3,000 casualties for the sake of proving our willingness to take down rouge states. Democratization? Important in the long term, but a sideshow compared to the nuclear knife at our throat. A free-spending Republican Congress? Not nearly as important as the danger of an administration paralyzed by a dovish Democratic congress at this moment of grievous danger. Capital Hill sex scandals? Not nearly as important as keeping the Capital and all its pages from being blown sky-high by Osama’s lackeys.

Oh, right. It’s all just a Rovian plot. What will it take to wake this sleeping nation up? It’s the nukes, stupid. It’s the nukes, smarty. It’s the nukes, Mr. President. It’s the nukes, Democrats. It’s the nukes, Republicans. It’s the nukes, Pat Buchanan. It’s the nukes, Michael Moore.... It’s the nukes.

It remains to be seen whether the President will do anything about it, or let the State Department and CIA continue to sell out American national security for positive reviews in The New York Times and in Bob Woodward's bestsellers. The administration's weak and cowardly response to Iranian nuclear development indicates more of the same for the forseeable future, at least until Los Angeles is wiped off the map.

Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt have excellent roundups. As usual, the blogosphere will provide much better coverage of this disaster than you'll ever find in the bought-and-paid-for LWM.