The Washington Times
  • Subscribe
  • Times News Services
  • RSS
  • Mobile Headlines
  • e-edition
  • E-MAIL ALERTS
  • REGISTER
  • LOG IN
  • E-MAIL ALERTS
  • WELCOME
  • Your Profile
  • Log Out
  • Front Page Image
  • Classifieds
  • Autos
  • Real Estate
  • Jobs
  • Special Sections
  • Customer Service
  • Home
  • News
    • World
    • National
    • Politics
    • National Security
    • DC Area
    • Business
    • Entertainment
    • Technology
    • Investigations
    • Faith
    • Energy
    • Environment
    • Headlines
    • Citizen Journalism
  • Opinion
  • Sports
    • NFL
    • NBA/WNBA
    • MLB
    • NHL
    • Tennis
    • Golf
    • Motorsports
    • Soccer
    • NCAA
    • Olympics
    • Outdoors
    • Other
  • Culture
    • Home & Living
    • Family & Kids
    • Fashion
    • Food
    • Travel
    • Health
    • Washington Visitors
    • Books
    • Military History
    • Life
    • Auto
    • TV Listings
    • Movie Listings
    • Death Notices
    • Entertainment
  • Themes
  • Communities
  • Shopping
    • Stores
    • Coupons
    • Daily Double
    • Promotion
    • How It Works
  • Videos
    • Two Guys
    • Birnbaum on Washington
    • Liz Glover
    • Amanda Carpenter
    • Morning Briefing
    • Documentaries
    • Joe Giganti
    • Video Game Minute
  • Podcasts
    • About Headlines
    • Audio and Radio
    • America's Morning News
  • National

    Tiger Woods injured in car accident

  • Security

    White House praises IAEA's censures of Iran

  • Business

    Wall Street tumbles on Dubai fears

  • Local

    Private funeral Friday for Pollin

  • Politics

    Ads add heat to health care debate

  • National

    At Mall of America, it's business as usual

  • World

    Drug lords finding safe haven in Bolivia

Monday, June 1, 2009

STEYN: Testing what we'll let pass

Rate this story

Average 0.00
after 0 votes
Login or register to rate this story

Wide notice of America's diplomatic squeak over detonation

  • Font Size -+
  • Print
  • Email
  • Comment
  • Tweet this!
  • Share
  • Article
  • Comments ()
  • Click-2-Listen
  • Videos
Please stand by, images loading!
  • North Korean leader Kim Jong-il makes his first public appearance since August at the Supreme People's Assembly on Thursday, April 9, 2009, countering suspicion that he is too ill to rule the nation. (Associated Press)

More Stories

  • Wall Street tumbles on Dubai fears
  • Obama calls service members on holiday
  • Gay marriage vote stalls in N.J., N.Y.
  • Shaq pays for murdered girl's funeral

By Mark Steyn

COMMENTARY:

What does a nuclear madman have to do to get America's attention? On Memorial Day, the North Koreans detonated "an underground atomic device many times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki," as my old colleagues at the Irish Times put it. You'd think that would rate something higher than "World News in Brief, see foot of Page 37. " But instead, Washington was consumed by the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who apparently has a "compelling personal story."

Doesn't Kim Jong-il have a compelling personal story? Like Judge Sotomayor, he grew up in a poor neighborhood (North Korea), yet he has managed to become a nuclear power, shattering the glass ceiling to take his seat at the old nuclear boys club.

Isn't that an inspiring narrative? Once upon a time, you had to be a great power, one of the Big Five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, to sit at the nuclear table: America, Britain, France, Russia, China, the old sons of power and privilege. But now the mentally unstable scion of an impoverished no-account backwater with a gross domestic product lower than Zimbabwe's has joined their ranks: Celebrate diversity!

Evidently, some compelling personal stories are more compelling than others. In The Washington Post, Stephen Stromberg argued that Mr. Kim's decision to drop the Big One on a three-day weekend was evidence of his appalling news judgment.

Other blase observers shrug that it's become an American holiday tradition. It began when Pyongyang staged the first of its holiday provocations on the Fourth of July 2006, and, amidst all the other fireworks displays, America barely noticed. No doubt there'll be another Hiroshima on Labor Day or Thanksgiving. Geez, doesn't the hick in the presidential palace get it? There's no point launching nukes when everyone's barbecuing chicken or watching football.

Well, you never know: Maybe we're the ones being parochial. If you're American, it's natural to assume the North Korean problem is about North Korea, just like the Iraq war is about Iraq. But they're not. If you're starving to death in Pyongyang, North Korea is about North Korea. For everyone else, North Korea and Iraq, and Afghanistan and Iran, are about America: American will, American purpose, American credibility.

The rest of the world doesn't observe Memorial Day. But it understands the crude symbolism of a rogue nuclear test staged on the day designated to honor American war dead and greeted with only half-hearted pro-forma diplomatese from Washington. Pyongyang's actions were "a matter of" - Drumroll please! - "grave concern," the president declared. Furthermore, if North Korea carries on like this, it will - wait for it - "not find international acceptance." As the comedian Andy Borowitz put it, "President Obama said that the United States was prepared to respond to the threat with 'the strongest possible adjectives.' Later in the day, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the North Korean nuclear test 'supercilious and jejune.' "

The president's general line on the geopolitical big picture is: I don't need this in my life right now. He's a domestic transformationalist, working overtime - via the banks, the automobile industry, health care, etc - to advance statism's death grip on American dynamism. His principal interest in the rest of the world is that he doesn't want anyone nuking America before he's finished turning it into a socialist basket case.

This isn't simply a matter of priorities. A U.S. government currently borrowing 50 cents for every dollar it spends cannot afford its global role, and thus the Obama cuts to missile defense and other programs have a kind of logic: You can't be Scandinavia writ large with a U.S.-sized military.

[Get Copyright Permissions] Click here for reprint permissions!
Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC

12Next »

Post a comment

There are comments on this article, submit your opinion!

Please login or register to post a comment

Ask a Question

You Report

Do you have another point of view, photos, audio, video or more information about a story?

Top Stories

Most Read

  1. EDITORIAL: Hiding evidence of global cooling
  2. Climate 'czar' says hacked e-mails don't change anything
  3. EDITORIAL: The global-cooling cover-up
  4. Grade-schooler unearths fossil at dinosaur park
  5. Top Republican lawmakers not attending State Dinner
More Top Stories »
  1. PRUDEN: Trouble afoot for high priests
  2. D.C. sports icon, Wizards owner Pollin dies
  3. Climate czar rejects doctored data claims
  4. List of W.H. state dinner guests
  5. HOLMES: Behind Obama's overseas allure

Most Shared

  1. EDITORIAL: The global-cooling cover-up
  2. PRUDEN: Trouble afoot for high priests
  3. EDITORIAL: Hiding evidence of global cooling
  4. Climate 'czar' says hacked e-mails don't change anything
  5. EDITORIAL: The duty of a nation to obey God
More Top Stories »
  1. Finance mavens gloomy
  2. Fenty's approval in D.C. divided by race
  3. Drug lords finding safe haven in Bolivia
  4. Grade-schooler unearths fossil at dinosaur park
  5. Global Warmists exposed

Most Commented

  1. Climate 'czar' says hacked e-mails don't change anything
  2. Climate czar rejects doctored data claims
  3. EDITORIAL: The global-cooling cover-up
  4. EDITORIAL: Hiding evidence of global cooling
  5. EDITORIAL: The duty of a nation to obey God
More Top Stories »
  1. PRUDEN: Trouble afoot for high priests
  2. Obama taking emissions goal to summit
  3. Crashers probe may become criminal investigation
  4. HOLMES: Behind Obama's overseas allure
  5. 9/11 families sharply split on civilian court trials

Listen to Washington Times Radio

  • America's Morning News

    with John McCaslin and Melanie Morgan

Blogs & Columns

  • Hot Button Blog

    RNC: Breast cancer recommendations may lead to 'rationing'

  • Belief Blog

    Evangelicals OK civil disobedience

  • Out of Context

    Foods that might kill libido

  • On the Fly

    United lifts some 'award' blocking

  • Technology

    Facebook wins round against phishing spammer

  • Redskins 360

    Hall out, Rogers will start

  • SNOBlog

    Beyond 'Woody'

Videos

Advertising Links
TWT Store
  • e-edition
  • Print Edition
  • Weekly Washington Times
TWT Affiliates
  • Middle East Times
  • Golf
  • UPI
  • Arbor Ballroom
  • Washington Times Global
  • About TWT
  • Press Room
  • F.A.Q.
  • Work for TWT
  • Advertise
  • Sponsors
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site Map

All site contents © Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC.