[Dialogue] Dear Leaders

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Friday, October 13, 2006 by Truthdig <http://www.truthdig.com>


Dear Leaders 

by Molly Ivins 

 

AUSTIN, Texas - Nobody else seems to be asking the obvious question about
Susan B. Ralston, former administrative assistant to Jack Abramoff and,
until last week, assistant to Karl Rove. She got hired by Rove at $64,700
after the 2004 election and then received a raise to $122,000. Why? I've
never gotten a 100 percent raise. Did you? Is this common? 

I know next to nothing about North Korea, but I know how to find out. People
who do know the weird country have been worrying about it in print for six
years now. (See articles in The New York Review of Books.) Eric Alterman
picked this bit up in "The Book on Bush": "The tone of [Colin] Powell's
tenure was set early in the administration, when he announced that he
planned 'to pick up where the Clinton administration had left off' in trying
to secure the peace between North and South Korea, while negotiating with
the North to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weaponry. The president not
only repudiated his secretary of state in public, announcing, 'We're not
certain as to whether or not they're keeping all terms of all agreements,'
he did so during a joint appearance with South Korean President (and Nobel
laureate for peace for his own efforts with the North) Kim Dae-Jung, thereby
humiliating his honored guest, as well. 

"A day later, Powell backpedaled. 'The president forcefully made the point
that we are undertaking a full review of our relationship with North Korea,'
Powell said. 'There was some suggestion that imminent negotiations are about
to begin-that is not the case.' " 

This was pre-9/11, when Bush's entire foreign policy consisted in not doing
whatever Clinton had done, and vice versa. Also from "The Book on Bush": "As
former Ambassadors Morton Abramowitz and James Laney warned at the moment of
Bush's carelessly worded 'Axis of Evil' address, 'Besides putting another
knife in the diminishing South Korean president,' the speech would likely
cause 'dangerous escalatory consequences, (including) ... renewed tensions
on the peninsula and continued export of missiles to the Mideast.' ... North
Korea called the Bush bluff, and the result, notes (Washington Post)
columnist Richard Cohen, was 'a stumble, a fumble, an error compounded by a
blooper ... as appalling a display of diplomacy as anyone has seen since a
shooting in Sarajevo turned into World War I.' " 

Remember Bush's diplomatic interview with Bob Woodward in which he said, "I
loathe Kim Jong Il!" Waving his finger, he added, "I've got a visceral
reaction to this guy because he is starving his people." Bush also said he
wanted to "topple him" and called him a "pygmy." How old were you when you
learned not to antagonize and infuriate the local crazy bully? 

Always a top diplomat. But I warn you, when Bush makes reference of this, as
in "my gut tells me," we are in big trouble. By any measure, North Korea
continued to be more dangerous than Iraq. 

I don't see how this mess can be blamed on anyone but Bush, but I notice
that a few Republicans have dragged out the shade of Bill Clinton because he
tried to deal with North Korea. I would have thought there wasn't much water
left in that bogeyman, but I guess he is the straw man for all seasons among
Republicans. Why doesn't someone on Fox News ask him about it? 

Meanwhile, our fiendishly clever president has dragged his daddy's old
family consigliore, James Baker, out of retirement to think of something to
do about Iraq. A three-part partition is mentioned. History Professor Juan
Cole on his blog explains why that's a disaster, but I suspect that's where
the poor Iraqis end up anyway, followed by war with Turkey and Saudi Arabia.


Molly Ivins is from Houston, Texas, graduated from Smith College in 1966,
attended Columbia University's School of Journalism and studied for a year
at the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris. Her first newspaper job was
at the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle. She rapidly worked her
way up to the position of sewer editor, where she wrote a number of gripping
articles about street closings. She went on to the Minneapolis Tribune and
was the first woman police reporter in that city. In the late 1960s, she was
assigned to a beat called "Movements for Social Change," covering angry
blacks, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other
misfits and troublemakers. Ivins counts as her highest honors that the
Minneapolis police force named its mascot pig after her, and that she was
once banned from the campus of Texas A&M.

###

 

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