RAINES OF ERROR:

When the Clinton Administration, despite dire warnings from foreign policy realists on the Right, entered into an agreement with North Korea that gave our still declared enemies massive benefits for a pie-in-the-sky promise to curtail their nuclear program, the Times had the following to say:

Diplomacy with North Korea has scored a resounding triumph. Monday's draft agreement freezing and then dismantling North Korea's nuclear program should bring to an end two years of international anxiety and put to rest widespread fears that an unpredictable nation might provoke nuclear disaster.

The U.S. negotiator Robert Gallucci and his North Korean interlocutors have drawn up a detailed road map of reciprocal steps that both sides accepted despite deep mutual suspicion. In so doing they have defied impatient hawks and other skeptics who accused the Clinton Administration of gullibility and urged swifter, stronger action. The North has agreed first to freeze its nuclear program in return for U.S. diplomatic recognition and oil from Japan and other countries to meet its energy needs. Pyongyang will then begin to roll back that program as an American-led consortium replaces the North's nuclear reactors with two new ones that are much less able to be used for bomb-making. At that time, the North will also allow special inspections of its nuclear waste sites, which could help determine how much plutonium it had extracted from spent fuel in the past.

A last-minute snag, North Korea's refusal to resume its suspended talks with neighboring South Korea, was resolved to Seoul's satisfaction. If Washington and Pyongyang approve the agreement, and if the North fulfills its commitments, this negotiation could become a textbook case on how to curb the spread of nuclear arms.

Hawks, arguing that the North was simply stalling while it built more bombs, had called for economic sanctions or attacks on the North's nuclear installations. The Administration muted the war talk and pursued determined diplomacy.

Yes, not only was this a textbook illustration of successful nuclear non-proliferation, it was also, and probably more importantly to the Times, an object lesson for the Right, demonstrating the efficacy of multilateral diplomacy and that we should trust the North Koreas of the world.

When the Bush administration took office and determined to re-examine the US/N. Korea relationship, fearing that Bill Clinton had been gulled, the Times thundered about the Right's shortsightededness, the willingness to risk all that had been "achieved" up until then just to satisfy the hawks. When George W. Bush included North Korea in the "axis of evil" the Times was derisive. So the "revelation" that the hawks had been right about North Korea all along and that the Left--from Bill Clinton to Jimmy Carter to Howell Raines and Maureen Dowd--had proven itself utterly gullible once again when it comes to judging
the "good intentions" of communist dictatorships it had to have been just humiliating. We Americans are a forgiving people though, and a few mea culpas would have more than likely gotten them all off the hook.

Instead, this morning, we get this from the Times, North Korea's Nuclear Secret (NY Times, October 18, 2002):

North Korea has stunned the world by acknowledging that it has been working to produce nuclear bomb fuel despite a 1994 agreement with the United States to freeze nuclear weapons development.

People on both sides of the Iraq debate will use this alarming news to prop up their views. Hawks will say this demonstrates the futility of treaties with megalomaniacal dictators, while doves will say this gives the lie to the administration's argument that Iraq is uniquely dangerous.

That's right; though the Right has been warning all along that this was precisely the case and though the Bush administration explicitly included North Korea in the axis of evil--those powers antithetical to our interests who are also pursuing weapons of mass destruction--the Times thinks the world was "stunned" by their admission. And what is the first lesson we should learn from this contretemps? Is it that the doves at the Times were wrong about the trustworthiness of a dictatorship? Is it that we should listen to the hawks more carefully? Don't be ridiculous. The primary lesson is that the hawks should not use the fact that they were right to "prop up their views". "Prop up"? Since when does the side that's correct need to "prop up" its views?

One hardly expects the Times to behave with any decency anymore, never mind with honor, but here's an idea that might be helpful in restoring its once great reputation. How about an apology? Instead of a bizarre effort to use their own errors as a whip with which to flay "hawks", how about just saying: "They were right. We were wrong. We're sorry."

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 18, 2002 10:42 AM