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Are We at Peace?

Rome — Here the sun is shining, the quiet Tiber suggests lazily that it has seen everything there is to see in this world; the streets are thronged with tourists (including this columnist); the locals are amorous; and the food is delicious. Here, perhaps even more than in the United States, one could easily slip into the comfortable feeling that we are at peace. Explaining the Obama administration's departure from some Bush interrogation techniques, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair described reading about those methods "on a bright, sunny, safe day in ... 2009."

Well, it feels peaceful now. But to paraphrase the great Anonymous: The wise man learns from other people's mistakes. The sensible man doesn't make the same mistake twice. And the fool fails to learn from his own mistakes. History (and being in the Eternal City makes one more than usually conscious of the past) affords thousands of examples of the folly of falling into complacency when a threat seems to have temporarily abated. Troy arguably fell for this at the hands of the Greeks. Europe's democracies deluded themselves that Germany wanted peace as much as they did following the catastrophic First World War. Israel failed to keep its guard up after the 1967 war and was caught flat-footed (for a time) by the attack that came in 1973. Fill in your own favorite examples.

This week the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has exploded what looks to be a real nuclear weapon (the last explosion left some experts in doubt) and also launched a short-range missile as, what, an exclamation point perhaps? This destitute little redoubt of crazed Stalinism now has something of value to sell to the highest bidder. And while we're contemplating that grim picture, consider that there is a failure here.

We've heard incessantly since 2006 that George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq War represented the failure of armed force. And while it is certainly true that President Bush waited about two years too long to fix the problems in post-invasion Iraq, the much-overlooked reality is that developments in Iraq now seem to be on track for a happy ending. Even if you believe that the price was too high in blood and money for the results obtained, you cannot reasonably argue that the whole enterprise was a failure. In place of a genocidal aggressor in Iraq, we now have something that looks more democratic than any other Arab state.

The exclusively diplomatic approach, by contrast, has suffered a complete and total failure in the case of North Korea.

This was not a failure simply of the Obama administration (U.S. Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth last week noted that the Obama administration is "relatively relaxed" and that "there is not a sense of crisis") but also of the Bush and Clinton years. All of these administrations followed essentially the same policy. Remember former President Jimmy Carter (Clinton's informal envoy) proudly boasting of the "Framework Agreement" they had achieved? The U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with fuel oil and two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for the DPRK's promise to suspend its nuclear weapons program. When asked, a couple of years on, about North Korean violations, Secretary of State Warren Christopher was reassuring: "The Framework Accord between the United States and North Korea has proved to be quite durable through a rather long period of time as we have gone through the steps called for by the Accord. The United States has been furnishing oil and KEDO (Korean Energy Development Organization) has been moving forward in its processes. When I met with Foreign Minister Gong recently we agreed it was very important to preserve the Framework Accord because through it we have frozen the North Korean nuclear development ..."

Clinton's next secretary of state was no less solicitous of agreements. Madeleine Albright spent the last days of the Clinton presidency posing with Kim Jong-Il in Pyongyang.

The Bush administration, after some initial tough talk, caved to the State Department's diplomacy track. In its final months, the Bush administration removed North Korea from a list of terror-sponsoring states. No one has ridiculed this more pungently than former U.N. Envoy John Bolton:

"In the weeks before being delisted, North Korea expelled international inspectors, first from its Yongbyon plutonium-reprocessing facility and then from the entire complex. It moved to reactivate Yongbyon and to conduct a possible second nuclear-weapons test, and prepared for an extensive salvo of antiship and other missile capabilities. All of this the Bush administration dismissed as North Korea's typical negotiation style."

The fruits of this path of "diplomacy only" — blindly pursued by three presidents — are now clear. But those so eager to learn lessons from mistakes in Iraq will probably be deaf to this one.

To find out more about Mona Charen and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

Comments

1 Comments | Post Comment

Dear Mona Charen, America will never be free until politicians stop giving Taxpayers money away to illegitimates having more illegitimates that's creating 'TERRORISM ON AMERICA SOIL!' ILLEGITIMATE MOMS ARE TO BLAME FOR HAVING ILLEGITIMATES BY THE DOZENS, AND IT'S THE POLITICIANS FAULT FOR GIVING THEM TAXPAYERS MONEY 'JUST TO GET ELECTED!
IT'S YOUR LIFE OR THEIRS - DO YOU THINK THESE ILLEGITIMATE PUNKS, OF ALL RACES, CARE IF THEY SHOOT, KILL, MAIM, OR RAPE YOU? TRUST ME, THEY DON'T!
*******BEST SOLUTION:GO BACK TO STERILIZATION (KINDA LATE, THOUGH); SEND
THEM TO A COUNTRY THAT CAN HANDLE THEM; MAKE THEM WORK TO
SURVIVE, EAT AND SLEEP; NO HANDOUTS, GOVERNMENT AID, OR MONEY SHOULD BE
GIVEN TO THEM; IF YOU DON'T EARN IT, YOU DON'T EAT OR SLEEP, JUST THAT
SIMPLE! TIME TO GO BACK TO THE 'OLD-FASHIONED WAY OF LIVING, DON'T YOU
THINK SO?'
IT'S GOING TO TAKE SOME HARD, CRITICAL DECISIONS TO CLEAN UP AMERICA, BUT
NOW'S THE TIME TO START!
AS LONG AS THESE 'AMERICAN PUNK TERRORISTS' ARE ALLOWED TO REMAIN IN AMERICA, NO ONE
IS SAFE 'EVEN TO GOT GET GROCERIES', AS ALL ILLEGITIMATES HAVE BEEN TAUGHT BY ONES RAISING
THEM - 'YOU'RE ENTITLED!' SO STOP THE 'DON'T HURT MY BABIES' CRAP, AS YOU'RE
THE ONES RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS MESS YOU'VE CREATED IN AMERICA.
ILLEGITIMATES HAVE HAD THE BEST, WITHOUT HAVING TO WORK OR HAVE ANY
RESPONSIBILITY! TAXPAYERS HAVE BEEN FORCED TO FURNISH SCHOOLS (ENDLESS MONEY
PITS, ALSO), FOOD, MEDICINES, HOUSING, AMBULANCES,HOSPITALS, CLOTHES,AND
THIS WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH FOR THEM! WITH TRILLIONS OWED, THAT TAXPAYERS DIDN'T CONSENT TO BORROWING, WOULDN'T IT BE A GOOD IDEA TO SEND THESE PEOPLE, WITH JUST THE CLOTHES ON THEIR BACK, ALONG WITH POLITICIANS, TO A PLACE WHERE THEY CAN ALL LEARN 'COMMON SENSE' TOGETHER, LEARN HOW TO WORK LONG HARD HOURS TO FEED THEMSELVES, WITH NOTHING LEFT OVER, JUST LIKE THEY'VE DONE THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER?

WAKE UP, AMERICA! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

DON'T MISUNDERSTAND ME! I HATE VIOLENCE, BUT 'AN EYE FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR
A TOOTH' IS LOOKING STRONGER EVERYDAY!' As for the following story, in all morning news, it broke my heart to see him arrested for protecting himself.
*******TURN THIS MAN LOOSE, THIS MAN ISN'T GUILTY OF ANYTHING - HE DIDN'T CREATE THE PROBLEMS, POLITICIANS DID! EVERYONE IS
GOING TO HAVE TO BUY FIREARMS TO PROTECT THEMSELVES, AND GUESS WHAT, THESE
PEOPLE KNOW THIS AND THIS IS WHY THEY CONTINUE STEALING, RAPING, MAIMING,
KILLING, AS THEY KNOW THEY'RE 'PROTECTED' BY POLITICIANS WHO CONTINUE TO GET
ELECTED BY THEM! DON'T CLOSE GITMO! IT'S REALLY NEEDED FOR CRIMINALS!

Shirley deLong
May God Bless America and the NRA!
***I saw a bumper stick that said 'My President is Charlton Hester'!
==============================================================================

By TIM TALLEY Associated Press Writer The Associated Press
Friday, May 29, 2009 3:23 PM EDT

Jerome Ersland is lead to the courtroom by Oklahoma County sheriff deputies
for a... (AP Photo/The

Oklahoman, Paul B. Southerland
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Confronted by two holdup men, pharmacist Jerome Ersland
pulled a gun, shot one of them in the head and chased the other away. Then,
in a scene recorded by the drugstore's security camera, he went behind the
counter, got another gun, and pumped five more bullets into the wounded
teenager as he lay on the floor.

Now Ersland has been charged with first-degree murder in a case that has
stirred a furious debate over vigilante justice and self-defense and turned
the pharmacist into something of a folk hero.

Ersland, 57, is free on $100,000 bail, courtesy of an anonymous donor. He
has won praise from the pharmacy's owner, received an outpouring of cards,
letters and checks from supporters, and become the darling of conservative
talk radio.

"His adrenaline was going. You're just thinking of survival," said John Paul
Hernandez, 60, a retired Defense Department employee who grew up in the
neighborhood. "All it was is defending your employee, business and
livelihood. If I was in that position and that was me, I probably would have
done the same thing."

District Attorney David Prater said Ersland was justified in shooting
16-year-old Antwun Parker once in the head, but not in firing the additional
shots into his belly. The prosecutor said the teenager was unconscious,
unarmed, lying on his back and posing no threat when Ersland fired what the
medical examiner said were the fatal shots.

Anthony Douglas, president of the Oklahoma chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called it an
"execution-style murder" and praised the district attorney for bringing
charges. Ersland is white; the two suspects were black.

Parker's parents also expressed relief that Ersland faces a criminal charge.

"He didn't have to shoot my baby like that," Parker's mother, Cleta
Jennings, told TV station KOCO.

But many of those who have seen the video of the May 19 robbery attempt at
Reliable Discount Pharmacy have concluded the teenager in the ski mask got
what he deserved.

Mark Shannon, who runs a conservative talk show on Oklahoma City's KTOK,
said callers have jammed his lines this week in support of Ersland, a former
Air Force lieutenant colonel who wears a back brace on the job and told
reporters he is a disabled veteran of the Gulf War.

"There is no gray area," Shannon said. One caller "said he should have put
all the shots in the head."

Don Spencer, a 49-year-old National Rifle Association member who lives in
the small town of Meridian, 40 miles north of Oklahoma City, said the
pharmacist did the right thing: "You shoot more than enough to make sure the
threat has been removed."

Barbara Bergman, past president of the National Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers and a professor at the University of New Mexico School of
Law, likened the public reaction to that of the case of Bernard Goetz, the
New Yorker who shot four teenagers he said were trying to rob him when they
asked for $5 on a subway in 1984.

Goetz was cleared of attempted murder and assault but convicted of illegal
gun possession and served 8 1/2 months in jail.

Bergman said those who claim they used deadly force in self-defense have to
show they were "in reasonable fear of serious bodily injury."

The pharmacy is in a crime-ridden section of south Oklahoma City and had
been robbed before.

The video shows two men bursting in, one of them pointing a gun at Ersland
and two women working with the druggist behind the counter. Ersland fires a
pistol, driving the gunman from the store and hitting Parker in the head as
he puts on a ski mask.

Ersland chases the second man outside, then goes back inside, walks behind
the counter with his back to Parker, gets a second handgun and opens fire.

Irven Box, Ersland's attorney, noted the outpouring of support for the
pharmacist, including $2,000 in donations, and said: "I feel very good 12
people would not determine he committed murder in the first degree."

Under Oklahoma's "Make My Day Law" - passed in the late 1980s and named for
one of Clint Eastwood's most famous movie lines - people can use deadly
force when they feel threatened by an intruder inside their homes. In 2006,
Oklahoma's "Stand Your Ground Law" extended that to anywhere a citizen has
the right to be, such as a car or office.

"It's a 'Make-My-Day' case," Box said. "This guy came in, your money or your
life. Mr. Ersland said, `You're not taking my life.'" The gunman "forfeited
his life."

Box said that another person might have reacted differently, but he asked:
"When do you turn off that adrenaline switch? When do you think you're safe?
I think that's going to be the ultimate issue."

If convicted, Ersland could be sentenced to life in prison with or without
parole, or receive the death penalty.

Jevontia Ingram, the 14-year-old boy accused of wielding the gun in the
robbery, was arrested Thursday. The district attorney on Friday filed a
first-degree murder charge against him, as well as against a man accused of
being the getaway driver, and another man suspected of helping talk the
teens into the crime.

The charges accuse all three of sharing responsibility for Parker's shooting
death.

Comment: #1
Posted by: Shirley deLong
Sat May 30, 2009 10:12 AM