The Bill of Rights II Amendment and the North Korean Exception

Kim Jong-il, it seems, has approached the international chess board with a full set of queens and an RPG. As any chess player knows, tactfulness is a difficult neccessity even when your against an equal. But an imminent check mate is different from an likely check mate and with the Western world screaming `Go Democracy, Go!` civilised culture boasts its own political indemnity in the UNGA and (ever loquacious) USA. Maybe this counter military stockpile, and dress rehersal in Iraq, suddenly reveals Kim Jong-il's queens as more of a means of defence than the WMD offensive becomming of Bush's Axis of Evil.

According to ITN and BB[P]C news, this unlevelling of the playing field makes North Korea `a threat`, but the man with .30 caliber rifle is no more deadly than the .44 Magnum. What makes a weapon deadly is the mania of the trigger finger.

Being the third most sinister *regime* on Bush's Axis of Evil this is what we, as moral absolutes, inherantly think of Kim Jong-il :

`[Our goal] is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.` - George Bush in 2002

And unlike Iraq, whose charge was `a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world`, it seems like at least one of the three *regimes* of the axis is actully evil enough to merit its infamy. And despite the current lack of evidence of complicity between Iraq, Iran and N.Korea (the composite *regimes* of the axis), the world's biggest arms dealer (the USA) loses its apetite for armis when it discovers the Sword of Damocles placed by these very axis monkies.

But like I said, the gun is only as formidable as the pernicious intentions of the hand it's in. Ping Pong-il can point as many warheads at as many countries as he likes, but he has no purpose in making sport of his enemies; and even less reason to provoke them to international media focus.

Assuming Ping Pong-il has as much sense of governence as a need to go to Specsavers, what he needs is a deterrent against Sadam's fate; not a machine to antagonise the West! According to the CIA World Factbook North Korea's ecconomy is very insular and requires negligable international trade, and let's face it if we look at modern day China, the West has no quarrel with trading with communism anyway! So I'm guessing Ping Pong-il has just a little too much power, land, political stability and legacy for a double or quits against the united military powers of Japan, China, the UN Defence Council & militarty adept member states, South Korea and anyone else who fancies a share in the liberation of a third of the globe's axis of evil.

North Korea has told the West that they have tested a nuclear device, but not confirmed the size... they have made a scarey shock wave across the geography and media of the rest of the world and asserted itself as a capably armed objector to the principles of democracy. While North Korea has all the insular assets it needs, my two pence are that this dash for nuclear armourment is nothing more than North Korea puffing up it's chest against it's objectors... an exposition of patriotism and self assertion as a country and a power: not just a *regime* that topples in a haze of Western moral glory like Iraq. N.Korea has always held true to a veneer of prosiac repose and even Blue Peter's trip to South Korea mentioned the sinister but low-key repute of its Northern counterpart.

So are Bush's sanctions necessary?

I don't think there's anything wrong with the UNGA asserting itself as an international super power, and I think it's better to make the mistake of proscribing a barely evil regime than the bigger mistake of burying heads in sand and waiting for Krystal Nacht at the diplomatic expense of an eviler one. Long may the infiltration of political centrality continue and so long as globalisation grants us world wide economic co-operation, long may humanitarian dependency be placed on the middle liberalists of the West.