North Korea

I'm interested that in all the e-mails I've gotten, and responses posted on this blog about triple-dipping retired generals getting paid to "mentor" the active duty military while at the same time working in the defense industry, and also collecting their pensions, not a single person has contended that, yes, George Marshall would approve of this behavior. As a friend of mine says, this is a good gut-check: WWGMD?

Also, another friend points out that one of the dangers of this whole "mentoring" this is that if you are not careful, you wind up bringing in people who simply reinforce existing prejudices, instead of challenging them. For example, just how well mentored was Gen. Tommy R. Franks in his mishandling of Afghanistan in 2001-02 and then in his bungled invasion of Iraq in 2003? (And while we're on the subject of money, who remembers that Franks charged a group $100,000 to help them raise money for wounded vets-and that it later turned out that the group only delivered 25 percent of its funds to its supposed beneficiaries?)  WWGMD?

Department of Defense

My item on the bad blood between our ambassador in Iraq, Christopher Hill, and our top officer there, Gen. Raymond Odierno, provoked some interesting comments and e-mails, especially from those who encountered him on Korean issues.

This is one that was posted by Joel Wit, a longtime Korea expert who, according to his bio, "served as senior advisor to Ambassador Robert L. Galluci from 1993-1995, where he developed strategies to help resolve the crisis over North Korea's weapons program, and as Coordinator for the U.S.-North Korea's weapons program and as Coordinator for the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework from 1995-1999, where he was the official in charge of implementation":

As someone who follows Iraq only as closely as any foreign-policy generalist but who specializes in North Korea, I can tell you none of us would be surprised by the problems between Chris Hill and the U.S. military in that country. When he worked on North Korea issues at the end of the Bush administration, Hill was not willing to listen to anyone who knew the issues and had his own little team of groupies who worshipped the ground he walked on (or at least pretended to). While there are a number of reasons why we are in trouble with the North today, not the least of which is the North Koreans themselves, Hill wouldn't listen to experts or anyone else about how to deal with a country that he knew nothing about. Sounds like he is repeating his performance in Iraq. Lets hope the consequences arent as bad.

And this is a story I recieved by e-mail from someone in Washington intimately familiar with all this:

During the NK talks, he supposedly coached the North Koreans on what answers to give, so then he could go back and tell Washington they said the right language. The technique finally blew up at the end when he told Bush that if the president  took them off the terror list they would agree to a verification plan. He had none of this in writing but Bush and Condi agreed -- and then when the U.S. went back to North Korea, they denied they had ever agreed to what Hill said they had agreed to.

I have been told that the Obama folks, once they looked at the negotiating record on North Korea (after Hill was off to Iraq), they were absolutely appalled at what they discovered.

Meanwhile, Hill is telling people that he’s never met me. I guess he doesn’t remember a conversation we had in his office in the embassy in Skopje, Macedonia, in the late '90s.
 
Finally, Lady Emma Sky, the always-interesting political advisor to General Odierno, surfaces to report that she has "smacked [Tom Ricks's] bottom and told me I was totally wrong in my portrayal of the relationship of these two people."

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

I said I was gonna ignore North Korea, and I still intend to. But I was struck by this comment by proven provider John McCreary in his NightWatch:

During the past 40 years North Korean leaders have been blustery but fundamentally risk averse. They have done nothing that would risk the total destruction of their state -- which means Pyongyang for all practical and symbolic purposes -- until now.... The actions in the past two days represent risk accepting behavior, defiance bordering on recklessness. This behavior began shortly after Kim Chong-il's stroke in August 2008. If Kim is ordering these actions, he has had a personality change, which can occur if dementia follows a stroke, according to medical authorities."

Let's ignore them.

Flickr user (stephan)

The surprise of 2009 may be the collapse of North Korea. I know this has been predicted before, including by me, but smart guys I know are saying it more. "Once we see the loss of military coherency and the ability of the Kim Family Regime to have central governing effectiveness we are likely to see regime collapse," comments an old friend who is an Army officer.

Of course, there's also Cuba. Which ancien regime goes first?

KNS/AFP/Getty Images

Why does North Korea remind me of Dick Cheney? I think it is because I wish that both would just go away, and also because the best way to deal them is to ignore them.

Here's a link to a guess on what Cheney is up to with his fear-mongering. I think trying to stave off the inevitable is a losing game. I would like everything to come out in a Truth & Reconciliation Commission. But if it doesn't, I think it will leak out over the years with a steady dribble of memoirs, lawsuits and incriminating documents surfacing. And there is a poetic justice in that sort of water torture. 

FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images

Besides what I saw in Team America, I don't know much about North Korea -- since 9/11, I've been busy elsewhere. But people who do keep an eye on Pyongyang are raising eyebrows over the noises out of there this morning. John McCreary's NightWatch is alarmed by the regime's demand in a party newspaper for support from its people. "When a Communist Party organ – Rodong Sinmun is the mouthpiece of the Korean Workers' Party – makes an appeal to the people to support the regime, that signifies an existential threat," McCreary, a veteran DIA analyst, observes. Stay tuned. This might surpass Pakistan as Obama's first crisis.