As you may have heard, North Korea has been de-listed from the Axis of Evil in return for blowing up its nuclear reactor. It's an unlikely development, because North Korea was supposed to belong to the Axis of "Evil" and one of the qualities of "evil" is that it remains forever bad. "Evil" is pernicious. It's a universal force of wickedness. It doesn't just suddenly turn good. Can you imagine Dorothy reconciling with the Wicked Witch of the West? No. It cannot happen because the Wicked Witch of the West is "evil."
So the fact that North Korea can be accepted into the international community simply by blowing up a nuclear reactor makes me think it was never truly "evil," and that the "Axis of Evil" was really something else, like the "Axis of the Dangerously Misguided" or the "Axis of the Wayward" or the "Axis of Countries that Could Go Bad on Us If We Don't
Pay Attention."
In light of North Korea's rehabilitation, I think there are some questions we should ask ourselves. Questions like, "They blew up their own nuclear reactor? How cool is that? I mean, isn't that awesome?"
Another question we should ask is: How did the Bush Administration pull this off? Let's not forget, the White House is packed to the gills with ideological blowhard morons. And not just your B-grade ideological blowhard morons. These are blowhard morons of a special breed, whose arrogance acts as a sort of veil, blinding them to their own ignorance. The President thinks Jesus talks to him in his sleep. The Vice-President walks like he has a giant cockroach up his ass, and didn't seem the least bit bothered when he shot his hunting partner in the face. How could this bunch have realized such a sophisticated diplomatic achievement?
The answer is: They did it by giving North Korea the silent treatment. In fact, this is how we, as a country, persuaded North Korea's leaders to come around. We stopped paying attention to them.
Think about it. The Axis of Evil seemed to be a problem for a while, and we all worried over its nuclear ambitions, and all that worrying only made the problem worse. President Bush spoke in increasingly grave and frightening tones, squinting hard to convince us we were really going to get it. And then what happened instead was the war went South, and Katrina hit, and Miley Cyrus posed half-naked with her dad, and then
before you knew it Libya had become a tourist destination and North Korea was blowing up its nuclear reactor. True, Libya was in the expanded version of the Axis of Evil (version 2.0), but I think the point holds.
And why was North Korea blowing up its reactor? To get our attention. We had checked out. We were onto other things. We were all like, "Blah, blah, What was Eliot Spitzer thinking?, yadda, yadda, I can't believe Emily Gould did that to Josh Stein!" and then, suddenly, North Korea was all, "Hellooooooo! Hey guys! Over here!" And then, out of nowhere: Kaboom.
What can we learn from this? For me, the lesson is that international diplomacy really is just like dating. What do you do when you want someone -- in this case one of the world's last remaining Communist dictatorships -- to be nicer to you? You ignore them for a little while. Maybe call them every now and then, or send a friendly text message, but otherwise pretend like you have more important things going on. What was Kim Il-sung doing? He wasn't trying to develop a nuclear capability to blackmail the West into increasing shipments of food and technology to his country. No! He only wanted more attention. He just wanted us to love him.
And what turned out to be the appropriate response? That's right: To pretend he didn't exist.
Think about this: If international diplomacy is really like dating, who have we had in charge of this important responsibility? That's right. Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, and Condoleezza Rice. Can you think of three people less equipped to win the love of other human beings? I can't. Well, OK. Paul Wolfowitz, maybe.
Anyway, I think we ought to put our newfound power to work. If you think about it, the strategy ought to succeed just as well with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, another lonely guy who only seems to want a little love. All that provocative talk. If we just pretended it didn't bother us, Ahmadinejad would be revealed as the desperate character he is, someone not worthy of our attention. We would be like the cool kids at the corner table in the lunch room, and the rest of Iran would say, "OK, this isn't working. Let's try something else."
That's why I think Katie Couric should stop calling the President of Iran by insensitive names like "I'm a Dinner Jacket." That's not how you do it. She should just stop mentioning him altogether. The next time Ahmadinejad calls, we should look down casually and just not open our phones. When he e-mails the next day, to ask how it's going, trying to be all casual and cool, we should send back a pretend automated response saying we're on vacation and not checking e-mail. When he calls again, we wait three days and send a text message saying, "Hey! Srry I missed u! Hope ur well."
We have to act fast, though. We only have a little time to put this plan into action because our next President, Barrack Obama, keeps going around saying that after he is elected he will not be afraid to talk to our enemies.
Sheesh.
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