Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [116]
In September 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the U.S. delegates again threw the by-now normal monkey wrenches into the works, including trying to kill language that would have included female genital mutilation, forced child marriage, and “honor” killings as human-rights violations. That’s us: in favor of female genital mutilation, forced child marriage, and “honor” killings. We deadlocked negotiations at the eleventh hour, siding once again with the Vatican and various Islamic fundamentalists. We finally acceded, but only after we had further alienated other nations.
The crisis with Korea had been building since Bush first broke off talks at the beginning of his administration. He has thoroughly alienated not only North Korea but South Korea—there’s a feat. He chose the occasion of an early visit to Washington by the South’s President Kim Dae Jung to announce his opposition to Jung’s “sunshine policy,” which was creating real cooperation across the DMZ. Jung won the Nobel Peace Prize for his policy in 2000. Bush went on to describe North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, as “a pygmy,” saying, “I loathe him” and “I want to topple him.” In October 2002, at the first high-level meeting between the Bush administration and North Korea, the United States presented evidence that North Korea had a uranium-enrichment program. To our astonishment, the North Koreans confirmed it—yeah, we do, and what do you plan to do about it? The administration promptly announced that the 1994 Agreed Framework was defunct. Under that agreement, North Korea froze its plutonium-based reactor at Yongbyon in return for help with two light-water reactors for power and a promise of U.S. diplomatic and economic relations. Unfortunately, we did not quite live up to our part of that bargain. The North Koreans said they would stop the uranium-enrichment program and accept new inspections, if the United States promised not to launch a preemptive attack (not hard to see why they were concerned about that) and to normalize relations. Bush refused, and cut off the shipments of oil agreed to under the 1994 framework. A few months later Kim Jong Il restarted the Yongbyon reactor and kicked out the U.N. weapons inspectors. The United States had never lived up to its commitments under the ’94 agreement—neither the light reactors nor the promise to lift economic sanctions were ever followed through on. Republicans took over Congress shortly after the agreement was signed and began denouncing the ’94 agreement as a Clinton sellout. This in turn strengthened the hard-liners in North Korea.
After the October announcement, Bush flatly refused to negotiate with the North Koreans, then, in January 2003, he changed his mind and said we would not negotiate, but we would “talk.” The word incoherent began to be replaced by the word silly to describe our foreign policy.
In November the United States announced it wanted to withdraw its support for the treaty signed at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. We threatened to drop out unless all references to “reproductive-health services” and “reproductive rights” were eliminated. One of our delegates insisted that “natural family-planning methods” work perfectly and should be substituted. She was corrected by the delegate from Iran, of all places, who happened to be an OB-GYN. We lost the contested votes 31–1 and 32–1. The U.S. delegation then appended a “general reservation” to the final document that is perilously close to completely nutty. “Because the United States supports innocent life from conception to natural death, the United States does not support, promote or endorse abortions, abortion-related services or the use of abortifacients.