Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: Josh Marshall, via Howie Kurtz:

"On one side, you have most of Washington's chattering classes, an assortment of blowhards and yada-meisters, telling a story about Clintonian appeasement and the current administration's steely-eyed determination to deal with yet another run-amok rogue regime.

"On the other side, you have most folks who follow politics and geo-politics in Asia, and especially in North Asia. You also have most politicians and diplomats from the region itself. They tell a rather different story: how the Bush administration blundered its way into this crisis by casting about for two years with loose threats it was in no real position to make good on. It is also a story about how the administration committed itself to what was effectively a policy of no negotiations rather than trying to toughen, and thus improve, the deals the Clinton administration had cut in 1994 and thereafter. . . .

"Now they're trying to find a face-saving way to get out of this jam by asking the Chinese, the Russians, the Japanese, the South Koreans – just about anyone who has the North Koreans' phone number, it seems – to let the North Koreans know that we'd really like to get back to the bargaining table if only they'd give us something to help us save a little face.

"This is one of the many embarrassments of the situation we're now in. Usually it's the weaker party that needs to save face when backing down from some untenable position. But here we're the ones who need to save face."