Doug: Now that everyone has expressed their philosophical positions, a few practical points:
1. I respectfully submit that anyone who imagines that anything is gained by calling a foreign power "evil" has a superstitious belief in the magical power of words that defies logic. I am not a theologian, and don't know whether North Korea is "evil" or not. Surely it isn't a place anyone would want to live. But kindly tell me, what in hell do you think is gained by heaping gratuitous insults on people who are sitting there with big armies?
2. Aside from the above philosophical criticisms of Bush, there are some very sound practical problems with his approach. Discovery of these atomic weapons creates what I would call a serious crisis. Bush stopped negotiations with North Korea, so it is going to be very touchy to negotiate out of it. Bush does not have what it takes to deal with crises. He does not have the patience. His only mode is to strike macho poses and try to bully everyone in sight.
3. Now, Bill Clinton fumbled a bit at the beginning, but by the time he got to his second term, he had an excellent grasp of foreign policy. Bush's idea is to do everything different from Clinton, which means, do everything wrong. And pander to jingoes who get their rocks off at the idea of us throwing our weight around.
4. Finally, as I understand the word "appeasement," it was used by a Conservative First Lord of the Treasury to describe his plan to give Nazi Germany a big chunk of Czech real estate. Surely one should not give Iraq or Korea pieces of other people's real estate. But since when is it "appeasement" simply to refrain from attacking people, or refrain from unnecessarily insulting them?