Imagine If...

The Yongbyon nuclear facility is no more. A great triumph for diplomacy:



I did a scan of NRO and The Weekly Standard and the silence on this issue seems a bit deafening. But this is a big deal. Either Bush has, whatever criticisms one might have of his early policy toward the DPRK, done a good an important thing here or else he's become a victim of the very "false comfort of appeasement" he's warned against.

At a minimum, there seem to be obvious implications for the ongoing Iran debate. Most of them -- diplomacy works, there's no substitute for talks and mutual concessions, etc. -- reenforce liberal points unless you're willing to turn around and denounce Bush. But one can also observe here that working out a reasonable accommodation didn't require a presidential summit and it's actually possible to conduct constructing diplomacy while also maintaining the sort of hex on "evil" regimes that Obama wants to dispose of.

UPDATE: I obviously didn't scan NRO very well since I missed their editorial on the subject which does, indeed, slam the deal. My apologies, I don't know how I made that mistake since it's right on top of their site. I believe it was even before National Review's founding that William F. Buckley was condemning Ike as an appeaser for holding some meeting with Khruschev. So let's give three cheers for consistency here.