Stanley Kurtz provides this must read op-ed on the safe haven for al Qaeda and the Taliban in northwest Pakistan that Lord Curzon once observed will not be pacified “until the military steam-roller has passed over the country from end to end . . . But I do not want to be the person to start that machine.”

Amidst the slow progress of the United States’ diplomatic efforts to bring North Korea into the community of the world’s civilized nations (previous posts on North Korea are here), this recent W$J op-ed by Shin Dong-Hyok — who lived the first 23 years of his life in a North Korean gulag — reminds us of the stakes to humanity involved in finding a way to release the North Korean government’s death grip on North Koreans:

I was born a prisoner on Nov. 19, 1982, and until two years ago, North Korea’s Political Prison Camp No. 14 was the only place I had ever called home. [. . .]
I was a slave under club and fist. It was a world where love, happiness, joy or resistance found no meaning. This was the situation I found myself in until I escaped to China, and then South Korea. There, I was told why I was imprisoned by my distant relatives, who had escaped to the South during the Korean War.
In the midst of that conflict, two of my father’s brothers fled to freedom. Because of this “traitorous” crime, my grandparents, father and uncle back in the North were found guilty of treason and crimes against the state, and were arrested. My father and uncle were separated from each other and my grandparents, and were stripped of all identification and property.

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In this New Yorker article, Seymour Hersh lays out his theory on the Bush Administration’s plans for neutralizing Iran. As with most of Hersh’s work, it is a fascinating read. He concludes with the following story about tensions between Allied forces:

Another recent incident, in Afghanistan, reflects the tension over intelligence. In July, the London Telegraph reported that what appeared to be an SA-7 shoulder-launched missile was fired at an American C-130 Hercules aircraft. The missile missed its mark. Months earlier, British commandos had intercepted a few truckloads of weapons, including one containing a working SA-7 missile, coming across the Iranian border. But there was no way of determining whether the missile fired at the C-130 had come from Iranóespecially since SA-7s are available through black-market arms dealers.
Vincent Cannistraro, a retired C.I.A. officer who has worked closely with his counterparts in Britain, added to the story: ìThe Brits told me that they were afraid at first to tell us about the incidentóin fear that Cheney would use it as a reason to attack Iran.î The intelligence subsequently was forwarded, he said.
The retired four-star general confirmed that British intelligence ìwas worriedî about passing the information along. ìThe Brits donít trust the Iranians,î the retired general said, ìbut they also donít trust Bush and Cheney.î

In the magnificent penultimate scene in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film, Amistad, John Quincy Adams (played brilliantly by Anthony Hopkins) concludes his oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court with the following abnomition regarding the curse of slavery that is a central issue in the case::

“We desperately need your strength and wisdom to triumph over our fears, our prejudices, ourselves. Give us the courage to do what is right. And if it means civil war, then let it come. And when it does, may it be, finally, the last battle of the American Revolution.”
“That’s all I have to say.”

Harry V. Jaffa, a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute and the author of the well-known study of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (University of Chicago Press, 1959) pens this interesting blog post in which he makes the following observation about President Bush’s goal of eliminating tyranny in the world:

. . . [T]he president has . . . [declared] that it is our intention to eliminate tyranny from the world. These pronouncements show a profound ignorance, both of history and of political philosophy.
Our own government, by constitutional majorities, became possible only when sectarian religious differences were removed from the political process. The Constitution declares in Article VI that ìno religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.î Such a provision could not be found in any instrument of government in all of human history. (The Toleration Act of 1689 in England was full of religious tests.) In the aftermath of the religious wars in Europe, in which Protestants and Catholics slaughtered each other without restraint, our Founding Fathers recognized that majority rule was not possible if Protestants could thereby determine the religion of Catholics, or Catholics of Protestants, or Christians of Jews, or Jews of Christians. Government by majority rule ódemocracy in any sense ó is not possible unless sectarian religious differences are kept out of the political process. But in Iraq, in the Middle East generally, there are no political differences that are not sectarian.
According to Abraham Lincoln, ìThe principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.î By this he meant the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence. It was fidelity to these principles that led Lincoln in ìthe great secession winterî of 1860 and 1861 to refuse any compromise that permitted the extension of slavery. Compromises are possible only among those who share principles more fundamental than the interests they are asked to compromise. As a practical historical fact, when compromises are not possible war is the alternative, as it was in our Civil War. John Stuart Mill, an admirer of Lincoln, declared that ìDespotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians.î The dominant forms of political life throughout the Middle East are, with only one exception, as barbaric as those of Europe during the wars of religion. Only a despotism, as benign as we can find, and one that can begin turning people away from sectarian fanaticism, will answer our purpose. Otherwise, they will have to fight it out among themselves, as we did.