Washington pours more hot oil on North Korea

The US continues making move bad move after another when it comes to North Korea. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton is now using a fine tooth comb to judicially undo former US president George W. Bush's decision to remove Pyongyong from America's list of terrorist nations. T'won't be easy. Furthermore president Barack Obama is talking up the idea of interdicting North Korea vessels suspected of carry WMD [weapons of mass destruction]on the high sea. [Well we know about Washington's history of finding WMD. It is a ploy to go to war as Bush did in Iraq!] North Korea views such loose talk as a 'causus belli', and it ain't kidding. More, Kim Jong il tore up the 1953 Armistice Agreement putting the hot Korean War on the back burner yea these 56 years, so technically speaking, the US and North Korea are in an 'active state of war'. Is the 44 American president willing to should yet another war which it is certain short of using nuclear bombs, it cannot win? And if we judge from the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan America's record leaves much to be desired.
Mr. Obama may seduce his audience with his calculated rhetoric and oratory but Pyongyang ain't buying.
Mr. Obama's call for sanctions, demostrations of hard love, and dumb escalating threats against North Korea, delays any relaxation of tensions or a diplomatic resolution of the current standoff.
On top of this, North Korea's high court has condemned the two hapless journalists Ling and Lee to 12 years of hard labour. From the way things look now, they're going to split a lot rocks before Washington is going to be able to obtain their release.
Objectively, Washington has been dealing with Pyongyang directly or indirectly for the last 16 years. Apparently, it has learnt little, but forgotten much.
The US has never quite gotten over the fact that the Korean War put an end to its imperial swagger in 1953. It simply couldn't roll back the Red menace to the Yalu river. Triumphant in World War 2, America broke its front teeth in Korea. Hence the contempt and condescension it harbours for North Korea. [And lest we forget, it went on to fail badly in Vietnam!] So the burden of old chains of memory weigh heavily on America's mindset towards North Korea.
North Korea much to Mr. Obama's chagrin, means what it says. It puts its money where its mouth is. And the US president misjudged Mr. Kim. Leaning heavily on the bad advise of his military and diplomatic advisors, Mr. Obama has gone, as Guam Diary calls it, from one poor exercise in 'wishful non thinking' to another.
Until Mr. Obama in a face saving Canossa, the tensions, the threats, and instability with obtain in east Asia. The ball is in Mr. Obama's court. It has hit his own net and so he has to learn how to play better diplomatic tennis. Hot air and king of the dung heap rhetoric won't achieve anything much. It is a formula for trouble. And the hot oil that he is pouring on North Korea is splashing back and scalding the US badly.
And so the bad political posturing and theatre of an angry US president will go on and on and push the envelope to the limit of a mishap which may make him regret the fight he started by calling for sanctions when in early April 2009, North Korea in the peaceful use of a long range rocket launched a telecommunication satellite.