A commenter (dag, E.K.!) e-mails that we are too hard on President Obama and have whitewashed the enormities and foibles of President Bush. Our position: we started this blog after all the Bush controversies were long settled into obsessive partisan mantra-chanting. They bore us.

Buuuuuut, along comes this story to remind me afresh of the utterly ineffectual, nigh-catastrophic nuclear diplomacy we have conducted with Iran and North Korea.

So let me just state once and for all, the Bush Administration, from Powell to Rice, the NSC, and our entire diplomatic establishment might as well have put their feet up and watched soap operas, for all the good their work did on these fronts. (As they themselves likely know better than anyone. You could make a fortune on the Tums® concession at the Six-Party Talks.)

The only rogue states which backed off WMD proliferation were Pakistan—because they had to—and Libya— because Qaddafi got scared. The rest—including, incidentally, China and Russia—are at it as ever.

Take this as an indictment of American “soft power” in the age of Bush or a useful reminder of the limits of diplomacy. Your call.

Caption: conservative estimate of the range of the Shahab-5 or -6 missile [a Taepodong-2 variant], if the Iranians have it working. (LET OP, E.K.!)

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.