As usual, The Onion put it best.

Three weeks ago, the satirical weekly newspaper ran an article entitled, “North Korea wondering what it has to do to attract U.S. military attention.” The article included fictional interviews with North Korean President Kim Jong Il, portraying him at his wit’s end with regard to how to get America to take action.

If his recent decisions are any indication, the farcical interview might not be far from the truth. Everything Kim has done in the past few months makes him look like the scrawny social outcast in high school who is trying unsuccessfully to pick a fight with the biggest jock of them all.

In direct violation of an earlier treaty, he recently restarted a nuclear program that may build bombs capable of reaching the West Coast. He allowed a fighter to fly into South Korean airspace, lobbed a test missile into the ocean when Colin Powell visited South Korea and threatened to throw out the armistice that ended the Korean War. And, most recently, four North Korean fighter jets harassed a U.S. surveillance plane in neutral airspace, coming within 50 feet of the American plane.

Let me say that again: four high-speed military fighters came within 50 feet of a United States Air Force plane on a routine mission. That’s less than the distance to the pitcher’s mound in baseball. Less than the length as an extra point in football. Seventeen adult paces.

Sounds a lot like a kid whizzing BB’s past the ears of football players during warm-ups, trying to start a fight.

In response, America has given Kim a mild, dismissive shove. North Korea made the U.S. hit list as part of Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” but Iraq was the only member of that infamous trio to get serious attention. In response to the 50-foot fighter flyby, the Bush Administration is planning a “protest.” It’s a lot like the jock saying, “Knock it off or I’ll kick your ass,” without any real intention of doing so.

To be fair, some of North Korea’s recent actions may be a result of insecurity from being named in the Axis of Evil and having fuel shipments cut off — Kim may want to show toughness to avoid being invaded next. Nevertheless, the administration seems to be treating Kim more like Screech Powers than Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the gunmen who went on a jock-hunt at Columbine High School in 1999.

Most experts agree that North Korea has far more “weapons of mass destruction” than Iraq — especially since it now has nuclear capability. Not all of these weapons stay in North Korea, either; the country’s most lucrative export is arms. And Kim does not mince words in his aggressive stance toward South Korea and Japan — America’s two strongest allies in the Far East.

So what’s the holdup? Why is the Bush Administration playing Gandhi with the North Koreans while it furiously digs for an excuse to invade Iraq?

I’m not sure either.

Maybe Bush is not a multi-tasking kind of guy; he wants to finish off Saddam before he deals with anyone else. Of course, the mess in the Middle East that an American-occupied Baghdad would create could not be cleaned up anytime soon. Maybe he wants to take on the weakest link first: Iraq’s army is in tatters, while North Korea’s is one-million soldiers strong. Of course, this also undermines one of Bush’s premises for the invasion of Iraq, namely that Iraq constitutes the most significant foreign threat to American interests. Maybe Bush thinks Iraq is supporting Islamic terrorism. Of course, the link is questionable at best: in interviews in the 1990s, Osama called Saddam a phoney in his commitment to Islam.

On a more cynical note, maybe it is because an occupied Iraq, according to experts, would soon overtake Saudi Arabia for world dominance in oil production (North Korea has no natural resources to speak of). Or maybe it is because he recognizes, as a politician, that quick wars with few American casualties are overwhelmingly popular while bloody military conflicts or frustrating negotiations are decidedly not. As the Gulf War taught us, a war with Iraq would be the former; as the Korean War taught us, a war with North Korea would be the latter.

The reason is certainly not global opinion: the United Nations roundly condemned North Korea’s recent actions at the same time many its members were trashing the United States for its posturing toward Iraq. No country stands fully behind North Korea. From a humanitarian standpoint, this is no surprise; government mismanagement has led to the starvation of hundreds of thousands of North Korean peasants in recent years.

Kim is not getting aggressive to score points among his own citizens — he doesn’t let them dissent anyway. He’s doing it to get our attention. Maybe Bush ought to get tough with this Trenchcoat Mafia of the international world before he seeks to meet a weaker Saddam at the bike rack after school.

Matt Lynch ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English and political science.