Desiring Machine

With North Korea announcing a successful nuclear weapons test Australia Prime Minister John Howard had strong words for North Korea:

“We are outraged that a country that has to rely on the international community to feed its own people, and to bring them back from the brink of starvation, devotes so many of its scarce resources to missiles and nuclear weapons progress.

The test has destabilized the region. It’s eroded North Korea’s own security. A strong international response is called for, and Australia will give full support to that response.”

This is all nice and good but I fear that strong words are not enough. It seems the world is full of excuses. With spiraling out of control nuclear proliferation we need more than strong words. We need results. This is the only standard that we can hold our leaders up to, anything less is a failure and a direct threat to our survival.

We needed more than strong words when Pakistan became a Nuclear power.

We needed more than strong words when India became a Nuclear power and expanded it program repeatedly.

We need results in North Korea.

We neeed results in Iraq

We need results in Afghanistan

We need results in Iran

We need results in the Israeli conflict with its neighbors

We need results in Darfur

We need results in NOLA after Katrina

We need results in Russia when respected journalist Anna Politkovskaya is gunned down.

We need results on Human Rights in China.

We need results on the Mark Foley scandal.

We need results in the proliferating gang warfare that plagues our cities.

We need results in the Mexican government that continues to fail its people and does not actively curb the flow of drugs into our country.

We need results in the economy

We need results on turning the tide of global warming

We need results in environmental protections

We need results in the Hanford Nuclear clean up efforts

We need results in the cafe standards and fuel efficiency of our cars

We need results in the global effort to improve health and decrease poverty

The world’s problems are not intractable, just difficult. We can accomplish many things but it will take more than words. There are no problems only solutions and action. This will require real leadership from our leaders and other leaders around the world.

The Clinton Global Initiative is a start. There are many other efforts out there. But our leaders need to understand that words are not enough. History will judge us on results more than how we talked about the problems.