Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic, has put out a piece on the situation in North Korea. I very much admire Beinart’s work, but I found this piece disappointing. Beinart seems to be angling to blame president Bush for the current crisis. I think that’s wrong. But the real problem with this piece is that Beinart appears to strongly favor negotiations with the North Koreans, yet doesn’t lay out an argument for how or why negotiations might succeed. Before taking the president to task for the failure to negotiate bilaterally, let Beinart explain how a viable and verifiable agreement might result.