It may be time to summon the men in white coats for some of the folks over at the Guardian. Writing in Saturday’s paper (to be fair, the headline is more alarmist than the text) Simon Tisdall implies that the Bush administration may be setting out to wreck its own diplomatic initiatives. The reason? The desire to use the threat of confrontation (or maybe even confrontation) to oust the regimes in Pyongyang and Teheran. A quick glance at the atlas (check out where Seoul is located) would suggest that this is nonsense. Pressure is not the same as warmongering.

Under secretary John Bolton (“human scum” according to Kim Jong Il, a man who knows a thing or two about that topic) comes under fire for describing North Korea’s leader as a tyrannical despot and extortionist who “lives like royalty”, Bolton said, while hundreds of thousands of his people were locked up and millions more endured a life of “hellish nightmare… scrounging the ground for food in abject poverty”.

The Guardian obviously has a problem with diplomats who tell the truth, preferring to quote figures such as former ambassador James Goodby who has argues that “security assurances and economic incentives were what was really needed” to calm things down. This is nonsense. As a practical matter, Kim Jong Il probably could have had this some years ago, but he’s taken a different course, probably because the survival of his dictatorship depends, at least to an extent, on maintaining war psychosis at home.

As for Iran, it’s surprising to read a writer in such an exquisitely correct newspaper criticizing Tony Blair for “highlighting human rights issues.” Notice too the obvious unease with which Tisdall contemplates the overthrow of the mullahs. Now, Iran is a difficult case and there are some gung ho sorts who need to remember that wading in with too heavy a hand would almost certainly be a mistake. At the same time it’s no crime to at least hope that the theocratic trash that makes up that country’s leadership ends up where it belongs.

In jail.