] In foreign affairs, Washington is chronically
] unable to deal with more than one crisis at a
] time. As deputy secretary of state in the Carter
] administration, I helped to negotiate the
] release of 52 Americans held hostage in the
] United States Embassy in Iran. I recall how this
] relatively confined crisis submerged all other
] issues for 14 months, including the Soviet
] invasion of Afghanistan. Similarly, in the early
] years of the Clinton administration, our
] concentration on Bosnia and Haiti may have drawn
] our attention away from the killings in Rwanda.

] While Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may be
] right in saying that our military can fight two
] wars at the same time, my experience tells me
] that we cannot mount a war against Iraq and
] still maintain the necessary policy focus on
] North Korea and international terrorism. Anyone
] who has worked at the highest levels of our
] government knows how difficult it is to engage
] the attention of the White House on anything
] other than the issue of the day. For example,
] the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — a major
] crisis by any standard — now seems to be
] handled largely by an assistant secretary of
] state. Likewise, Afghanistan, which is at risk
] again of becoming a haven for terrorists, seems
] to be getting less attention than it deserves.

Warren Christopher, former Secretary of State, thinks we should be giving North Korea more attention then Iraq.

Iraq Belongs on the Back Burner