Kim Jong Il, 1; George W. Puss, 0. The tiny dictator of North Korea has apparently exploded a nuclear device in the northern part of his country. As I write, the great big Texan in the White House has done nothing about that gross provocation. Everything I say below is posited on the Puss Administration's not doing anything about the danger to the world that North Korea's becoming an active member of the nuclear club poses. And by nuclear "club", we need to understand "weapon" more than just "group". If Puss finds his manhood and takes decisive action to destroy the KJI regime, I retract everything negative that I now say below. (For feminists inclined to object that courage is not a male monopoly, let me say simply that feminist rhetoric almost always suggests that women would find ways other than war to resolve conflicts. If feminists wish to become as bellicose as men, and renounce that other rhetoric, let's hear the new rhetoric now, at a time when the stakes of inaction could get very high indeed. If, however, feminists insist that some solution short of war can end the threat from North Korea, let them put forward a comprehensive program now, in a hurry, before the missiles fly and millions die.)
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North Korea is the very essence of a "rogue state". KJI is the essence of evil, tho not, supposedly, of madness. Before Puss launched his unprovoked aggression against Iraq, a pushover state in every way, I publicly reproached that plan for having nothing to do with the real dangers to this country, which were much more likely to issue from North Korea than Iraq.
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In September 2002, 8 months before the Puss Administration attacked a country that had never attacked us, had no plans to attack us, and had no ability to attack us, I posted a very long expository and advocacy piece entitled "No to War Against Iraq!", which I added to over the next several months. That presentation includes this information and argumentation about North Korea.

North Korea says it is not just going to wait around to be attacked at a time of U.S. choosing. The Associated Press reports what I have said earlier in this piece, that other countries, in this case North Korea, assert the exact same right of pre-emptive war against the United States that the U.S. asserts against Iraq:

[The Associated Press reported, February 6, 2003 that] Ri Pyong Gap, a spokesman and deputy director at the North [Korean] Foreign Ministry, told The London-based Guardian newspaper that the impoverished country was entitled to launch a pre-emptive strike against the United States.

"The United States says that after Iraq, we are next," the paper quoted Ri as saying, "but we have our own countermeasures. Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the U.S."

How did the Puss Administration respond to this declaration of warlike intent? From the same AP story:

Even as it presses toward war with Iraq, the United States has insisted it wants a peaceful solution in the standoff with North Korea.

President Bush "keeps all of his options open," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a television interview. "But he happens to believe that this is a situation with North Korea that can be resolved diplomatically."

That worked well. Now, 3½ years later, North Korea has (apparently) tested both a nuclear device and missiles on which to carry them. The missile tests seem to have failed miserably, but so did the U.S. space program at first. We eventually did get to the moon, tho, didn't we? And North Korea might eventually get highly accurate long-range missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead — or multiple nuclear warheads — to any and every part of the United States.
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Continuing from my presentation as above:

Hmm. North Korea, a country many observers believe actually HAS nuclear weapons, and has 37,000 Americans within easy range of its million-man army, threatens pre-emptive war against the United States, but Iraq is the greatest danger we face? Something’s not right here.

What exactly does a pre-emptive strike from North Korea imply? Well, Pyongyang is known to have, already, ballistic missiles that can reach beyond Japan. [Apparently some missiles tested theretofore had actually been tracked beyond Japan, tho none of the most recent group tested went anywhere near that far. Is that because they couldn't, and just fizzled out for being defective? Or because they were destroyed by North Korean 'mission control' as not to give away their ultimate range?] How FAR beyond Japan can they reach — today? How much farther tomorrow? Hawaii? California? Iowa? If they attack by a polar route, how long will it be before North Korean missiles can strike New York or Washington?

Saddam had no nuclear weaoons, no program to develop any, no missiles on which to launch them, and no program to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, but Puss attacked Iraq nonetheless. Bullies usually do pick on the kid who can't fite back. Which is precisely why, we are told, North Korea wants nukes: so the U.S. won't dare to attack.
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Today, North Korea has nuclear weapons and a program to develop more, and has long-range missiles and an ongoing program to develop more missiles of greater range and accuracy, but Puss does nothing.
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Why exactly would that be? Does the Puss Administration believe that North Korea's leadership is so tenderhearted that it would not kill a few hundred thousand Americans? They've killed over a million of their own people. Why would they hesitate to kill Americans?
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We have a history with North Korea, and it does not bode well. From my 2002 presentation, again:

Moreover, the North Koreans committed hideous crimes against U.S. prisoners of war, including "brainwashing" of a particularly vicious sort that left many Americans permanently traumatized.

"OVER 7,000 AMERICANS were captured during the three years of the Korean War. They wound up in 20 camps throughout North Korea with nearly 40 percent of them dying there.

Some were murdered or starved, others died from poor medical treatment or from the severe cold. Despite brutal conditions, most of the POWs survived the isolation, cold, hunger and disease." (Italics added)

War and Crime.com — American POWs in Korea

One chilling website, "Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century" — which everyone who thinks Saddam is uniquely monstrous should visit — does a comprehensive survey of deaths worldwide that includes this notation about the U.S. death toll from the Korean War:

"(US POWs: 2,701 out of 7,140 died after capture. In all, 5,639 USAns died as a result of war crimes. (Lewy))"

2,701 of 7,140 is 37.8%, which confirms the statement at "American POWs
in Korea" given above.

Indeed, the Puss Administration may well have learned many of the 'pressure' techniques it employs against "terrorists" — and which have earned it massive condemnation from the entire civilized world — from North Korea!
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I tell you what I'd do if I were President. Before another hour passed — because I'd have been ready for this for many months — I would launch a "Shock and Awe" campaign against every single physical place that Kim Jong Il might be, and against every single military facility and nuclear facility of every description in his entire country, and keep it going until the North Korean regime was completely destroyed. If they attempted to launch a ground attack upon South Korea — and the thousands of Americans stationed in that country — I would use tactical nuclear weapons, if that were needed, to halt the attack before it could get very far. But I suspect that a Shock and Awe campaign with conventional weapons would suffice. Two weeks, five weeks, 17 weeks of sustained air bombardment would destroy North Korea's offensive capability and decimate the Kim regime.
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Will President Puss do any such thing? Don't count on it.
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What will he do to protect us? Anything? Nothing? If North Korea were where Iraq is and threatened Israel, we'd have invaded years ago. But the United States is much less important to the Puss Administration than Israel is. So they will do nothing but talk a tuf game, leaving China to crack the whip.
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But if China really meant to prevent North Korea from testing, it could have done so. China is 1.3 billion people, with an army of 2.25 million and an additional million people in active militia/paramilitary service. In 1979, a mere four years after the U.S. left Vietnam in disgrace, China invaded northern Vietnam, trounced the Vietnamese, and left a month later, having severely chastened that overconfident little country, which was absolutely powerless to stop a Chinese invasion of its heavily defended northern heartland. China could surely destroy North Korea in a trice. One must, then, believe that if North Korea dared to test a nuclear device, it is almost certainly because it had received assurances, sub rosa, that China would do nothing.
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Absent Chinese mauling or U.S. attack, what is to restrain North Korea from continuing its preparations for a nuclear first strike against U.S. interests in its area? Well, there's a little country east of Korea called "Japan" that used to own Korea, and wasn't very nice to it. 61 years ago — I was already alive, it was so recently — Japan was marauding thru much of eastern Asia, killing millions, making Korean women into sex slaves, and otherwise lording it over its 'inferiors'. Japan has a very violent past, internally as well as externally, and the U.S. could give Japan the green lite to resurrect its samurai warrior culture — in "self-defense", of course. But we know what "self-defense" means to violent peoples. We have the example of Israel ever before us. "Self-defense" is a synonym for "aggression" against people one hates. And there is no love lost between Japan and (North) Korea.
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Instead of preparing the American people for a war of annihilation against the Kim Jong Il regime, the Puss Administration is instead working very hard to persuade Americans that we need to launch yet another war against Moslems in the Middle East, which has as its only real purpose to keep Israel safe. Israel's security is vastly more important to the Pussites than Alaska's, California's, or Iowa's.
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How clever, or dumb, is Kim Jong Il in launching his test — of a nuclear device and of U.S. will — one month before U.S. midterm elections?
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Will Puss do nothing, and prove to Americans that he and his party are unfit to hold total power in the United States, such that Kim ousts Puss's party from Congressional power? Or will Bushy Boy make bellicose noises and preparations for war, forcing voters to rally round the flag and give the President a strong mandate by returning Republicans to solid control of both houses of Congress?
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Will Americans go for another war when we have two already, under this President, both going badly? Or will preparations for another Korean War — the first was one of the most unpopular of all American wars, which cost the Democrats the Presidency in 1952 — prove the straw that broke the camel's back, and bury the Republicans in votes of dismay and antiwar urgency, even hysteria?
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Not one person on this big blue planet can answer any of those questions.
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The (ersatz?) Chinese expression comes to mind: "May you live in interesting times." In nuclear times, we may need to alter that to "May you live thru interesting times."
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,744 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:04 AM