If you're a North Korean dictator looking to maximize the impact of your son's succession to your throne of power, and thus pave the way for the building of his own cult of personality, what better way to go about it than bombing the living shit out of a neighboring countries island while they're in the middle of military exercises? That seems to be the consensus as to the reason for North Korea's attack on the South Korean island of Pyongyuang.
Not only does South Korea want to engage in payback against the North Koreans for their latest provocation, but Japan is also demanding a strong response. Predictably, everybody else is urging caution and patience, including the US, even though South Korea is an ally, and they have been attacked. Many are worried that the tepid response from the Obama Administration bodes ill for our overall foreign policy and our standing in the world with but friend and foe alike.
Nevertheless, the South Koreans, while claiming that a considerable number of North Koreans were likely killed as a result of their response to the North's attack, are threatening an even stronger response.
The North Korean position is typical-South Korea started it.
The time for diplomacy is past. It doesn't work, and neither does sanctions. Yet, what can we do about it? Officially, we'll issue stern rebukes and threaten further sanctions and eventually accede to demands for yet another round of multilateral diplomatic meetings in the hopes of working things out, if in fact we ourselves do not call for them ourselves. To all practical intents and purposes, we will end up doing nothing other than what amounts to hiding under our beds, quaking in fear, and otherwise adhering to the overall posture of the American Left-crying about how scary it is.
Because of the fear and trepidation which is endemic to the public's perceptions and its attendant paranoiac assumptions pertaining to foreign policy and security concerns of the modern era, both the good news and the bad news is-things are probably not going to change. I hold the Democratic Party in particular responsible for this, along with much of the rank-and-file of their liberal base, but also many Republicans among the Washington political establishment. For good measure I'll throw the mainstream media in to this boiling vat of scared chicken soup as well. Add hot tar and mix well.
Somebody on the leftist site linked above did make an interesting point before I was banned, though unfortunately her reply was also removed. The gist of it is as follows-there is nothing of strategic importance in Pyongyang, therefore it would be meaningless to raze the city, as all that is there are bureaucrats and laborers. That was not her exact wording, but that was the sense of it, and it does make sense. A nation as provocative, unstable, and more to the point as paranoid as North Korea would probably not want to put all their eggs in one basket. If we absolutely decimated the North Korean capitol, the majority of the nation's military and power infrastructure would be mostly unharmed.
Be that as it may, it would nevertheless send them a strong message, one they would be hard pressed to spin to their advantage. My guess is they would claim credit for destroying the city to keep it from falling into the hands of the South Koreans or the Americans.
The bottom line is, we are going to have to take them out. If we don't, they are eventually going to go to the extent of launching a nuclear missile, on the South, maybe on Japan-and without a doubt, if they can do it, to the US. I know that conventional wisdom insists they won't do that, because they know we would utterly destroy their nation.
I am afraid that such an assumption is, as they say, assuming facts which are not in evidence. We have given the North Koreans no reason whatsoever to think that we are capable of taking strong, decisive and devastating action. They have watched in a mixture of amusement and disgust at the way we have conducted ourselves in our two current wars. To them we act like a schoolyard bully who is at heart a coward and who has been called out for a reckoning, and is now desperately trying to prove his bravery, while both inwardly and outwardly quivering and quaking in his boots the whole time. In short, we are a laughing stock to the developing world. That is not an attitude which is unique to North Korea, they are just the first ones to take their place in line to confront the bully.
This is not the first time they have done something like this, nor is it even the worse thing they have done. It hasn't been but a few short months ago that they torpedoed a South Korean submarine, resulting in the deaths of 46 South Korean sailors. Now this, on the heels of the failure of Obama to accomplish anything substantive at the G8 summit, incidentally held in Seoul. Then we were informed just a few short days ago that the North has a highly advanced nuclear processing plant, one which can easily produce nuclear warheads.
I would not go so far as some as to suggest the North Koreans were behind the explosion of the Deep Water Horizon. On the other hand, would anybody really be surprised to learn that the strange unidentified flying object flying over California right around the time of Obama's trip to Asia was in truth a North Korean missile? This is a country run by a rogue regime composed of people who are primarily psychopathic in nature. Korea is almost like a country which has a split personality, and the Mr. Hyde of the pair, the North, rightly blames China for their problems, while in a sense being enslaved to them through dependency. Because of this natural resentment, there is only so much the Chinese can do to rein them in, even if they wanted to, despite what some US lawmakers such as John McCain might believe. The awful truth is, there is little if anything the Chinese can do about it, but they are not about to lose face by admitting as much, any more than the North Koreans will stand for being perceived as a Chinese lapdog. If anything, it is the other way around, and China, possibly in an attempt to manufacture an excuse to not have to risk a confrontation with this insane regime, probably assisted them in constructing the aforementioned uranium enrichment facility, maybe as a strategic means of isolating the regime further and yet making it less likely that any would risk assaulting the North with anything stronger than a good tongue lashing.
Unfortunately, when the South Koreans halted aid to the North as a punishment for the North's refusal to cease developing its nuclear capacity, it helped set the stage for yet more conflict. In the insane world of the North Korean dictatorship, any slight, any refusal, is not only an excuse for a martial response, it practically demands one.
Whether we like it or not, we have to stand by the South Koreans, even if we end up being responsible for the most massive casualties since the days of Hiroshima. There are some things in life for which there is only one conceivable satisfactory ending. The national suicidal posture of North Korea might well end up being one of these examples.
