. . . because a devastating attack from North Korea is promised tomorrow.
I really don’t know what to make of this. I agree, of course, with Carl on the tyranno-pathological character of the regime. That means, of course, that we can’t be sure they won’t do something really stupid. Probably all that war-declaring is just talk, but . . .
This sort of real threat might show the limits of Paulism. After all, what did we ever do to them but pretty much not take them that seriously? I gather Obama is taking them more seriously than Bush did (for the most part).
History will probably show we should have done more to undermine their regime. Regime undermining has a very mixed record, though. And, in their case, it’s not like they have the power or the ideological attractiveness to really project themselves in any sustainable way beyond their borders. They don’t seem to terrorize us with terrorists operating within our borders. They just have some missles that might be able to do a huge amount of random damage and conceivably mass murder.
I agree with Carl that finally it doesn’t speak well of the South Koreans that they haven’t been willing to do more to liberate their fellow Koreans.
It’s easy to agree that we should be doing a lot more to scare them. But crazy, desperate, shamelessly vicious tyrannical people with huge self-esteem issues are hard to scare.
When Bush named his Axis of Evil, North Korea seemed maybe the most evil, but easily the least scary to us.
I sure wish John Bolton hadn’t said that we should take out their regime and unify the peninsula. For one thing, with what army? For another, that comment plays into stereotypes about “neocons.” For yet another, that should be a South Korean project on behalf of Korea. For still another, our rogue general tried that once, and once again the Chinese are massing on their border.
On the other hand, the absence of a formidable enough army might really prove to be a problem if things get out of control on that peninsula.
In any case, live for today, because some North Korean missle might just be visting your town soon.
