North Korea’s pudgy dictator has been trying earnestly to get our attention, as well as the attention of the rest of the world. In my book, he has succeeded with his latest test-firing of a self-claimed ICBM (InterContinental Ballistic Missile) which he claims can strike anywhere in the continental U.S. I assume he includes Hawaii and Alaska even though not contiguous to the bulk of the U.S. states. He can hit us.
It is, as I said, time for us to demonstrate what we think of him and his continuing belligerent behavior, his neighborhood bully approach to global relations. I know that he has placed millions of North Korean citizens at risk with his behavior. And I understand they have little means of removing him from office and getting a new person in that office who is sane and who does not endanger their lives. Theirs is not a democracy. It is at the opposite end of the scale, a dictatorship.
We are uncomfortable with leaders who act out like a mischievous 5-year old since they have their finger on the trigger and can pull that trigger at any time of any day they decide to pull that trigger. This guy is plain and simple, a nut case! That is a rather ugly thing to say about another person, but I believe this man is most deserving of that descriptive.
We Americans tend to believe in giving people another chance, another opportunity to demonstrate that they were not what we originally thought. In this case, we give him another chance to show us he is over his belligerent snit-fit, and he seizes the opportunity to drop another ICBM into the ocean. We tend to think of such threats as something to take the floor of the U.N., but the U.N. has shown us it has virtually no power and seldom chooses to use what little power it does have unless it has found another way to embarrass the U.S.
We Americans are a genuinely humane sort of people. We help people the world over in famine situations, after crushing storms wipe out infrastructures, when those people are attacked by an aggressor opposed to freedom and a live-and-let-live approach to others. We have become the ‘world’s policeman’ because we are built that way and we have the power to act in that capacity.
I have to believe that we have a very healthy, pinpoint grid of targets of opportunity in North Korea that have been selected to produce the greatest destructive power where it avoids the greatest loss of innocent life. Unfortunately, dictators do not think about the lives of anyone other than themselves and, possibly, their family members. Those people are simply pieces to be taken advantage of as one might give up a Pawn in chess to gain the advantage of sweeping a Knight off the board.
I have to believe that we are quite certain of the targets that will put North Korean out of the ‘war’ business for decades to come; and, I have to believe the rest of the free world would rise up immediately to thank President Trump for taking this dangerous and uncontrollable player off the chessboard of life. Ultimately, his own people would do the very same thing although it might take two or three generations to complete the clean-up. That process will never occur without us starting it, and it will never occur as the result of some other entity taking the bold and very necessary step of a first strike at every strategic point in that country.
I have to believe that this has been “gamed” in every possible combination of scenarios in the Pentagon and every major military educational and command institution in America. “Gamed” is an offensive term to many because we’re talking about human life, and we actually do create training exercises that are very “game-like” for just that reason. We want the best combination of destroying what needs to be destroyed at the very smallest cost to human life and that country’s infrastructure.
Why do we do that? We do that to assure that we destroy what needs to be destroyed and that we protect what needs to be protected. Unfortunately, there is almost always a loss greater than the military gaming has suggested because things go wrong when the first bomb is dropped and the first artillery round is lofted toward its target. That having been said, there is nothing good to come from the North Korean situation. We have to take the initiative and we have to take it very soon. In these situations, the first strike advantage will usually provide that side the ultimate victory if it doesn’t lose its will to win.
This makes battle sound like a ‘game’. It isn’t a game, but it provides those who plan and lead in such cases the backdrop of the exercises to draw upon as things change which they inevitably do in any battle.
The only thing certain in delaying our response to Kim’s belligerence is that he will continue to escalate until we do respond; and, his escalation is the most dangerous part of this entire process because it gives him that sense that he can actually defeat us if he simply perseveres. It is time to put an end to his folly and we’re the only country capable of doing so, even if we have to do it alone which I doubt will be the case.
It is, unfortunately, time to end his folly…or we’ll certainly pay a much more significant price for having continued to delay the inevitable.