Should We Attack North Korea Now?

June 3, 2009

What is the problem with North Korea? The leader of this country is like a child. Pay attention to me or I will make noise and threats.

The United States has patiently been ignoring North Korea while tackling problems in other parts of the world. This has not gone un-noticed by the leader of North Korea. He has observed exactly who we seem to have gumption to attack & who we do not. He is not stupid.

Lets talk about Iraq as a comparison to the above statement. The Bush administration led us to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and we should attack before he used them. The debate over wether he had such weapons is debated both ways. He did have such weapons because he used them on his own people in the previous years.

The big screwup in all of this is that he apparently did destroy them, or just didn’t have enough to really threaten anybody. We haven’t really found anything anywhere near the description we all heard being played out over the United Nations. Bush then attempted to turn the fact from that to Iraq helping out the people that attacked the world trade center on 9/11. Even though there was some stickers found on cars advertising the attack, nothing significant was found to back up this claim either. Even VP Dick Cheney came out recently & said they had no evidence.

All of years spent straightening out Iraq, while good for their people, was complete overkill & cost many American soldiers their lives.
News flash to any future adminstrations – a well placed cruise missle or a sniper will do the same job you tried to accomplish using an entire army.

The war with Japan was ended in a similar way. Rather than send any more soldiers to a death against an army that believed in suicide, the US dropped a couple of Atomic bombs to force Japan’s surrender. It was a message, more than anything, that we did not have to send in a invading force to end a war.

Enter North Korea. North Korea actually has a military force close to our own in numbers. Close enough. To invade North Korea would be stupid. For some reason Kim Jong-il just doesn’t seem to understand this. This is the most paranoid leader in the world. He either does not understand this, or he actually does, and really just wants to make all his money by selling nuclear technology to rogue countries like Iran, Syria, or even Al-Queda itself. Israel already took out a nuclear plant set up by North Korea in Syria. Syria kept relatively quiet after the bombing, not to implicate North Korea for the sale of the technology.

The above is a no win situation & the delema of the current Obama adminstration. It is hard to engage your enemy, as Obama stated he wanted to do, when your enemy believes he really doesn’t have anything to loose by not talking to you. So what do you do with a scurge to peace like Kim Jong-il?

1. Invasion is really out of the question, as stated before. Its not that we couldn’t win, but the loss of life would be so great that it would not be worth it. North Korea knows this.
2. Get China & Russia on board to tighten a noose around North Korea. (This might work in conjunction with a Cuba-style blockade of shipping to and from North Korea). But, those two countries have dragged their feet for years on anything the U.S. is interested in doing.
3. Turn Japan loose on building their military up. Since WW-II Japan has been under the protection of the United States militarily. Times have changed. Japan is well within range of any North Korean missle. If we were in the same general location as Japan, we would be attacking North Korea now. They are our allies & there a millions of innoncent lives at stake in our friends in Japan. Its time to turn them loose to build a military once again & provide them with whatever they need in their defense.
4. Missle strikes. Lets face it, North Korea probably has a good air defense system. Air raids would be very risky. Cruise missles actually travel slower than many of our jets. They can be shot down if Korea is expecting such a attack & is waiting for it. Kim Jong-il has built this frenzy in his country that we are going to attack one day, so thats all they have been doing for years – preparing for a U.S. attack.
5. Sniper from the inside. While this would work in scaring any future replacement, like his sons, whoever did this will stand a 90% chance of getting killed himself. The U.S. has never backed assination attempts, but one has to wonder if this isn’t the route to go in this situation, just as it was with Saddam Hussein. Lets face it, 10 million dollars to the person that did it & millions of potential lives saved. It does look appealing.

There are the options. If China would get on board we don’t even have to worry about Russia. China is the northern border & China has big money in the United States – billions of dollars actually. Much more than what they have invested in North Korea. If we can somehow convince them of this, we can make this work. Blockade North Korea. They can threaten all they want, but if they do fire a missle then that gets shot down. They will surrender their goals or they will be grounded. If it flies – it gets shot down. If it floats – it gets inspected. It will not take long of total isolation to bring North Korea to its knees & cooperate with the rest of the world.

The big beef with these rogue countries is why should some countries have nuclear bombs & not others. Why? Because we use our arsenal as a deterent, not as a threat, or to destablize the world by selling the technology to kooks. Yes, Israel has nukes. Have they ever used them? They are surrounded by people who do not like them, yet they have not used them. It is the difference between a stable/sane leadership & one that wants to threaten everybody else if they do not cave to their demands.

The few images we see from inside North Korea are ones of a good Korean killing a bad American. The people are raised to believe we are the enemy for some reason. They do not know what Americans really think. We have no greif against anyone until they give us reason. They believe we are just out to invade and do them harm. The former Soviet Union had their people believing this as well. Except for the older generation & the hardliners in Russia, I do believe the majority of the people understand that Americans were not their enemy, and never were. North Korea is so closed I do not know if the people of that country will ever get that message, and it is a shame. War is a bad thing & they have a leader that seems bent on heading that directon.

Thru history, people manage to get along with one another until the leaders of countries get involved. They dominate the news that gets to the people. The news tells lies and people only hear one side of the story. They believe & they become scared & hate their unknown enemy.

People do not make war, Governments do. If we can get free news to everyone in the world then we can all get along. Yes, there will always be a skirmish somewhere. A group that does not agree with something, anything. We have to join together to stop such people for all of us to survive.