North Korea is ‘close to testing’ a long range ballistic missile. So says Dubya’s meat puppet, Tony Snow in a story on the Associated Press today. If Snow isn’t full of it and Kim Jong-Il is for real, then you and I have a problem.
Here’s the short geography lesson to get you located: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is North Korea, the unfriendly one. It is owned and operated by Kim Jong-Il, the guy with the bad perm, heel lifts and the movie addiction. It has not been confirmed that North Korea has nuclear weapons, but a lot of the sideband chatter says they either do, or are so close as to make no difference. North Korea has one side of the 38th parallel, too many people, not enough food and a standing army that wants to do something other than standing at attention in the morning, then executing political prisoners in the afternoon.
The Republic of Korea, the one we know as South Korea, isn’t terrifically friendly either, if truth be told. South Korea does understand that countries turned into glowing, radioactive, glass lakes don’t buy enough ships, cars, marine engines, HDTV’s, cell phones, computers, clothing and home appliances to make it profitable for Hyundai, Samsung and LG. South Korea does not have nukes. They have a lot of American troops, the other side of the 38th parallel and some UN folks standing around looking important in their blue hats.
North Korea is kissin’ buddies with China. South Korea is kissin’ buddies with the United States. Both those countries have nukes. China has an international dialing plan for their missiles: The US can reach out and touch anyone, anytime, anywhere. North Korea might be able to hit Alaska with a limited payload.
The standoff is the old Cold-War-Mutually-Assured-Destruction-SuperPower-War-By-Proxy game of Don’t Blink.
Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, or NATO and the Warsaw Pact until 1990, we aren’t eyeball to eyeball with reasonably pragmatic, approximately sane, Soviet leaders: If the technology works, the US will be eyeball to eyeball with Kim Jong-Il and by proxy, whoever is on the big chair in Beijing this week.
The US cannot preemptively bomb North Korea, even with conventional bombs. China would be very unhappy with the US doing anything in the backyard. South Korea can’t do anything about it, as that tweaks China’s nose too. Japan might have the tools and the moxie, but if Kim Jong-Il’s Taepodong-2 missile can reach the US, then hitting Japan is dial 9 for an outside line easy and puts a damper on Japan hitting first.
England and France are too far away to care. India and Pakistan are more concerned about making grumpy noises at each other. Israel may or may not: They’re being coy. Russia has re-aimed the four or five missiles they have left at Beijing, figuring, hell, if we’re going to go, let’s all do the Apocalypso.
All it takes is one jittery, unstable, none-too-bright, warmonger Daddy’s Boy with a grudge, to escalate this beyond all sense. This narrows our choices down to Kim Jong-Il and George Walker Bush. We know how one of them responds to ‘foreigners’ and threats, real, imagined or manufactured.
Here’s my prediction: Within three months expect to see a Presidential “Cuban Missile Crisis” type of briefing on television. If you think you’re frightened now about terrorist Al Qaeda cells looking to bomb your local Wal-Mart, imagine how North Korean and China will be demonized. The Terror Alert Pez Dispenser is going to be pinned on Red.
This is a great way to get your Star Wars II program funded for your buddies. What? StarWars II? Originally a bad hashish dream of Ronald Regan who had been taking too many hits off the bong with Nancy, StarWars was shown to be a complete technical hallucination. Dubya trotted it out in 2004 as a way to defend the US from “rogue nations” like Indonesia, Libya and, drum roll please, North Korea.
StarWars II, more properly, the Missile Defense Shield, never went away. The US doesn’t have the cash to shovel into it right now as they have boots on the sand in Iraq.
But an invisible threat by crazy, Godless communist yellow people a half a world away in a country that you can’t actually invade with expensive troops? This has promise. They can pull the troops out of Iraq with impunity and bring them home, freeing up some serious money for StarWars II.
Keep in mind that it won’t be the top 1%, Dubya’s base, who will take a huge tax hit to ‘protect our homes with an umbrella of American technology to defend us from those evildoers of the Axis of Evil with their nukleer missiles who mean to do us harm.” The top 1% own the companies that are going to make a bundle. You are going to be frightened into paying for it.
It puts any Democratic Presidential candidate in a box for the next ten years. The Republicans could exhume Richard Nixon’s remains and win, as long as the press release said he was in favour of StarWarsII to protect the US of A and be a ‘beacon of freedom to all the freedom loving peoples of the world”
North Korea doesn’t want to attack or invade North America. They can’t take the ground, they can’t hold the ground if they did invade, and they wouldn’t know what to do with North America if they could take it and hold it. North Korea needs us as a place to sell things to earn enough money to get by. They can’t feed their own people, let alone take over another country.
You could cut a deal and get North Korea to sit down and shut the fuck up, with four freighters of Canadian wheat and a tanker of oil. A quiet negotiation and a simple settlement is not the War President’s way.
He must have a Legacy. And his buddies must have more money.
RoadDave 