Goodbye Sunshine

Foreign Press Magazine ^ | 5/21/2010 | Christian Caryl

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

So now it's official: North Korea did it. In the early morning hours of March 26 an explosion tore through the hull of the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan, which was sailing in waters not far from the disputed maritime boundary with the North. The 1,200-ton patrol boat split in two and sank, and 46 sailors lost their lives.

The cause of the disaster wasn't immediately obvious. No one claimed responsibility for an attack, and some sort of accident was, of course, within the realm of possibility. So the South Korean government launched a probe to figure out what happened. On Thursday, after six weeks of work, the investigators presented their findings. The evidence included fragments, recovered from the sea bottom near the sinking, of a Chinese-made torpedo of a kind known to be in use by the North Korean Navy.

So what happens next? Media commentators assure us that -- as is usually the case in matters North Korean -- all the options facing South Korean President Lee Myung Bak are bad ones. Yet this commonplace may need a bit of correcting. President Lee's range of possible moves may be relatively limited, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the ones he chooses will be ineffective. On Friday, Lee ordered his government to prepare "resolute and systematic" countermeasures against North Korea, and announced that he would be announcing further moves in a speech next week. And though he may not go so far as to say it outright, his plan is likely to revolve around doing away with the remnants of the "Sunshine Policy," the South's decade-long program of rapprochement with the North. Bruce Bennett, a Korea-watcher at the Rand Corporation, notes: "When somebody's committing acts of war against you there isn't any sunshine

[streetpreacher]

Your username is fitting for this thread. This is a strange world we are living in when nations have to debate on how to respond to an act of war.

[Hoosier-Daddy]

Actually, if you assassinate the sob, there would be a lot less blood shed.

[rawcatslyentist]

0d0rk0 immediately responded 8 days later by sending in a swat team, and blaming Boosh!

[cricket]

This is a strange world we are living in when nations have to debate on how to respond to an act of war.

We have what is the Left's group-puppet think whereby they escape the consequences of authentic Leadership and the consequences of such.

Meantime, our esteemed Secy of State, Hillary, is making threats - as hollow promises - and Obama is boldly making war against Arizona.

[sphinx]

This is a strange world we are living in when nations have to debate on how to respond to an act of war.

War? That's so crude. I think this is an international man-made torpedo contingency. Get with the program.

[DrC]

“blaming Boosh!”

This incident simply proves what an awful president GWB was. Clearly NK’s leaders were so distraught by Bush’s horrid treatment of them that they undertook this provocative action DESPITE Obama’s flawless diplomacy in handling Kim and company over the past 16 months...

Poor Barack: stuck with cleaning up mess after mess created by GWB. The man is a saint and we are so blessed he is our leader.

[TXnMA]

Here's the story in a single slide:

Thannks again to TigerLikesRooster...