North Korea has just pulled off an impressive dual feat -- the successful test both of an intercontinental ballistic missile and an atom bomb in the 6-kiloton range. Posted on 02/15/2013 6:18:01 AM PST by Kaslin
North Korea has just pulled off an impressive dual feat -- the successful test both of an intercontinental ballistic missile and an atom bomb in the 6-kiloton range.
Pyongyang's ruler, 30-year-old Kim Jong Un, said the tests are aimed at the United States. So it would seem. One does not build an ICBM to hit Seoul, 30 miles away.
Experts believe North Korea is still far from having the capability to marry a nuclear warhead to a missile that could hit the West Coast. But this seems to be Kim's goal.
Why is he obsessed with a nation half a world away?
America has never recognized his, his father's or his grandfather's regime. We have led the U.N. Security Council in imposing sanctions. We have 28,000 troops in the South and a defense treaty that will bring us into any war with the North from day one, and a U.S. general would assume overall command of U.S. and Republic of Korea troops.
We are South Korea's defense shield and deterrent against the North.
And while America cannot abdicate her responsibility and role in this crisis, we should be asking ourselves: Why is this our crisis in 2013?
President Eisenhower ended the Korean War 60 years ago. The Chinese armies in Korea went home. Twenty years ago, the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia abandoned communism and ceased to arm the North, and Mao's China gave up world revolution for state capitalism.
Epochal events. Yet U.S. troops still sit on the DMZ, just as their grandfathers did when this writer was still in high school.
Why? North Korea represents no threat to us, and South Korea is not the ruined ravaged land of 1953. It has twice the population of the North, an economy 40 times the size of the North's, and access to the most modern weapons in America's arsenal.
Why were U.S. troops not withdrawn from Korea at the end of the Cold War? Why should we have to fight Seoul's war if Pyongyang attacks, when the South is capable of fighting and winning its own war?
Why is South Korea's defense still America's obligation?
Had the United States moved its soldiers out of South Korea, and its planes and ships offshore, and turned over to Seoul responsibility for its own security, would the North be building missiles that can hit the United States?
Undeniably, Kim Jong Un runs a tyrannical, wretched regime. But its closest neighbors are South Korea, Japan, Russia and China.
Why is Kim Jong Un not primarily their problem, rather than ours?
Had we departed 20 years ago, the South would have built up its own forces to contain the North. Instead, we have allowed it to remain a strategic dependency. And the same holds true for Japan.
Japanese and Chinese warplanes and warships are now circling each other near what Tokyo calls the Senkaku Islands and Beijing calls the Diaoyou. These rocks were occupied by Japan in 1895, when the Empire of the Sun was at war with China and colonizing Taiwan.
After Imperial Japan fell in 1945 and disgorged its colonies, the Senkakus, along with the Ryukyus -- of which the largest is Okinawa -- were returned by President Nixon. And as the Senkakus are but a few rocks sticking out of the East China Sea, no one seemed to mind, before reports surfaced of oil and gas deposits in adjacent waters.
Beijing restated China's claim. Last week, Chinese warships reportedly locked firing radar on Japanese ships and helicopters near the islands. China denies it.
What has this to do with us?
The United States has reportedly signaled Japan that the Senkakus are covered by our mutual defense treaty and if China attacks in those waters, and Japan goes to war, we stand with Japan.
Sixty years ago, U.S. commitments to go to war to keep South Korea and Japan from falling into the Stalin-Mao sphere were supported by Americans, who willingly sent their sons to the Far East to defend the "frontiers of freedom."
But South Korea and Japan long ago became economic powers, fully capable of undertaking their own defense. And the Cold War enemies we confronted no longer exist.
Why have we failed to adapt to the new world we are in? As Lord Salisbury said, "The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies."
Vladimir Putin's Russia is not Stalin's. If Putin is in a quarrel with Japan over the Kuriles, why should that be our quarrel? If Japan is in a quarrel with Xi Jinping's China over the Senkakus, why is that our quarrel?
Are our war guarantees to Japan and South Korea eternal?
Undeniably, should the U.S. seek to renegotiate its defense pacts with Seoul and Tokyo, each would consider, given the rogue regime in the North, a nuclear deterrent of its own. This would stun and shock China.
But what help have the Chinese been to us lately?
Bring our troops home.
Cause we said we would....
Nuff said
They can afford to defend themselves against Red China?
I beleive korea is still a UN mission.
Why is the US carrying the load ?
If we remove 28k troops, does S.korea economy go down the tubes ?
Do we care ?
That’s advocating a communist South Korea.
You've got a point. But as a nation we have gone way, way beyond bankrupt. So perhaps old Frederick has a point also.
“He Who Defends Everything Defends Nothing” – Frederick The Great
SK can’t handle the PRC
New world order, i.e., international banking, is the backer of world communism.
NWO strategy alternates war and peace, making gains for totalitarianism during each phase.
During peacetime, the idea is to set up for major war and have localized wars. In America, NWO uses “hawks” to drive up defense spending and export arms as much as possible (NWO benefits from gov’t spending and the large, ready militaries make it much easier for NWO to precipitate conflict). Doves, on the other hand, are used to promote the idea of simply handing over territory to totalitarian states, avoid war at all costs, avoid foreign entanglements, etc. Basically, give territory back that was hard-won with much blood and treasure. For example, the outcome of WWII saw all of NWO’s goals being realized.
New world order has carefully nursed along the idea that totalitarian superpowers either “collapsed”, as in the case of Russia, or “are our friends” in the case of China.
While American, and really all, freedom does have an enemy in communism and all collectivist thinking, it also has an enemy in new world order, an enemy that has had its way with us - and the rest of the world - for a hundred years. Without vanquishing new world order, the US, and every other country, is constantly facing manipulations that endeavor to ultimately reduce free people to economic slaves.
Playing nice with enemies is certainly not the activity of “defend(ing) everything”, though.
After WWII, America, under the influence of new world order, gave away the store to communism. Part of the effect of that was the Korean War.
Pat’s statements are just more giving away of the store to communist China, the new world order’s darling subsidiary.
If you read up on “eastern establishment”, new world order, etc., (Shadows of Power by Perloff is a place to start), you’ll begin to see the magnitude of the enemy that we actually face, what they’re up to and how real the possibility is that they win and we lose.
btw, my first trip to Asia was in 1951 so I know a little about the territory and people.
I have a friend who spent the better part of the 1990s in South Korea. He says if anybody should want us to stay its the North Koreans because the south would stomp them in days.
The founders were right. 60 years is plenty. Those with a hardon for perpetual war can get over there and deal with it themselves and they can fund themselves as well.
The founders were right, but George Washington was wrong?
Because that’s what the Elders of Zion want? /sarcasm
That response is funny coming from advocating a liberal position (withdrawal). Running away from an aggressor and telling allies to go it alone means that the “foreign entanglement” remains, and remains unresolved. It also makes us look like extremely unreliable allies. (Not that Obama is too bothered about maintaining our alliances with true allies, of course; he is quite intent on breaking them and founding “alliances” with enemies that weaken us greatly.)
Tibet can't either - and we're not there. Why one and not the other?
Face it, this country is broke and can't be the protector for all the world.
Then we are heading straight for WWIII. If we won’t stand up to protect the peace, nobody else will. Literally.
You have a serious misunderstanding of the way America works. MacArthur refusing to abide by the rules Truman set up and being fired was a great thing by itself. (not to mention he was probably one of the absolutely worst Generals we ever produced)
But advocating that in order to follow Sun Tsu, Mac should have attacked China despite the orders of the President is lunacy.
You also badly skew George Washington’s intent in the reference to “being ready for war”. There is not the slightest evidence that he meant that to include wars where the USA does not have a national interest.
Washington would have been horrified to imagine the USA as being able to find some national interest in every single war on earth. He likewise would have been horrified at treaties solely designed to do nothing but drag us into wars that have nothing to do with us.
And last, none of the founders viewed the USA as a messianic nation that should try to meddle with and shape the internal look of every other nation on earth, beyond how they interacted with us.
So now you’re calling me a liberal.
Again another liberal tactic used when one lacks facts to back up their argument.
You’re 0-2 for now.
Amusing coming from a defender of Putin. Never mind utterly mischaracterizing the USA to make it look just like the liberals try to make it look.
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