We Must Go to War With North Korea and Iran if Necessary

White House Dossier ^ | 4/19/17 | Keith Koffler

[LibWhacker]

We Must Go to War With North Korea and Iran if Necessary

Posted on April 19, 2017, 9:08 am by Keith Koffler • 28 Comments

I hate to share bad news. I’d love to pretend nothing was wrong. Dreadfully wrong.

I know many of you will disagree. But there are two existential threats to our country that President Trump must deal with. Militarily if necessary, and it will not be pretty if it comes to that.

Secretary of State Tillerson warned Congress that Trump may pull out of the Iran deal. Now that’s welcome news. But I’d milk this one along for a time, while not letting the goal of ending the deal get out of sight.

From the Washington Examiner:

Tillerson certified that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama’s team in a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan that was released late Tuesday night. But he hastened to add that Iran’s role as “a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods” has the Trump team debating whether to stick with the agreement.

I am not an interventionist. We should not be in Syria except to fight ISIS. Abandoning Mubarak, our longtime ally, was a dumb idea. I supported the overthrow of Qaddafi, but it was a mistake, we should have left him right where he was. I think I let myself get carried away by the fact that he killed so many Americans in the skies over Lockerbie. And the brutal reality that he was set to slaughter thousands of his own people. But that, unfortunately, is how these countries work.

But a nuclear Iran or a nuclear North Korea is simply, as a previous president put it without understanding the term, a red line. We cannot be in a position where the insane, terrorism-supporting rulers of either of the countries are in a position to destroy us with nuclear weapons. And once they have the capability, we may never be able to rid them of it.

In short, we must do everything short of war to end their hopes of a first-strike capability against the United States. But if everything short of war comes up short, then there must be war. Our survival, and perhaps that of the world, depends on it.

The reason I say to “milk it” with Iran is that North Korea already has nuclear weapons and is developing ICBMs with which to strike us. That is, North Korea must be dealt with first. And if we have to strike North Korea, it might just convince Iran to make a verifiable deal to end its nuclear weapons program, and it may even encourage those in Iran who want to overthrow a regime hell-bent on confronting the United States with nukes.

But I doubt it.

This country has big problems, both domestic and foreign, courtesy of the previous administration. People don’t want to hear that we can’t pay for entitlements and the government must be massively cut, wiping out service many people depend on, or think they depend on. Or that we have obligations to defend ourselves that will result in grievous violence and loss of life.

But those are the facts.

[jazminerose]

Iran and North Korea cannot be allowed to get nukes. They must be stopped by any means necessary.

Thankfully, we have serious adults in charge. There’s no doubt that the President and Secretary Tillerson are well aware of the urgency.

Should either of those regimes get nuclear capability, the world will never be the same.

Thank God, literally, that Trump won.

[nathanbedford]

North Korea is already possessed of the bomb and a developing delivery system while Iran, despite the best efforts of Barack Obama, is presumably not yet a nuclear power. Our military capacity to prevent acquisition of atomic weapons is 10 times more ready than our capacity to de-nuke by force. To de-nuke without incurring massive casualties is a very risky undertaking indeed.

The ability of the United States to bunker bust into the myriad locations where our intelligence agencies should tell us, with dubious degrees of accuracy, where the bombs and rockets are buried is highly questionable. If we limit ourselves to conventional weapons even these heavy bunker busting bombs, the result is even more questionable. If we resort to nuclear weapons, we will have moved terror to a whole new level which might someday boomerang with devastating effect.

If North Korea reacts in a limited fashion, that is non-nuclear counter attack, they can rain devastation with conventional artillery onto Seoul South Korea from the heights where they are thoroughly dug in. There are millions of potential victims under the range of North Korea's guns. Our own soldiers, last time I heard approximately 28,000, are virtual hostages stationed as human tripwires along the demarcation line and utterly vulnerable to atomic retaliation. If Kim Jong Un believes his life is forfeit, he might well unleash whatever atomic weapons he possesses. No one knows for sure what he will do or even what he can do.

The existential long-term real threat remains a nuclear Iran which clearly is far more dangerous to American interests than North Korea possessed, as it has been for some years, with an atomic bomb. Yet, the risk/reward capacity to strike Iran without starting a nuclear war is far, far more attractive and more to be desired than action against Korea.

My guess, and it is only a guess, is that Donald Trump is trying to multiply his diplomatic leverage with saber rattling. That is clearly the right way to approach this matter, if that is in fact what he is doing. Further, he apparently is combining saber rattling directed against North Korea with diplomacy directed toward China to intervene on behalf of sanity against the North Koreans. On the surface it appears to be working.

Several questions must be raised, Donald Trump has forthrightly made clear that he has promised the Chinese better trade terms, especially including making no moves for what everybody agrees is inactive currency manipulation no longer done by China, in exchange for Chinese pressure on the North Koreans. It is legitimate to ask what has he given up? Has president Trump departed from candidate Trump's promises to strike better deals with China? Are those sacrifices, which he has forthrightly admitted, worth what he is getting from China when we keep in mind that this game has been played for decades in which the Chinese pretend to apply pressure to North Korea and in which the North Koreans pretend to behave in exchange for a blind eye for China's rapacious mercantilism.

It is also proper to note that this is a situation (rather than a crisis) that Donald Trump has inherited not of his own making and one that has recently become more acute because the North Koreans are firing off rockets and making actual and explicit threats against America. But it is also fair to note that candidate Trump should have been fully aware of the tagteam match as it has been played by the Chinese and the North Koreans for many years and if he had planned to exchange trade reform for strategic safety, he might have said so. That might be too much to ask of any politician and we certainly know Hillary would certainly not have revealed any such trade-offs, even if the question had occurred to her.

Yet this question goes deeper than merely presumed political cynicism conducted by a candidate once he gets into office, it has to do with one of the most fundamental propositions of the Trump campaign and it is, more importantly, vital to a reinvigoration of the economy which is the only approach Trump is willing to adapt to get federal deficits under control in an environment in which the United States is already $20 trillion in debt. Growth is the only hope for the economy and by extension for deficits with the hope of avoiding a terrible reckoning in the bond markets because president Trump and candidate Trump have made it quite clear that there will be no reduction in entitlements (now including Obamacare), which are the main culprits in driving deficits. Trade reform, tax reform, foreign funds repatriation, regulation reform must be stimulative enough to reduce deficits even when the administration increases spending on the military, spends $1 trillion on infrastructure and contemplates new entitlements such as Ivankacare. If the deal with China, our most important trading partner in terms of trade deficits, is compromised by the deal over North Korea, it might have real effect on our ability to get our fiscal house in order.

These are questions rather than assertions, we do not know enough about Trump's real plans to judge but they are questions which should inform our watching and waiting.

[Mark17]

Iran and North Korea cannot be allowed to get nukes. They must be stopped by any means necessary.

Don't the Norks already have them?

[justa-hairyape]

The author should not be too upset about being wrong on Libya. Most everyone was. Even a slim majority here. Obama was still Hope and Change and his Foriegn Policy was a master piece that noone would dare criticize. According to the MSM.

[justa-hairyape]

Think you are going to be surprised. We are going for a full stop in nuclear proliferation. We have no other choice. There is no future for civilization on this planet with nuclear proliferation. In fact our future is fairly grim even with the nukes we have now.

[nathanbedford]

surprised by what?

[justa-hairyape]

That we ran out of Sabers.

[nathanbedford]

Have you noticed that it is always the Democrats with their cowardice and temporizing who give our enemies time to arm up to the point where the oncoming Republican administration is handcuffed? From 1945 until 1948 or 1949 America had exclusive possession of the atomic bomb. Truman did nothing while Russia spied on us in developed its own bomb.

When North Korea was about to develop its atomic bomb, former president Jimmy Carter intervened to contrive a negotiated settlement which history has shown to be at nothing but a cover for their development of a weapon. Once a country arms up with an atomic weapon, our options are severely limited to the point where we are almost handcuffed.

[A strike]

Much, MUCH better now than later.

[jazminerose]

Yes. Clinton and Albright gave nukes to the Norks. Thus far, they haven’t been able to assemble a working delivery system.

We really don’t know for certain what they have.

And of course, Obama and Kerry made generous contributions of our money to finance Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

I probably could have been more clear. Iran and North Korea cannot be allowed to get nuclear weapons. I don’t care how we stop them.

[Alberta's Child]

There is no putting the genie back in the bottle here, folks. It's not like this world exists with solid, giant walls between nations that prevent nuclear weapons from proliferation.

Most people have no idea how many countries in the world are capable of using a nuclear weapon tomorrow if they felt a compelling need for it. I sure wouldn't trust anything that comes out of our U.S. intelligence experts on the matter.

[RC one]

This should be approached as more of a WW3 kind of a war. We need allies who are willing to provide soldiers, equipment and treasure in this endeavor and if we don't have any such allies, we should just allow these two countries to obtain nuclear weapons.

If the world isn't willing to join with us in this epic fight, the world will just have to live with the consequences. IMHO.

We should make every attempt to rally the world. if the world won't rally, we should not pursue unilateral conventional action.

[momincombatboots]

So how many American Soldiers will you look in the eye and tell them their life is worth this? We are at war in practically every ME country except Israel. How many fronts can we fight? Seen the cost of your wars up close?? Lives, limbs, real people. Until our own country isn’t in the beginning of a sixties style war on the streets, we certainly can’t help another country.
What is your personal plan and how many days will you drag your bag around in this war you desire?
Think we can stop them from nukes? How? By dying in their country?

[Chainmail]

NathanBedford - normally I am content to just read your comments and nod sagely but this time I have to respond.

Is the main issue having a .."real effect on our ability to get our fiscal house in order."? When the main point of this discussion and whether we risk thousands, maybe millions of lives to deal with a nuclear North Korea and Iran, I hardly think the financial aspects are particularly relevant.

The real issue is whether we have or can quickly develop means to deal with North Korea and Iran's nuclear capabilities and ballistic delivery systems as well as develop alliances to provide more mass than just ourselves alone to secure the flanks to prevent a widening war.

The Bushs and Hussein handed us this intensely dangerous mess where complete nothingburger countries are now in the position of directly attacking the continental US. We can't stand by and hope for the better.

Worrying about our credit card balances should be much further back in the list of our immediate priorities, right?

[wyowolf]

But the Iraq war was SOOOO worth it!!/ sarc...

[Fhios]

NKOR is a pawn. War with NKOR probably means a more belligerent China and Chinese participating.

Iran is currently a willing pawn of Russia. They will extract as much as they can and either become too powerful to ignore and sanction or part owner of the Competing Caliphates in the area.

[DoodleDawg]

We Must Go to War With North Korea and Iran if Necessary

And I have no doubt that Mr. Koffler is on his way to the recruiting station so that he can be sure that he's in the first wave of the invasion. </sarcasm>

[Chainmail]

"Think we can stop them from nukes? How? By dying in their country?"

So, OK, Mom - how much worse will it be when severely irrational societies like Iran and North Korea have the means to directly attack multiple cities within the US? Any idea how many innocent people would die?

What, out of curiosity, do you think our armed forces exist for? Colorful parades? Career paths for all social groups?

No, our military forces exist to have the means to engage and destroy any threats to our country and its citizens, even if it means the loss of our lives in the process.

Your kind of reasoning was popular in the late '30s, when events in Ethiopia and Manchuria and Czechoslovakia were interesting but weren't something we felt should involve us. All of it came after us a few years later and cost the world millions of lives in the process.

Time to nip this danger in the bud.

[nathanbedford]

If we wake up tomorrow morning and have to decide between nuclear annihilation and bankruptcy, of course the choice is obvious.

But there is no more immediacy in the Korea or Iran threats today than there has been for years and it is quite conceivable that the situation will continue as is for years to come. Meanwhile, the fiscal situation creeps ever closer to becoming irredeemable.

I believe that Trump is doing the right thing in trading off trade advantages for cooperation but I also think it is quite right to point out that China has played this game successfully against us several times before with the connivance of North Korea and there is reason to believe that they are doing it again. Trump probably has no choice but to play the game one more time but try to change the rules to get a different result this time and we for our part have no choice but to hope and believe that he knows what he is doing and will succeed.

I think it is quite legitimate to point out that in dealing with Korea through China we are perhaps working against ourselves concerning another vital interest. I think is also quite right to point out that if the situation in Korea is immediate, security must trump (pun shamelessly intended) the balance sheet.