Posted on 07/30/2017 11:33:35 AM PDT by Strac6
If history has taught us anything, it has taught us that failure to deal with dictators early in their existence only ensures that we must deal with them later, at a much higher price.
For example, Hitler’s orders to his troops during what amounted to Germany’s invasion of Austria was that they were to retreat and return to Germany at the slightest effective resistance. However, Austria (and the rest of Europe) tried to appease Hitler, and the 10 years was a glaring example of the history referenced above.
This is the situation we are currently facing regarding North Korea and Kim Jong-Un. Actually, it’s the situation we have faced since the Clinton administration first appeased North Korea and Kim’s father decades ago. The reality is that Kim is far from the madman some would like to portray him as. He is ruthless, smart, and as a result of those two “attributes”, he is getting what he wants on the world stage. His latest test launches prove he has developed intercontinental range ballistic missiles. The question of whether or not he can currently fit a nuclear warhead to the top of those missiles is moot. If he cannot now do so, he will be able to do so, and most certainly will do so in the very near future.
Once he has nuclear -tipped ICBMs Kim can dictate what he wants, not just on the Korean Peninsula and the surrounding waters, but throughout the entire world. So the reality becomes that we must either stop them now, or stop him at a much greater cost later when the threat of his retaliation becomes reality, or perhaps, following the current trends of the Western world, be prepared to dance to his tune for the next millennia.
We cannot depend on China to stop North Korea. North Korea provides a great service to China, and I’m not talking about the coal the PRC imports from the DPRK. North Korea is a huge practical, strategic and diplomatic thorn in our side in eastern Asia. By forcing the United States to devote a large percentage of our defense expenditures and interests onto the Korean Peninsula, we take a great deal of pressure off Beijing.
Likewise the Japanese do not have the ability, the constitutional authority, nor the will to defeat the North Koreans. The news leader of South Korea has absolutely no intestinal fortitude to take on his northern neighbor, and has publicly said so. The bottom line is that the Japanese would be more than willing to help to the degree they can while the South Koreans “held our coats” if we decided to take definitive action against North Korea.
Another reality is that despite all the noise the Chinese and Russians would make if we decided to take out North Korea as an effective nuclear power, they really wouldn’t mind it that much, Moscow and Beijing both realize North Korean missiles can fly west just as easily as they can fly east.
The problem is, we need one, overriding, war-justifying act on the part of Kim to trigger a response. The “smart part” of Kim has been careful to push us to the brink, but not over it, and in the process, neither justifying nor triggering a military response to his launches.
Without that tipping-point justification we are severely limited by the political realities of the 21st century world. Kim’s latest ICBM launch may however point us in the direction of the solution to justify what history tells us is necessary.
The latest two launches have not followed traditional missile parabolas. Rather than launching for maximum range, these missiles have impacted only a short horizontal distance away from the launching point after having traveled to exceptionally high altitudes before heading back into the atmosphere. The now-demonstrated ability to achieve these total distances traveled by the missiles, including a 40 minute time-of-flight of the latest launch, prove that by simply reprogramming the missiles trajectory into a more horizontal plane they could have easily struck most of North America, including a majority of the East Coast of the United States.
So, in order to give us the justification we need, why don’t we help Kim do that?
Granted, I am slipping back into the days of dirty tricks diplomacy, but that worked exceptionally well for decades, why not give it another chance with this opportunity presents itself so well, as it does here, and the price of not taking effective action is so high.
The concept, which a few million dollars, yen, yuan in bribes could undoubtably create, would be to hack into the guidance computers of the next North Korean missile launch and lower the trajectory so the unarmed nosecone does in fact impact somewhere North America. Now I realize the danger that the relatively rudimentary guidance of a North Korean ICBM might create an impact in some good union worker’s house in the suburbs of Pittsburgh and kill the family pet turtle, but since Kim is launching without nuclear warheads, that would be a small price to pay for the justification of an attack that would completely eliminate his nuclear, missile, and other large-scale affective capabilities.
Think about it. As bizarre as it is, this errant missile impact would give POTUS the justification to do basically anything he wanted to do in return and retaliation. Even the screaming pinkos would be relatively silent when the president’s actions were so “clearly justified.”
Yes, I know it’s bizarre. But by 1939, Hitler’s aggressive war intentions were clearly understood throughout the world. Likewise Tojo had decreed the “Greater Southeast Asia Co-prosperity Severe.” Both had stated their intention to conquer the West in much less virulent terms then Kim uses now. If you were given the opportunity to go back in time and stop Hitler or Tojo before 30 million people died to fulfill their psychotic dreams, would you not do so?
Given the opportunity to stop Kim now, should we not do so? In fact, must not we do so...now?
Anyone else have any better ideas as to how to get away with it?
Since you admit your case for killing millions is so weak you can’t even convince 1/2 of Congress, why even discuss further
If you want to draw 1930s analogies, you sound awfully similar to those national -socialists in Germany who were braying for war because they felt threatened by the Poles.
Where did I ever advocate killing millions? I did not. I would simply remove Kim, his leadership team (all except three) and his offensive military capacity.
Regarding the 30’s, you far-left liberal peacenicks forget that those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.
You also forget that WWII was, in it early and middle stages, a very near thing. Had it not been for dozens of favorable lucky outcomes; the Norse Hydro, Franco’s refusal to permit German troops on Spanish soil to attack Gibraltar and therefore control the supply routes in the Med, (and therefore the UK would have lost North Africa, freeing Rommel and his Africa Corps for duty elsewhere), The Midway intercepts and carrier action, Admiral Canaris’ anti-Nazi help, Hitler’s idiocy in some areas, i.e. Operation Barbarossa, and many others, we easily could have lost the war.
Why do you want to give Kim the good chance to win this one?
Kim taking out those three cities..... millions of illegal aliens, communists and federal bureaucrats gone in the blink of an eye.
Oh the huge manatee....
Well, if we could knew he would only attack The People’s Republic of California......
you Wilsonian big government liberals always .....
LOL
Well, the North Koreans have had those three elements for at least 10 years and no one has felt sufficiently endangered to do anything really forceful about them..
I suppose there would be no doubt the capability existed if North Korea were to launch a missile and blow up a piece of ocean in the eastern Pacific Ocean. But such a demonstration would justify an immediate attack on North Korea by the United States, and the North Koreans are not going to provide that essential bit of information freely.
As noted in the article, the question is not a matter of IF the North Koreans can miniaturize their nuclear weapons design sufficiently to fit into a missile warhead. It is a matter of when. Until that time, the North Koreans don’t, in fact, have a strategic nuclear armed missile. They just have the very strong likelihood.
Sophistry, to be sure, but diplomatic negotiators will insist they still have time to finally convince the North Korean government to abandon a program it has pursued doggedly for over 50 years. And even after the fact of a complete weapon system is established, the diplomats will then argue that they only have a few such missiles and it would be suicide to attack the United States until they had many more. Then the diplomats will argue about the number of nuclear ballistic missile systems necessary to trigger a military response and that the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council seem to accept that other nations,some big, some small, possess nuclear weapons.
And on, and on, until a North Korean nuclear warhead comes down in ...wherever and extinguishes the lives of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Americans. Then the United States will have to respond militarily and because the missiles are on mobile launchers, it will be obliged to thoroughly destroy North Korea, taking or imperiling the lives of some 25 millions, the vast majority of whom are innocent pawns/victims of their own brutal regime.
This why I feel that the critical moment, the trigger for action, is the next and final step in developing the weapon system: successful miniaturization of the atomic bomb to fit in to a warhead. I have already listed the reasons for why the Chinese are the logical choice to deliver the attack.
The next questions are: 1) Are the Chinese willing to do the deed and 2) What actions is the United States prepared to take to support the Chinese and to compensate them for the losses they will incur?
Another Johnson type Gulf of Tonkin debacle? The same modern technology that makes such possible also makes it likely that there would be a trail as to what happened - we would not have the world applauding us for causing a strike one our own land - active nuke or not..
The problem with the Gulf of Tonkin incident was not what happened then and in the days following.
The real problem was what didn’t happen in the weeks, months, and years that followed.
H. R. McMasters “Dereliction of Duty” is the seminal work on the issue. It lays the future failures in RVN directly on Johnson, the JCS and other military leaders.
In this case, the execution phase could be over in 120 hours.
Again you totally misquote me. Not a smart idea here. You trolls get caught all the time.
Well said, but how do we know when such miniaturization is complete, if it has not already been accomplished.
Modern thermonuclear design is very well know, and assembly is rather easy, once you have the Pu and the Tritium for the zipper.
Our problem is if he demos one with a mid-Pacific detonation, on an arched high altitude shot, and then says, oh, by the way, I have 5 more all on easily-hidden mobile TELs, and they are aimed at New York, DC, LA, London, and another city I will not tell you about.
Now what do we do, because he could launch before we could destroy those 5 missiles?
That is the real problem.
“Are you ready to protect your home with a security system that alarms 50% of the time? Or a weapon that shoots 50% of the time?”
Want to take that chance?
We already have several developed, deployed, and tested ABM systems (Patriot, THAAD, SM-3, and the Alaska-based exoatmospheric interceptor missiles whose program name escapes me at the moment) which can deal successfully with a limited numbers raid like the one you postulate.
The recent successful ABM tests conducted by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) were, among other objectives, meant to underscore the existence of this capability to outside parties, especially hostile ones like North Korea and Iran.
Along with the MDA, a big thank you is owed to President Reagan and all subsequent presidents (both Democratic and Republican) and Congresses for their support in developing this capability. It took a long time and a lot of money to accomplish it.
This is why the question of what to do once you have defeated a limited nuclear ballistic missile attack is salient and why I think the Chinese would act pre-emptively. They don’t want to find out how well or poorly their ABM defenses would perform when dozens of US nuclear missiles in multiple waves come arcing over the Pacific inbound for North Korea.
The current crop of deployed anti-missiles, and those projected for the near future are 50% effective, even under prepared and forewarned test conditions.
I am not ready to protect my home with a security system that alarms 50% of the time, nor a weapon that fires 50% of the time I pull the trigger, and being that you are a smart FReeper, I doubt you are either.
Be well.
I understand you wish to end the dialogue.
Let me just say in parting that ABM is a difficult technological task and 50%, while not great, is better than 0%, which is what we would have now if we had never tried.
Thank you for the opportunity to exchange views.
Oh the pain!!! Oh the tragedy!!! Oh the humanity!!!
(Just kidding ------- I think!)
The problem is, if that happened, the country would simply “stop.”
You mean Congress won't repeal and replace Obamacare, and they won't build that wall, and they won't bring manufacturing jobs back, and they won't cut taxes, and they won't rebuild our infrastructure, and they...
(By the way, can you provide a documented list of what good things Congress has accomplished during this term so far?)
No, it would have nothing to do with Congress or in many ways legislative, judicial or executive government at all.
There are other elements mist forget.
We are a complicated country. For example, take just one of 140+ critical items, food. Supermarkets have 3-4 days of food on hand, at most. Warehouses have another 4 days. (By the way, that’s why race riots generally stop after 4-5 days. They run out of food, and they can’t eat the new stolen plasma TV.)
After that, our eating depends an exceptionally complex system of trucks, rail, ocean shipping and much more. They are all tied together by events in DC. Absent the 3 letter agencies, the shipping system would hold up for about 30 days, at most. (remember that the trucks and trains need fuel, payments, etc)
I’m far from a “big government” proponent, but after 45 years in DC, I’ve learned how interdependent things are. That’s just one item, food.
The problem is, as an industrialized country, we depend on others states and oceans away.
In Iraq, if they want meat, they go slaughter a goat. Here, in the US, if a rancher in North Dakota doesn’t raise it from calves bred in Texas or Florida, hauled 1000 through 12 states, and butchered by someone 20 or 100 miles away, or the wheat for bread isn’t grown in Oklahoma, baked into bread in Tennessee, etc, we don’t eat.
Like it or not, that all depends on systems based in DC.
Take one more example, without the Fed, how other than barter does anyone get paid.... especially that rancher in North Dakota....
P.S., Congress’s accomplishments this year?
Well, they did officially declare March as Peach Month.
(I wish I could claim credit for that quip, but it’s an old Bob Dole line.)
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