Posted on 05/14/2003 10:18:17 AM PDT by adamyoshida
A Surprise Nuclear Attack is Our Only Chance
On one matter there can be little doubt: the Stalinist Monarchy which calls itself the ‘Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” is, by far, the greatest threat to peace today. It is persistently and recklessly aggressive, an economic basket case perpetually on the brink of total collapse, and run by a man who seemingly lacks any basic connection to reality and who, in any sane nation, would be institutionalized. More than that, it has just become the world’s newest nuclear power and has given us every reason to believe that they intend to use those weapons for blackmail or, even more ominously, as a cash crop, selling them off to the highest bidder. Even most of the respectable left agrees that North Korea must be stopped. They demonstrated this prior to the Battle of Iraq when they shrilly demanded that President Bush focus on the ‘real threat’ posed by the North Koreans. The question then is not of if we will try and stop them, but how.
The preferred option of many for dealing with this situation would be through further diplomatic negotiations or, as former President Clinton and his many former underlings have put it, ‘engagement’. Those listening to the debate must understand one thing, when Clinton and his servants call for ‘engagement’ of the North Koreans, what they are really calling for is appeasement. There is, or at least should be, nothing to negotiate over here: the North Koreans must immediately and unconditionally destroy all nuclear weapons, all delivery systems and all materials and designs related to these items or face total destruction. Negotiating with the North Koreans directly at this point essentially means sitting at a table and figuring out how much we will have to pay them to make sure that they don’t blow up Los Angeles sometime in the next few years.
What Democrats seem to want is a rerun of 1994, when President Clinton joined together with Jimmy Carter in what was the greatest foreign policy betrayal of the real interests of the American people in the recent history of the United States. The Agreed Framework between the US and the DPRK, in which the United States agreed to provide North Korea with aid and light-water reactors in exchange for a halt to all nuclear weapons research and development, was a farce from the moment it was signed. The United States sent aid to prop up the despotic regime of Kim Jong Il and the North Koreans simply went along with nuclear development as if northing had changed. Clinton went along with this out of cowardice and political calculation. Now, nine years later, we are left with an increasingly dire situation. Appeasement today will simply mean that, in a few years, we will be facing a North Korea with more nukes and more missiles. Worse than that, we’d be sending a signal to every despot in the world: threaten to use nuclear weapons and free peoples will pay to save you.
Many on the left, faced with the possibility of conflict, will suddenly fall in love once more with the concepts of ‘deterrence’ that the loathed so much during the Cold War (but suddenly came to adore in the run-up to the Battle of Iraq). “The North Koreans won’t use nuclear weapons because they know that, if they do, they’ll be destroyed,” they’ll tell us. What they forget is that deterrence works only against the rational- and Kim Jong Il is certainly not that. We need to understand who this man is. Right now, on his orders, all triplets in his country are being rounded up and forced to live in special state orphanages because he had a premonition that a triplet would one day rise up and overthrow his regime. Seriously. When his father charged him with improving the North Korean film industry he responded by kidnapping a famous South Korean actress and director and holding them prisoner for several years. When he wanted people to train his agents to speak Japanese he simply kidnapped people at random off the streets of Japan. The insane are not deterable. For all we know he could wake up tomorrow and declare it to be the day of Armageddon.
Nor are the options used against Iraq available. The North Koreans have already repeatedly stated that they would consider economic sanctions to be a ’declaration of war’ and, doubtlessly, they would feel the same way about a lengthy build-up accompanied by the assembly of a ‘coalition of the willing.’ Though US forces would doubtlessly defeat a North Korean attack, the forces of the North are capable to creating millions, perhaps even tens of millions, of civilian casualties in a few hours. They could launch long-range nuclear missiles at perhaps as many as four cities in Asia or on the Pacific Coast of the United States. Their thousands of artillery pieces could utterly devastate the city of Seoul. If given more than a few hours warning of attack they would be easily capable of unleashing such devastation.
Therefore, there is only a single option: a surprise attack. And, because of the need to make sure that key targets are destroyed in the opening minutes of the conflict, that attack would need to include nuclear weapons. Because of the sensitive nature of this sort of attack, it would have to occur without any forewarning. This would mean not informing the crews of their mission until hours before launch, launching strikes from pre-existing bases, and maintaining secrecy at all costs. This would also mean that the 2nd Infantry Division, based in South Korea, would not be able to be reinforced prior to the start of hostilities. However, given the dire threat and the urgency of the situation, such measures are needed. Most of the weapons used would be small, in the range of little more than ten kilotons, and would be used against military targets- the North Korean troop concentrations along the Demilitarized Zone which separates the North and South, air bases, nuclear facilities, and missile launching grounds. Cities would be avoided and the use of only low-yield weapons would probably keep fallout to a minimum. This attack would have to be followed up by an invasion and occupation, with US forces being rushed to the region.
The attack would also probably have to take place without informing the South Korean Government (or the Chinese and Russian Governments) until a few hours before it took place, otherwise North Korean agents might be able to warn their government in time to allow them to strike pre-emptively. However, given the urgency of the situation this seems warranted.
Whatever happens we cannot allow the North Koreans to become a nuclear power. In many ways the fate of the world depends upon the successful disarmament of the present regime in Pyongyang. If we allow them to get away with their provocations, if we submit to their blackmail, we will have entered a new and dangerous world where ever fifth-rate nation is capable of holding the West at its mercy. They will become the Mafia writ large, a grand coalition of Thug States joining together to oppress free peoples. We cannot allow this to happen, however high the costs of stopping it might be.
They are NOT a nuclear power.
They are full of sh*t.
Most of the weapons used would be small, in the range of little more than ten kilotons…
Wimp.
1. A small country having hard financial times (Duchy of Fenwick/N. Korea).
2. The small country's leader (Peter Sellers/Kim Jong Il) gets the bright idea to declare war on America, hoping to be "humanely" conquered in retaliation by the US, foreign aid and Hershey Bars pour into the country, the farm is saved, yadda yadda.
Where we lose the thread from movie to real life is in the recent response of the US to N. Korea's provocations. We've essentially ignored them, so they will continue to escalate to larger and larger provocations until we pay attention to them, hopefully bringing our big fat checkbooks with us when we do invade.
When the N. Koreans surface-test a nuclear device, then I will start to sweat. But until then, pass the popcorn.
But I do agree they are a thorn in our side.
IMHO, we have so American trained So Koreans poking around in the country, and have been for quite some time, to see if they are bluffing which I believe they are. If we decided to attack, it would be so shocking to the little weasals, they wouldn't be around long enough to awe anything.....
One word, friend.....Prozac.
Moreover, crippling the NK army would take quite a few nukes, many being used about a half hour's drive from Seoul. Are we going, then, to hope that we obliterate every last artillery unit? The DPRK has more artillery pieces than the U.S. military did before the drawdown of the 1990's. It's going to take a good bit of atomic fission to make sure that all of these are accounted for.
What your plan would involve is effectively killing millions of South Koreans without the South Korean Government's permission. I would say that even a red-blooded Canadian who would like to be an American Republican should look rather askance on such a gross violation of the sovreignty of an ally. No, let's not set off a nuclear holocaust in the Pacific rim.
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