Mark Steyn: Can America be serious?

The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 01/11/03 | Mark Steyn

[Pokey78]

[Howlin]

Why aren't people screaming for Bush to go to the UN about North Korea? Then, after 10 years of no compliance, we could do something about it.

[knighthawk]

Ping

[Pokey78]

I've used up the trial version of Collapse II. If I buy it, I'd never stop. hehe

[DManA]

How can he claim that the war against Saddam is on "the back burner". A massive build up in underway. France just said they will join the battle. Seems war, on our time table, is inevitable.

[aruanan]

M.S. bump.

[RandyRep]

Let's see if I understand this - KJI of DPRK theatens war if we don't give him a non-aggression pact... The USA says that DPRK should abide by the treaties it has signed.

Should I hold my breath until Babs, Asner, Baldwin and the other peacekooks march off to Pyongyang to beg KJI for peace?

Nah - they'll complain about the USA threatening DPRK with all those modern weapons at the DMZ.

[Miss Marple]

I have enough trouble with the original Collapse. I am not about to download the new version...it will be like when my son got Mario Brothers and my husband and I played until 2AM. LOL!

[KC_Conspirator]

But, if they’re that relaxed about nuclear proliferation in their backyard, then, as the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer suggests, Washington should toss ’em a wild card: how about a nuclear Japan?

Thats a great suggestion. I'll even one up them - how about a nuclear Taiwan? The communists will always connive with one another to enslave free peoples.

[Restorer]

I'm afraid I can't understand these guys whining about the delay. Read the weather statistics. Nobody in his right mind wants to fight in Iraq any time other than the winter. We'll probably invade just about the same time we did in Gulf War I.

[Iconoclast2]

"China . . . recently shipped 20 tons of tributyl phosphate to North Korea for extracting plutonium from their stockpile of spent reactor fuel"

If we had folks on the ball in DC, we'd blow up the tributyl phosphate shipment and deny any involvement. I.e., practical nonproliferation policy instead of State Department B.S.

[MrConfettiMan]

Bump

[Howlin]

Exactly. Let's give one to our friends!

as Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of those famous Iranian moderates, has said, the day the Muslim world gets a deliverable nuclear weapon the Israeli question will be settled for ever.

A horrific thought. I wonder what Babs thinks about Israel.

[Wolfstar]

I could not agree more with Steyn's analysis in this piece. As much as I love and respect President Bush, I've got a sinking feeling that there will NOT be any war in Iraq to take out Saddam. The longer Blix, Anan, and the Leftists who infest the UN get to play in their sandbox, the weaker the case for war appears to the general public. By all accounts, the president chose to take Colin Powell's route through the UN. I increasingly fear it may have been a massive mistake. In any event, I sure don't see Powell working very hard to push the UN to do the right thing.

[MeekOneGOP]

Thanks for the post and ping, Pokey! This bears repeating !!

By contrast, North Korea is literally the No Dong state. Take a look at a satellite picture of the peninsula by night: South Korea ablaze in electric light, the North in darkness. In Far East Asia, North Korea’s the hole in the doughnut.

[The Great Satan]

The time to stop Saddam is before he gets nukes.

Saddam doesn't need nukes. He already has anthrax, and is therefore quite invulnerable, unfortunately. There is just no getting around that reality.

[Imal]

If I read this article aright, we'd better have the CIA keep an eye on the comings and goings of Long Dong Silver.

[300winmag]

How can he claim that the war against Saddam is on "the back burner". A massive build up in underway. France just said they will join the battle. Seems war, on our time table, is inevitable.

You bring out a couple of good points that Steyn doesn't.

First, much of our military was run down by the klintons, and they've fought tooth-and-nail, through the democRAT party, to prevent it from being rebuilt.

Second, our military industrial capacity has been weakened, again thanks to the RATS. The weaponry that should have been restocked after Gulf War I was instead further depleted by Bill using it to influence the daily news cycle whenever his ass was in legal trouble.

Third, Bill and Hitlery sucked up to terrorists of all kinds, and Bush has had to work hard to convince the world that America is under new management, and countries have to choose between helping, or being listed in the footnotes of the "axis of evil".

The "delay" has been used to fix our weaknesses, and undo some of the damage caused by Bill and Hitlery, who harmed America far more than the raghead terrorists could ever aspire to. My personal prediction is that Gulf War 2 will last less than a week, and will have so much high-tech razzle-dazzle that scenes from Gulf War 1 will look like slogging through the trenches of World War 1.