Thoughts on North Korea as it Pertains to Iran

I finished my Point-Counterpoint (PCP) for the paper, and I'll post a link to that come Wednesday, but at the risk of ruining PCP, a few words are needed on North Korea.

Predictably, Bush is upset:

US President George W. Bush branded North Korea's nuclear test "a threat to international peace and security" and called for an immediate response by the UN Security Council.

This the same council which Bush spurned in going to war with Iraq. I'm betting they're thrilled to go along with whatever it is we're going to do to show North Korea we mean business.

"Once again North Korea has defied the will of the international community, and the international community will respond," the US president said in a hastily arranged public statement at the White House.

Just how they will respond is unclear. It will probably remain so for quite some time--barring an October surprise. Iran anyone? Don't mind me, just speculating.

Bush, who declined to confirm Pyongyang's claim to have tested a nuclear device, said that he had discussed the crisis with the leaders of China, South Korea, Russia and Japan, Washington's chief partners on North Korea.

China has us by the balls from an economic standpoint, and they're not going to do a thing about North Korea because, as Joseph Farah observed: "We have some allies – notably Japan, Taiwan and South Korea – but Russia and China know North Korea's nuclear weapons are not targeted in their direction. They are targeted at us."

He failed to mention that America has either treaty obligations or verbal commitments to the defense of all three of our "allies.

Meanwhile, over at HuffingtonPost, someone gave this clown a metaphorical microphone:

We have as proof today the news that a true danger to America in North Korea has gone ignored and unchecked by the Bush administration, while we continue to hemorrhage blood and money in a war of choice, against a country that posed no danger whatsoever to us.

Evidently he would have given Bush the rubber-stamp on taking out Kim Jong-Il. Perhaps he secretly pines for a war with Iran. Alternatively, he may simply be a complete moron.

Have we learned nothing at all in the last six years? Pre-emptive war is immoral, stupid, and ineffective. As Vox Day observed some days ago:

There are two ways to defeat an insurgency, the Roman way and the British way. The Roman way requires killing and enslaving a statistically significant portion of the populace and colonizing the land. The British way requires dividing the potential resistance and constantly playing the various parties against each other.

Simply pointing machine guns at people and telling them all to play nicely together will never cut it. Since Americans possess neither Roman ruthlessness nor British mercantilism, there is no point in playing at occupation. Once it became clear that no one was ever going to be interested in buying condos overlooking the Euphrates, the occupation was doomed.

I do not like the fact that North Korea may be nuclear. But there isn't a good way to prevent a country, however despicable, from doing just that.

It will be fascinating to see how the left will choose to oppose the war with Iran. The neo-cons now have nuclear North Korea to scare up the fearful minions who hold safety--or the illusion therof--sacrosanct. By opposing the war with Iraq, not on moral or even practical grounds, but instead because Saddam wasn't a real threat, the left has made it more difficult for them to oppose a prospective war with Iran.

Moreover, the Democrats are shamelessly Machiavellian; if a case can be made to the American people that those who oppose a war with Iran are insufficiently "tough on terror" the left will be an unenviable position. All hinges on the gullibility of the American people.