North Korea – a real threat
Fri Feb 11 9:22:21 2005 EST (-0500 GMT)Two years ago Hans Blix gave a 45 minute presentation to the UN that concluded that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Two years and a day later North Korea openly claims to have Nuclear Weapons (maybe 2 years to the day if you are generous with the international date line). This is the consequence of this New American Century style foreign policy of using America’s might to crush countries that could never fight back in the first place.
Forget the obvious consequences of dismantling a state and trying to rebuild it from the ground up. What we have to worry about now is leaders like Kim Jung Il figuring out that as soon as you go nuclear America can’t just invade and remove you and destroy your state.
Rumsfeld has apparently stated that he is not sure if North Korea has the nukes or not: if Rumsfeld previous intelligence is any indication, we should take North Korea at their word. We had to listen to Colin Powell talk about tubes and show us pictures of blurry trucks, and a few circumstantial wiretaps, claiming these items posed a real threat to America. A country now claims to have weapons of mass destruction and Rumsfeld thinks we should sit around and hope that they are bluffing?
When you label someone as a real and immediate threat and do nothing about it for over two years it sends a signal. America’s complete lack of interest in negotiations has demonstrated that the only way Bush will ‘solve’ a problem with a foreign nation is to invade it. So as long as America’s Army is otherwise disposed rouge nations clearly need to build their army to ensure that when America is ready to engage them the task is too large. Five years ago the Clinton administration had North Korea talking, and was placating their need for resources and pacifying them. Ironically, four years ago when Bush came into office North Korea might have been the one rouge nation that might have been solved militarily – if any one cared about it.
Kim Jung Il, the nut who the Daily Show has taken to referring to as ‘Bouffant Hitler,’ has bested America at their own proliferation game.