The Conservative Cat

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October 9, 2006

Notes from Ferdy - North Korea Shows Us How Terrifyng We Are

Don Surber reports on North Korea's successful nuclear test. Japan and South Korea are unhappy about this, mostly because the wacky antics of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il are more worrisome when you're in missile range of the guy.

Many people believe that Kim wants to take over South Korea, and the nukes will enable him to blackmail the rest of the world into letting him do it. This is very similar to what Japan did in the Tom Clancy novel Debt of Honor when they seized control of several islands in the Pacific. (Debt of Honor is the same book in which a crazy person wipes out all of Congress by flying a plane into the capitol building.)

The real problem, however, is that the United Nations has once again proven that it can't threaten rogue states into submission. That's mostly because the only weapon the U.N. has in its arsenal is unspecified threats that are rarely carried out. You only have to look at Sudan to see how well that works.

There was a short period in which the UN really was a real power in the world. It was right after the first Gulf War. The Oslo Accords were viewed as a real step toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians, hostages were being released, and everything was looking up. Saddam Hussein had defied the UN and paid the price.

It is a different world now. America is perceived as too infirm of purpose to put real teeth behind UN resolutions, and the resolutions themselves are pretty worthless. Consider, for example, how much of the recent Lebanon peace plan is actually coming to fruition.

I can't help but thinking that Iraq is the key to all this. We have to win there, and we need to do it soon, or there will be no reason for the wacko dictators of the world to rein themselves in. Winning, however, is hard. If you try to win, you risk losing. As a result, many people would rather we tried to lose. But the joy of being in the history books for ending a war needs to be tempered with the knowledge that the last time we won, the world became a better place, and by any objective criterion, not winning is having precisely the opposite effect.

If the Democrats win next month, their priority is going to be investigating what President Bush has done in the past six years. The funny thing about having your eyes in the past is that the entire future is going on behind your back. If even a lunatic like Kim Jong-Il can figure that out, it seems incredible that it hasn't yet occurred to Nancy Pelosi.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

# At Mon 12:10 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (2) | More Notes from Ferdy | Tags: Desert Storm Don Surber Kim Jong-Il Lebanon North Korea nuclear proliferation Sudan Tom Clancy UN War on Terror

Trackback Pings

» Kim Jong-il in the tank for Bush from Brain Droppings
Just as the election looms you have a nuke going off in North Korea to remind the American voter the world is a dangerous place. Voila. Victory. And they thought the Foley scandal would carry the day. BWahahahahahaha. [Read More]

Tracked on October 9, 2006 5:50 PM

» K. Peninsula's Ring of Fire... from Mensa Barbie Welcomes You
"..And these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them." -H. G. Wells, The World Set Free, 1914... (But not as strange as the men who might want to use them ; ) [Read More]

Tracked on October 9, 2006 6:59 PM

Comments

Posted by: beth at October 9, 2006 12:38 PM

Posted by: J. Mark English at October 10, 2006 1:32 PM