Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

I was watching CNN last night and one of the so called experts says that the launching of missiles by the North Koreans means there is more danger than when we were in the Cold War. This is ridiculous. The North Koreans were not even successful with the launch of their long range missile and even if they were successful, they are no threat to us. It will be years before they can fire these missles with any accuracy and put a nuclear warhead on them. And we can always blow up the missles before they are launched if we want to. Kim Jong Il also knows that if he ever use nuclear weapons he will be destroyed. Like any dictator, his first priority is staying in power and he cannot do that if his country is destroyed.

So why does Kim shoots his missiles? He does it to get attention. By creating a crisis, he hopes to improve his image at home and get concessions from the U.S. He was tired of Iran getting the attention when she does not even have nuclear weapons yet. Kim has gotten concessions before by causing a crisis and even if he does not get anything this time, he enjoys being in the limelight.

So how do we respond? We are paying way too much attention to Kim. As I said, this is no threat to us. We should just ignore him. Our government should not even mention this event and certainly should not say that this has grave consequences for North Korea. We are not going to attack him and diplomatically there is very little we can do. Just like treating a child, negative reinforcement seldom works. So we should ignore bad behavior and reward good behavior, if any ever occurs. Say nothing except perhaps give a computer generated scenario of what would happen to another country if we ever counterstrike against a nuclear attack. Just to give Kim a reminder!

The so-called Axis of Evil are all paper tigers. We should have never invaded Iraq. Having seen Iraq destroyed despite not having WMDs just make Iran and North Korea more anxious to have nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Iran and North Korea are still not great threats yet. Nuclear bombs will not fly across the sky at us. If any nuclear weapon is to hit here, it would be most likely be carried across the ocean on cargo ships or delivered as a dirty bomb. None of these countries we are worried about has the technology or the willingness to help terrorist groups secure nuclear weapons. They don't want their own country obliterated for helping terrorists. The most likely source of help for the terrorists, in my opinion, will be former Soviet states. They have the weapons and the skilled scientists who are not paid well. These scientists can be bought off and help secure nuclear material. If say a scientist in Lithuania helps Al Qaeda, we can't bomb the whole country of Lithuania for revenge. So this is a much bigger potential threat. Instead of worrying about North Korea and Iran, we should spend more money and effort to safeguard the nuclear materials and scientists in the former Soviet Union.

So ignore North Korea's antics. South Korea is much more threatened than us by North Korea. If the South doesn't want sanctions against the North, we shouldn't demand international sanctions. Sanctions would not be effecitve anyways and China and Russia may veto it. China is not helpful to us because she likes to see North Korea being a headache to us. China enjoys getting the attention from us as the only with possible influence on Kim. China does not want to see North Korea collapses and milllions of refugees charge into China. The only situation where China will be putting pressure on Kim is if Japan starts building up her military in response to North Korea threats. This may happen soon and China will not be happy. Obviously we don't want big military build-ups in Asia but the threat of a build up in Japan would be the only strong reason for China to put great pressure on North Korea. So let South Korea and Japan take the intiative in dealing with North Korea, they have a lot more at stake than us.