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Another Dumb Suggestion that We Bomb North Korea

This time, it’s William Kristol, so the lefty bloggers are calling for their smelling salts. Where were they when liberals and so-called “realists” were saying the same thing?

It is true, of course, that diplomacy alone will never disarm Kim Jong Il or contain him as a proliferation threat. I fear we’re already too late to understand that, and some still refuse to understand it (or can’t).

But absent an imminent danger to U.S. national security that can’t be addressed by other means, bombing or invading North Korea is a dumb idea, no matter who suggests it. If proposing military action is about sounding tough for the domestic audience, it’s just going to make the proponent sound stupid. If it’s about threatening Kim Jong Il, it’s an empty threat. If the goal is to destroy Kim Jong Il’s nuclear program, you can bomb the reactors and pray they don’t retaliate, but then tell me which of these mountains their actual nuclear bombs are under:

nk-mountains.jpg

If the goal is to get rid of Kim Jong Il, we lack the national will and the available forces to do it ourselves. Only the North Koreans can do that. We could give them intelligence and encouragement. To a very limited extent, we could arm them and supply them. But we can’t do it for them. The strategy should be Contain (proliferation, conventional deterrence), Constrict (the vulnerable finances the regime uses to feed its army), and Collapse (through more subversive methods of outreach to, and support for, North Koreans who oppose Kim Jong Il’s misrule).

3 Responses

  1. “Only the North Koreans can do that.”

    I’m not sure if they can, after years of political brainwashing, famine and the myriads of concentration camps. I’m sure any resistance that gets put up will be met with horrible consequences, a la Tiananmen Square et al (The Kim Regime would not bat an eyelash at the thought of “cleansing” millions of people if it meant it was the only way to stay in power – those interviews with former concentration camp guards should’ve made that very clear)

    Which brings me back to the focal point in history and how we ended up in this mess, largely due to the politics of the United States (and Stalin Russia/pre USSR) during the tail end of World War II. Not sure why it’s being argued that this is a situation that only North Koreans can be responsible for … when I believe in that same breath, you should talk about the responsibilities of ALL Koreans, which goes all the way back to the United States (and Russia).

    I think the mistake was made when that armistice was signed. It should never have been signed without a serious effort towards a peace agreement and ultimately a reunification. It was very much a, “we’re tired of wars, even though lots of lives were lost, we’ll settle for the exact same thing that caused this war in the first place.”

    I’m not advocating pre-emptive strike or military aggression or however you want to phrase justification to resume the war in an active fashion. I am just pointing out that since the war has never officially ended, that no one should ever be fooled for a moment into thinking that military actions are/should never [be] an option.

  2. Where were they when liberals and so-called “realists” were saying the same thing?

    Your link goes to an example of one obscure talk radio host advocating bombing the DPRK and Iran. Hmm. A quick look at Wikipedia shows that he’s also anti-gun control, so hardly a poster boy for liberalism.

    On the other hand, Bill Kristol is.. oh, I’ll just c&p from Wikipedia:
    He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard, a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel, and a former conservative op-ed columnist for the New York Times.
    Kristol is associated with a number of conservatively aligned think tanks: he was chairman of the New Citizenship Project from 1997 to 2005, he cofounded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997 with Robert Kagan, he is a member of the board of trustees for the free-market Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and he is a member of the Policy Advisory Board for the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

    Is it that surprising that Bill Kristol’s dumb comments evoked more reaction than Lionel’s dumb comments?