U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said North Korea's military actions against the South have placed Northeast Asia in a "precarious situation" and that the U.S. was intensifying efforts to de-escalate regional tensions while still deterring Pyongyang.Umm, the NoKos just torpedoed a South Korean Navy vessel and killed a bunch of sailors. We're responding by reviewing our posture. If there's any doubt about what will happen once Iran goes nuclear, this should pretty much put an end to that.
Mrs. Clinton said the Obama administration was initiating a review of the U.S.'s military and economic posture towards Kim Jong Il's government to ensure the safety of its regional treaty allies, South Korea and Japan.
Update: From the comments on that WSJ article: "We're obviously not talking enough. Gotta talk longer and faster." Outstanding!
3 comments:
We're so doomed!
Well, what are the options here?
Sanctions? I though we already had sanctions in place, fat lot of good that's doing.
War? The North Koreans are doing their damndest to convince everyone that at even the slightest shooting, they will immediately escalate to all-out war. They might even mean it.
Are you ready for that second choice? I personally am inclined to say that if anybody is going to get in a shooting war with North Korea, it had better be the Chinese, because we don't want to get into that again. Particularly not if there's a chance that the Chinese are going to end up fighting on the side of the North Koreans again.
My father was in the Korean War. He came back with a Purple Heart, a piece of hand grenade in his foot, and the memory of barely surviving while the rest of his unit was killed by Chinese troops. He doesn't like to talk about it much, but he has a pretty bad opinion of the whole idea of throwing soldiers at overseas problems.
Tim, in a perfect world, we'd embargo not North Korea, but China. We'd raise tariffs like crazy on their products and get nasty with them. Without China, North Korea falls tomorrow. Unfortunately, China has us by the throat because of our braindead spending of borrowed Chinese cash on entitlements and "stimulus". Our profligacy has led us to the point where we can't have any response except to have the Paint Suit Lady look stern and issue warnings.
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