Tuesday, August 1, 2017

An Itch About North Korea

I've got an itch that this piece is going to help me scratch. It's about North Korea.

There's been a big hullabaloo about North Korea's nuclear ambitions, most pointedly about its ICBM that would be able to reach Seattle. Nuclear weapons are a threat to mankind — whether they're in the arsenals of the United States, Russia, China, Israel, or North Korea. But the hype about the North Korean ICBM is ludicrous. Can you imagine what would happen if Kim Jong Un had the audacity to send its missile our way? That would be the end of North Korea.

To justify the fear being instilled in us about the danger to Seattle, Kim is being incessantly portrayed as a monster with no regard for human life. He may be as bad as he's being portrayed, but I have a few questions: (1) Have we ever heard a speech, much less a word, by Kim? (2) From every scene of North Korea that reaches our TV screens, most of which are of a military nature, we are meant to get the impression that it's a failing country bolstered only by its military might.

I'm not suggesting that Kim is being given a bad rap, only that it's a rap not supported by anything from his own mouth. And if, as implied by Western reports, that the North Koreans are miserable under the dictatorial whims of Kim Jong Un, we have not seen any evidence of it.

While I feel that nuclear proliferation must be stopped, It seems evident to me that North Korea considers its nuclear weaponry a defensive plus, just as we do our own nuclear stockpile.

We are living with the greatest irony of all time: that keeping the peace depends upon possession of the most destructive power ever created. The danger lies not that the leadership of civilized nations — including North Korea — will use atomic weapons, but that this power may fall into the hands of terrorists who are only too willing to blow themselves up along with everyone else in the misguided notion that that is the true path to heavenly bliss.

We must find a way to deal with North Korea as we would with any other nation. Not doing so is more dangerous than the portrait we're painting of it.