Tag Archives: Kim Jong Un

International news

What does Kim Jong Un want? Part 3

Kim Jong Un has a list of demands he is laying at the feet of the U.S. president.

Most of them seem to present intractable circumstances for Donald J. Trump to ponder.

Such as this one: Removal of all U.S. troops from South Korea.

It’s not going to happen, Mr. North Korean Dictator. It won’t happen at least until North and South Korea sign a peace treaty that comes with ironclad assurances that North Korea won’t ever — ever! — attack South Korea. The agreement also needs to include a denuclearization component, meaning that Kim needs to dismantle and abandon his ambitions to become a nuclear power.

Our troops commitment to South Korea was purchased with lots of blood. The Korean War’s hostilities ended in 1953 after more than 50,000 American personnel were killed in action. We came to South Korea’s defense after North Korea invaded its neighbors three years earlier. Indeed, Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, sent the troops south. So, that means the current North Korean dictator bears a bit of personal responsibility for what transpired, given that he is kin to the man who launched the aggression in the first place.

The ceasefire that both sides signed in 1953 included a commitment from the United States to defend South Korea against the North, given that the two Koreas are technically still in a state of war; no peace treaty means they cannot put their guards down.

There are roughly 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea. That’s just part of the defense network. We have heavily armed naval vessels throughout the region and immense air power assets in places such as Guam and Japan — not to mention in South Korea.

Should we give all that up without a serious commitment to peace from North Korea?

The boy with the bad haircut — that would be Kim — surely knows we cannot do anything of the sort.

International news

Nuclear threat a boost to tourism? Who knew?

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You’re the governor of a remote U.S. territory. The crackpot dictator of a highly militarized regime then threatens to strike your home. The president of the United States calls ostensibly to offer you support.

Then you hear the president say something about how a possible nuclear missile attack could “boost tourism” on your island.

Guam Gov. Eddie Calvo fielded a call from Donald Trump.

Here’s how the New York Times reported a portion of the call: Mr. Trump said: “I have to tell you, you have become extremely famous all over the world. They are talking about Guam; and they’re talking about you.” And when it comes to tourism, he added, “I can say this: “You’re going to go up, like, tenfold with the expenditure of no money.”

I can’t stop laughing. The president is just killin’ it, don’t you think?

The president did say “we are with you 1,000 percent.” I hope that gives the governor some comfort. To be fair, Gov. Calvo didn’t seem disturbed by the seemingly flippant tone of the president’s call.

But really, Mr. President? Tourism is on your mind as you and Kim Jong Un continue to rattle the world with your reckless threats against each other?

International news

What does Kim Jong Un want? Part 2

Donald J. Trump has complicated what ought to be the simplest of Kim Jong Un’s reported demands of the United States of America.

He wants guarantees that he can keep his job as North Korea’s strongman. 

In other words, no “regime change.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sounded semi-conciliatory in that regard the other day when he said that United States has no interest in overthrowing Kim and seeks a “diplomatic solution” to the growing crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

Then the president chimed in with comments threatening “fire and fury” and saying that U.S. military is “locked and loaded” in case Kim decides to make any “overt threats” against the United States or its allies.

The term “locked and loaded” means, in military terms, that your weapon is loaded and that you’ve put the first round in the chamber. You’re set to fire said weapon. Is that what the commander in chief meant? Are we now set to launch a first strike against the North Koreans?

Kim is thought to be mindful of past U.S. military actions, providing him with cause to make the demand that he not be tossed out by an invading force.

I present you the March 2013 U.S. invasion of Iraq , which was launched for the expressed purpose of ridding Iraq of its own dictator, the late Saddam Hussein.

President George W. Bush and his national security team told us Saddam had “weapons of mass destruction,” which became the primary selling point for launching the invasion. Our military launched a full frontal assault. It got to Baghdad. We scoured the country from stem to stern looking for WMD. We found none. Nothin’, man.

Oh, we eventually pulled Saddam out of that spider hole. The Iraqis put him on trial, convicted him of crimes against humanity — and hanged him.

Kim doesn’t want that to happen to himself or his closest sycophants.

The secretary of state is trying to sound a reasoned, rational tone. The president, though, keeps pre-empting him with talk of an entirely different nature. What’s more, the secretary of state does serve at the pleasure of the president.

International news, national news

Tillerson gets tossed under the bus … but why?

Rex Tillerson deserves a good word for sounding like a serious adult.

The U.S. secretary of state has declared that Americans should “sleep well at night,” even in the wake of the bellicosity coming from the North Korean dictator and the president of the United States.

What does he get from a member of Donald Trump’s national security team? Sebastian Gorka, a key member of the National Security Council, said that Tillerson is a diplomat and has no authority to talk about military matters.

There you go. A key NSC adviser tosses Tillerson under the bus. For what reason? For suggesting that the North Koreans aren’t about to launch missiles at the United States or that the United States is about to go to war with the rogue regime.

I tend to think of Tillerson as one of the grownups with whom the president has surrounded himself.

Gorka, on the other hand, provides another bullying voice for the president, as if Donald Trump needs any assistance in rattling nerves around the world. The president has done plenty of that all by himself with his “fire and fury” and “locked and loaded” rhetoric.

As for Tillerson, I’m going to presume he’s opened all the back channels he can find between Washington and Pyongyang. Perhaps he’s able to pass along to some North Korean functionary about the grave danger that can result from a foolish act of aggression.

International news

‘Locked and loaded’ to release ‘fire and fury’

The alliteration might sound good as it rolls off the tongue or typed into a tweet.

“Fire and fury” has given way to “locked and loaded.” Is it realistic? Or logical? Does it further the cause of peace?

I want to consider for a brief moment something about this confrontation between the United States and North Korea. It is the rhetoric that flies out of the pie hole of Kim Jong Un, the boy with the bad haircut who runs North Korea.

Kim sounds like the two previous Kims who ruled the nation before he inherited the regime. His father and grandfather both said much the same thing about how they would destroy South Korea, Japan, the United States or any nation that “interfered” with the “internal” politics of the Korean Peninsula.

One key difference, though, is that the current Kim reportedly can deliver a nuclear weapon aboard a missile to faraway targets.

But has he acted on his threats? Daddy Kim blustered and bellowed until his death. Grandpa Kim did invade South Korea in 1950, precipitating the Korean War; the shooting lasted until 1953 with the signing of a ceasefire, but there has not yet been a peace treaty signed that officially ends the state of war between South and North Korea.

The more serious change in the rhetorical barrage, of course, comes from our side. The U.S. president has decided to fire back with tweets and assorted public pronouncements about how he intends to release “fire and fury” on Pyongyang if that government keeps threatening the United States. Donald Trump now has said that the U.S. military is “locked and loaded” in the event the commies do anything foolish.

The president’s bellicosity does not make me feel safer. It gives me little comfort. It doesn’t provide any assurance that the current Kim is going to work overtime to find restraint in his own bizarre impulses.

Diplomatic decorum would dictate that the president — the commander in chief of the world’s mightiest military — remain calm, reasoned and rational. Kim knows the United States can obliterate his country. Is he going to doom his people — and himself — to certain death now that he allegedly has the capability to launch a nuclear weapon at the United States of America?

I don’t know. I do know that he hasn’t delivered on any of the threats he has made already. As for the man he is staring in the face, Donald Trump, he doesn’t need to boast in front of the whole world about being “locked and loaded.”

We get the point, Mr. President. We’re the biggest, baddest dudes on the block. I’m quite sure Kim Jong Un knows it, too.

military news

Doubling down on ‘fire and fury’? What the … ?

Donald J. Trump says his “fire and fury” riff the other day didn’t go far enough.

If he had to do it over, the president said he would have spoken even more aggressively against the North Korean regime.

What? Eh? Are you serious, Mr. President?

Trump is vacationing in New Jersey. This past week, he held a “media opportunity” in which he declared that if North Korean dictator/goofball Kim Jong Un kept up with the “threats” against the United States, he would be met with “fire and fury the likes of which the world has never known.”

Trump improvised that comment. It’s been seen throughout the political world in this country and abroad as an unnecessary provocation. The North Koreans responded by offering a specific threat to launch a nuclear-armed missile at Guam, the U.S. island territory within range of a missile launched by North Korea.

Why Guam? It’s home to a significant military presence. The North Koreans surely understand what would occur if they were to launch a missile. In case they don’t, I’ll explain right here: They would be wiped off the face of the planet.

Do they want that? The obvious answer would be a resounding no.

I believe the obvious answer would be a resounding no.

Why, then, does the president of the United States insist on ratcheting up the rhetoric against North Korea?

The world is a jittery place right now. We can “thank” the president of the United States for adding to our worldwide fear.

International news

‘Power like the world has never seen’?

Donald J. Trump has issued the sternest of statements to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. It’s full of bluster and a bit of bravado.

It’s also frightening in the extreme — to our side as well as to the North Koreans!

The communist regime reportedly now is able to place a nuclear weapon aboard an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the United States. That’s a line that the president cannot tolerate.

So, while vacationing in New Jersey, Trump issued a direct threat to North Korea, saying that the United States is prepared to unleash “fire and fury” and a “power like the world has never seen.”

Let’s hold on. The United States once did unleash “fire and fury” on an enemy combatant state. It occurred on Aug. 6 and again on Aug. 9, 1945. We dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. World War II was drawing to a conclusion and President Truman decided he needed to deploy those weapons to persuade the Japanese that continued fighting would be futile.

Truman learned of the Hiroshima bombing while returning from the Potsdam Conference.

The strategy worked. Japan surrendered just days after Nagasaki was incinerated.

If Donald J. Trump is proposing measures that would eclipse those twin events in August 1945, then we are truly embarking down the most dangerous path anyone ever imagined.

International news

Does this guy have a death wish?

Now that the North Koreans have demonstrated — apparently — that they have a intercontinental ballistic missile capable of packing a nuclear warhead, it is good to ponder something about the boy with the bad haircut who runs that country.

Does Kim Jong Un have a death wish? Does he really and truly wish for this country to be destroyed in a full retaliatory strike by the world’s most powerful nation? Does the dictator really believe he can bully the United States of America with threats of a nuclear missile strike on major West Coast cities?

I keep coming with “no” on all counts?

Please do not misconstrue me on this. I am not dismissing any threat that this fruitcake dictator poses to South Korea, or Japan, or to the U.S. of A. Any dictator who is capable of allowing his people to starve while building a formidable military apparatus is capable, I suppose, of anything.

There are times, though, when it’s tempting to try to insert oneself into the skull of someone else. I try to do that on occasion with this clown. He blusters, boasts and bellows about how he intends to react whenever the United States conducts military drills with South Korea. But we keep performing these exercises. And nothing happens. We get no response from North Korea.

I suppose this is my of suggesting that a pre-emptive military strike against North Korea is likely the worst of a series of bad options facing the U.S. commander in chief.

Donald Trump once referred to Kim Jong Un as a “smart cookie.” Let’s take the president at his word, then, that this fellow is able to discern political reality when it stares him in the face.

Here’s one of those reality-based factors: Any missile fired at the United States of America or at South Korea is virtually guaranteed to provoke a response from this country that will destroy North Korea.

Does the North Korean tinhorn really and truly want that to happen?

International news

North Korea launches ICBM: What now?

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has done it. His military apparatus has launched an intercontinental ballistic missile — successfully at that!

The communists in Pyongyang now apparently have the means to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon. Yes? U.S. military and intelligence officials are analyzing the launch.

What is the U.S. option? None of them is good.

A pre-emptive military strike is seemingly out of the question. It would provoke Kim Jong Un to launch an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula. And as MSBNC military analyst Jack Jacobs — a Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient — said this morning while referencing the capital of South Korea, “Seoul is just footsteps away from the demilitarized zone.”

Hit them economically

Jacobs believes strong economic sanctions are the most effective immediate answer to preventing North Korea from doing something amazingly stupid, which would be to provoke a war with the United States.

North Korea is a poor nation that has spent almost all its national fiscal treasure on its military machine. The tinhorn dictator doesn’t care one bit, of course, about the citizens of his country.

It would be easy to say that here is where Donald J. Trump would earn his presidential salary, except that Trump supposedly isn’t getting paid to be president.

I’ll just stick with the notion that the president needs to weigh his options … very carefully.

International news

Young man dies; how do we get to the truth?

Otto Warmbier went to North Korea 17 months ago and was taken captive.

The North Koreans released the young student just the other day. Warmbier, though, came home in a coma. He was non-responsive. We have no clue how he became comatose.

Then he died. It’s a tragedy of enormous proportions for the young man’s family.

Warmbier’s death also should present the rest of his countrymen and women with a terrible quandary. Just how does the United States respond to this? How do U.S. spooks get to the truth in a nation infamous for its secrecy, its cultish leadership and the kooks who call the shots?

Otto Warmbier’s death requires some answers. How we get those answers from a hyper-secretive government is going to bedevil U.S. intelligence officials for well past the immediate future.

Donald J. Trump calls the North Koreans “brutal.” No kidding, Mr. President.

The doctors who examined Warmbier after he returned home to Ohio said he suffered from significant brain damage. How in the world did that damage occur?