In Threat Assessment, I wrote that
with the exception of our polarized populous, there is no force outside the U.S.
which could topple our constitutional republic. I now have to amend that. On July 4, 2006 a mouse roared
again. That mouse is North
Korea. As is so typical of the North Korean
government, it wants global attention.
A few things
must be realized concerning North
Korea. Technically, we are still in a state
of war with them. That is left over from the Cold War. Although hostilities
ceased in 1953, what we signed was an armistice agreement, not an official
peace treaty. The other point that has to be considered is that North Korea sits on China’s border. As I stated before,
over the thousands of years of history, China has been incredibly reluctant
to express its will outside its immediate geographical sphere of influence.
However, North Korea
is within that sphere. Unfortunately, the situation puts the U.S. in direct conflict with China.
In a series
of errors, which would resemble the same domino effect that triggered World War
One, we could very well find ourselves in a war with China,
Russia,
the various Islamic Nations, and our cousins south of the Unites States.
Japan, sitting right in the gun barrel of
the North Korean missiles, is screaming for sanctions against North Korea. The U.S., with her traditional allies, is supporting
the call for sanctions against North
Korea. However, in a move more reminiscent
of the Cold War than current political and economic interests, China and Russia are unwilling to support the
sanctions.
As this is a
developing story, it hard to make predictions as to how it will play out. The U.S.
could negotiate some form of agreement that could reduce the tensions in the
area for now. Whatever agreement is reached would only be a stopgap measure
since it is unlikely that North
Korea’s paranoia will vanish anytime soon.
If an agreement is reached, then we will buy an additional twenty years of
relative quiet. However, the only agreement that North
Korea wants is our assurances that we will not invade North Korea.
That brings us right back to the situation as it ended back in the 1950s. There
is no peace treaty. We are still, technically, at war with North Korea.
Not being
privy to all the insider information, I cannot tell you why this situation
persists. I cannot tell you why after more than a half a century the
belligerents of the Korean Conflict have not finally sat down and come to terms
with a war that is over. It is, however, a reality of human nature. There are
still people in the United
States who will adamantly argue the validity
of the Confederate Cause. That war is much older. Moreover, the South lost and
Lee surrendered. This is not the case with North Korea.
What would
initiate the chain of events which would bring us back to a conflict in the
Korean peninsula is hard to see right now. The U.S.
is myopically preoccupied with securing the oil supply in the Middle
East. It is strategic to our national interest. We can protest
this all we want, but oil is what we run on. We are out of oil in the U.S.
We ran out in 1970. Contrary to popular opinion, the Iraq War is not a
spiritual issue. Oil is our national obsession. So, what then would bring us to
conflict with North Korea?
One bright
day in July, let’s say North
Korea decided to set off yet another
missile. Let’s say this one does not fall into the Sea of
Japan. This one falls onto Japan. Even unarmed, it will make
an impact, and it will damage something. Innocent Japanese would be injured or
killed. There would be a diplomatic outcry. The Japanese defense force would be
mobilized. According to the Japanese constitution, Japan cannot go to war except as an
act of self-defense. It is not a stretch of the imagination to say that
preventing North Korean missiles from crashing into Japan’s population centers would
constitute self-defense. We, of course, would be compelled to come to the aid
of Japan.
I can see
the North Koreans firing a nuclear missile at one of our aircraft carriers or
cruse missile battleships. What is left of our strategic air force, no longer
the SAC of old, would be launched (even the Alabama Air National Guard has B1-B
Bombers, so it is not like all of our strategic bomber force has been
moth-balled.) Our “boomers” (nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered submarines) would
come to strategic positions around the world.
China would have to come to the air of North Korea, and Russia
would back China.
There you have it. All of the old Cold War belligerents would be red hot and
ready for a fight. The Islamic nations, including Pakistan, would back the Chinese
and North Koreans. The leftist in Central America and South America would
engage in clandestine operations to weaken the U.S. The old World War III scenario
which we have feared for so many years would finally come about.
It is not
exactly as if we will be alone in this. The old Eastern Block nations will come
to our aid in responding to the very limited threat posed by the USSR (I get
the impression that more than a few of them would like to pay Moscow’s debt of
blood for some 40 years of occupation.) The EU will back us in the Middle East
(contrary to the U.S. media,
France and Germany are struggling with the
Islamic extremist, and that situation would come to a boil quickly.) The United Kingdom, Great Britain, and most of the
members of the Commonwealth would be in full support of us. Even the Falklands
would become a vital base of operations for the US
and Great Britain in
addressing the threat rising from South America.
We would have armed allies in Africa.
We can
expect to lose seven or eight cities. That would include Fort Worth as we are sitting next to an old
SAC Air Force base designed to support heavy bombers. Just to let you know,
that means that this author would be among the honored dead within a twinkling
of an eye. This is fitting, of course, since my oldest son will be on one of
the aircraft carriers somewhere on the globe making sure that the last great
Superpower gives back threefold the assault unleashed on her people.
Since the
end of the Cold War, we have dismantled much of our land based ICBM
(Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) force. As such, the only option remaining
for an enemy may be to destroy our ability to continue to support a long-term
global war. Like so many of our wars since the turn of the last century, this
will be a war to kill economies. That puts the top ten cities of the US on
the target grid. As such, if Fort Worth is not
targeted, Dallas will be (actually, it would be
more like Plano, Texas
just north of Dallas.)
What is left
of the US
population will be forced to shift out of the cities. Our losses would be in
the neighborhood of 3% to 4% of our population. That is in the range of 15 million
people. Over the course of a few weeks, we could expect to be transported back
in time some 200 years. We will lose gasoline supplies, power, phones, sanitary
support systems, and, of course, income. If not lost altogether, such common
services will be diminished greatly. Law enforcement would still exist.
Hospital services, for the most part, would still exist. Both, however, would
be a crude form of what they were. Life would be a day-by-day existence of
substance survival. At that point, even beans and rice would be a luxury.
Will we win
such a confrontation? That depends on what you call winning. There will be twelve
million or more dead. The West Coast will be shattered. The cities of Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C, Philadelphia,
Boston, and Dallas will be left smoldering in radioactive
debris. The remaining population will shift into rural areas, which are ill-prepared
to handle such a population shift. The Army will be put on border patrol in the
north and the south, and they will become the peacekeepers within the nation.
The Air Force will cease to exist as a viable force. The Navy? The surface
vessels which depend upon petroleum-based fuels will cease to be functional
within months, if not weeks. Only the nuclear vessels will survive.
They will
make sure that no one is capable of assembling a fleet capable of delivering
foreign troops to the shores of the United States. In the end, the Navy
and the Marine Corps will be the ones who stave off the worst of the foreign
invasion. The Army will be tied up on the southern boarder. It will be in their
hands that the survivability of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and
what is left of Southern California, depends.
That will keep this nation a contiguous constitutional democratic republic.
Win? Lose? That is hard to say. We will survive as a nation. In the end,
surviving is all that matters.
Does it have
to come to this? Do these events, or ones very similar to what is described,
have to unfold? No, they don’t. However, the leadership capable of diverting
such a catastrophic end to the United
States as a Superpower is not in control.
The children of the Greatest Generation are now in power. These children, and
grandchildren, do not understand at a gut level what is at stake. They know the
ideals they have been taught and they know how to mimic and posture, but in the
end they do not understand the carnage which is war.
They do not
understand this in the United States,
China, Russia, Korea,
England,
or the EU. It is a lesson which has to be learned again. Moreover, it is just
such a war that these men and women have been trained to expect and accept.
That is why it will be repeated unless more pragmatists come to power
throughout the world. It is possible that such men and women exist, but we do
not see them in office yet.
If cooler
heads do not prevail, than all the other issues which I have covered within
these covers are irrelevant. We will be reduced to subsistence communal tribal
levels, and the only government any of us will know is the one that survives in
the towns where we exist. That alone may be enough of a reason to begin looking
for better leadership on all levels.
Remember the
word in Proverbs 24:17-18:
Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not
thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the LORD see it, and it displease
him, and he turn away his wrath from him.
In a recent
Washington Post article, it was reported that Mr. Bush has enveloped himself in
a bubble of isolation. While he sees international heads of state, the article
says, the sessions are more like those of a dignitary visiting the emperor of Rome. The story goes on to
say that there is no give and take and no discussion of issues. The visits are
more a formality of the office than a genuine exchange of ideas. This shows a
dangerous trend in the leadership of the United States.
According to
Edwin M. Lemert’s work on Primary and Secondary Deviance, Mr. Bush seems to be
exhibiting the eighth stage of Secondary Deviance.
The sequence
of interaction leading to secondary deviation [the taking on the role of
deviant behavior] is roughly as follows: (1) primary deviation; (2) social
penalties; (3) further primary deviation; (4) stronger penalties and
rejections; (5) further deviation, perhaps with hostility and resentment
beginning to focus upon those doing the penalizing; (6) crisis reached in the tolerance
quotient, expressed in formal action by the community stigmatizing of the
deviant; (7) strengthening of the deviant conduct as a reaction to the
stigmatizing and penalties; (8) ultimate acceptance of deviant social status
and efforts at adjustment on the basis of associated role.
Mr. Bush has
been accused of being a tyrant. He has been accused of acting as if he is a world
dictator. This has cost him much in the polls and in the status of the office
he holds. This constant pressure has to have affected him. If we accept
Lemert’s guidelines, this would mean that he is personalizing the role that so
many have accused him of over the past six years; he may be accepting his role
as world dictator.
If at any point
in time we need to pay heed to the instructions of Jesus, it is now.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them
that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you, and persecute you.
Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may
be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to
stand before the Son of man.
Confess your faults one to another, and pray one
for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous
man availeth much.
It is
interesting to note that the citizens of the United States may be in the sixth
or seventh phase of adopting secondary deviation due to the constant threat
from the Islamic terrorists.
