An Achilles Heel

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.[1]

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.[2]

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.[3]

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[4].

Pray without ceasing.[5]

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.

---

[1] Criminological Theory, Cullen and Agnew, p. 306

[2] Matthew 5:44

[3] Luke 21:36

[4] James 5:16

[5] 1 Thessalonians 5:17