North Korea's Fourth of July Fireworks for U.S.

Not since the Japanese attacked our anchored fleet on that sleepy morning on December 7, 1941, has the mid-Pacific islands of Hawaii been a target of a belligerent Asian nation. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il now threatens the U.S. Pacific paradise with nuclear attack if he perceives any act of the United States as an act of war. According to the Asia Times:

On March 9, the General Staff of the nuclear-armed Korean People's Army had begun preparing to launch simultaneous retaliatory strikes on the US, Japan and South Korea in response to their act of war.

Although no appropriate test site for a thermonuclear bomb is available on the Korean Peninsula, North Korean scientists and engineers are confident, as a series of computer simulations have proved that their hydrogen bombs will be operational. The North Korean message is that any soft spots of the US, Japan and South Korea's defense lines will be used as the testing grounds for their thermonuclear weapons.

The story goes on to state:

After shifting to a plan B, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il has put in place a nuclear game plan as a part of the plan's military first policy to deal with nuclear rogue state America and its allies South Korea and Japan.

The nuclear game plan is designed firstly to militarily prevent the US from throwing a monkey wrench into the plans of the Kim Jong-il administration for economic prosperity by 2012 - the centenary of the birth of founding father Kim Il-sung - in a bid to complete its membership of the three elite clubs of nuclear, space and economic powers.

Its second aim is to win the hearts and minds of the 70 million Korean people, North, South and abroad, and leave little doubt in their eyes that Kim Jong-il has what it takes to neutralize and phase out the American presence in Korea. This will hasten the divided parts of ancestral Korean land - bequeathed by Dankun 5,000 years ago and Jumon 2,000 years ago - coming together under a confederal umbrella as a reunified state.

The Asia Times story fails to make clear how  incinerating half the Korean peninsula will win Kim Jong Il the hearts and minds of the incinerated.

Though President Obama expresses a desire to employ the nebulas policy of “soft power” (that is, to say much while doing little), it is hard to imagine how this flaccid foreign policy approach will be perceived as anything but a sign of weakness by North Korea’s little dictator.

When the U.S. was in a shooting war North Korea (1950-1953), the new Eisenhower administration, refusing to continue the no-win war policies of President Harry Truman, conceived a plan to widen the war if North Korea refused to end hostilities. Carter Malasian, in his book on the Korean conflict writes:

American leaders issued a series of nuclear threats. First, on 21 May, Dulles [Secretary of State] told Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that the USA would expand military action if the current round of talks failed. Dulles expected that his statement would be relayed to the Chinese. Second, on 27 Mary, [Gen. Mark] Clark sent Kim [Il Sung] and Peng a letter stating that negotiations had reached their final stage. Third, on 3 June, Ambassador Charles Bohlen in Moscow told Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov that the failure of armistice talks would create a situation that the USA hoped to avoid. All these statements were meant to convey American intent to escalate the war, and possibly use atomic weapons, if the Communists did not concede soon in negotiations.

Of course, North Korea agreed to an armistice that has lasted more than fifty years. But now that little Kim Jong Il has nuclear weapons, all bets are off.

According to the New York Times, Hawaii may be in North Korea’s crosshairs in time for the upcoming all-American holiday:

…the Obama administration says North Korea could launch a ballistic missile in the state’s direction — possibly around the Fourth of July, according to the Japanese news media — prompting the United States military to beef up defenses here.

In response, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced the deployment of ground-based interceptors and sea-based radar to shoot down any North Korean missile threat to Hawaii. This is ironic in light of candidate Obama’s pledge to “…cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.” The nation owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to President Ronald Reagan’s for his farsighted Strategic Defense Initiative – and Obama can thank his lucky Star Wars.

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The following is a documentary on the history of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. It's interesting, in light of Obama's deployment of  missile defenses in Hawaii, how vociferous and condescending opposition was from the Democratic Left and the squishy Republican Center to Reagan's missile defense concept. Thankfully, the Democratic Left and squishy Republicans lost and our nation is safer for it.