Kim Jong-Il Fires Missile; Obama Retaliates With Harsh Words

At 0235 GMT, 11:35 am in North Korea, the Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile which had been sitting on a Pyongyang launch pad for several days - in direct violation of several UN Sanctions - sailed into the morning sky supposedly carrying a communications satellite. At a time when the Liberal Internationalist President Barack Obama was supposedly going to be restoring America (and the world's) "faith" in collective security agreements (i.e. the UN and NATO), he proved once again that such agreements (particularly in the UN's case) are utterly worthless. Thanks to his inaction (and the lack of action by any other Western nation), the world is a far more dangerous place.

The arguments about this recent issue have been numerous. Many believed that this missile test was just a way for Kim Jong-Il to get some attention both from the international media, as well as a way for him to have a sort of propaganda coup back at home. Unfortunately, this is far more dangerous. The successful test of this kind of missile is very key to a nation like North Korea, which has a nascent nuclear capability that threatens the world. This is the first step to marrying a nuclear warhead to a delivery system capable of dropping that nuclear warhead on any target, anywhere in the world, at any time. Once this technology is gained, the North Koreans could disseminate this technology to anyone who will pay as well as use this capability themselves against their perceived enemies (primarily South Korea, Japan, and the US). Meaning that on top of seeing Russia from her backyard, Sara Palin and the fine citizens of Alaska could be seeing nuclear explosions as well. This is the worst case scenario.

The "best" case scenario is that what North Korea launched was really a satellite but that it was far more than a mere "communications" satellite (North Korea has next to zero communication - or any other type of - infrastructure). What this satellite could be is some kind of spy satellite which will be used to survey American troop movements in South Korea and fleet movements within the Pacific Ocean (which is very bad should the North Koreans decide to invade the South). This satellite could also be used as a kind of early warning system to keep Western defenses from reaching North Korea in time to stop another launch, in the event they decide to actually go forward with some kind of nuclear launch in the future. So, as you can see, even the "best" case scenarios are extremely horrifying.

As always, regional incidents (or, "flaps" as the CIA calls them) like this have much greater and far-reaching geopolitical consequences. For instance, the CIA released intelligence which suggested that several high-ranking Iranian military and intelligence officers were present, in Pyongyang, for the launch in prelude to purchasing the technology if all went well. As well, there were reports that both Syria - a nation with long nuclear ties to the ailing Kim Jong-Il regime - had covert representatives attending the launch along with representatives from both Venezuela and potentially Cuba. This comes at a time when, only a year ago, the rogue Islamic Republic of Iran successfully launched their own satellite into orbit, and two years after the Israelis had annihilated a North Korean-built nuclear facility in southern Syria. What does this mean? It clearly shows a decentralized effort to allow the "Axis of Evil" to backdoor their way into getting their blood-stained hands on nuclear weapons. I have long suspected that North Korea - the ultimate weapons proliferator and flouter of international law - along with Iran and Syria, have each been developing different parts needed for the production of nuclear weapons technology in order to avoid detection from Israel, the US, and the world. Once they have the data they need, they will then piece those different parts together and disseminate that technology to anyone who aligns with them ideologically or, in North Korea's case, anyone who can pay for the lights in Kim Jong-Il's palaces to stay on.

This situation in North Korea was a test run; it was a way for these Rogue States to gauge how far they can push the envelope before the Western world shut their criminal actions down. What the Obama Administration showed was that the Western world would do absolutely nothing in the face of this nuclear brinksmanship. In fact, it showed that the Obama Administration would not only allow these two-bit, third-world dictators with delusions of grandeur to mock the international laws so many good people have died defending, but that after the insult was delivered, the Obama Administration would come running to the peace conference to apologize to and appease these rogue nations. How wonderful it must have been for Kim Jong-Il, witnessing the world's Sole Superpower flail about the place after your peon country flouted their edicts and sanctions. Rather than sternly denouncing this act of terror, the State Department vowed to press forward with negotiations next month at even greater speed and "resolve" than before. That ought to show them: if they fire missiles illegally, we'll rush in to talk with them! The result in all of this is that American credibility in the realm of deterrence has been severely diminished, whilst the Rogue Nation's credibility in the realm of international state terror has been greatly increased; which will only inspire more brazen acts in the future. Plus, the Axis of Evil has now gained key data for continuing their development of Weapons of Mass Destruction which very soon may come to threaten the entire freedom-loving world.

This lack of action on the part of the US-led Western Coalition will signal to the rogue states around the planet that these next four years will be one of a tyrannical free-for-all: the West will reserve its judgments upon them until the last possible moment...if at all. This spits in the eye of everything American Foreign Policy has been geared toward preventing: another 9/11. It's sad that at a time when President Obama - a man who ascribes to the woefully ignorant Liberal Internationalist view of international relations - vowed to restore both America's faith in and the world's faith in collective security agreements (i.e. the UN and NATO), has only highlighted how unreliable and worthless they are (primarily the UN) by not backing up UN sanctions with force. What's the point of having a Security Council that won't secure the world? It should be called the Paper Council: since all the UN is apparently able to do to our enemies is paper them to death with sanctions, but then never back those sanctions up with the threat of force! It's shocking that we can all agree on the horrifying nature of the Kim Jong-Il regime, we can all lob damning languages at Pyongyang, and yet, we don't even have the stomach to drop a single bomb on a lone missile, which could be the vanguard of the greatest threat to national security since the USSR planted Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles in Cuba back in 1962!

Now that the situation has passed (with surprisingly little media coverage), everyone seems to have resumed their lives and stopped worrying about North Korea. However, it was never the single missile which concerned me; it was what it represented that concerned me. After eight years of proving to the world that we would not retreat in the face of Terror - the kind of terror which took 3,000 of our countrymen's lives and shattered the proud American image of having a secure homeland - President Obama and his counterparts in the West have torn that down by backing away from this threat. The real question becomes: what will happen next? Clearly, these Rogue Nations no longer fear the United States. Clearly, these nations feel that they will - at the very least - have a large degree of "breathing space" to enact their sinister schemes and terrorize the innocents abroad until the United States actually decides to stand up to them. However, following Obama's strategy (the strategy of other Western Statists like Neville Chamberlain), we may be forced to act at a time when those Rogue Nations are fully armed with nukes and the damage that will be inflicted upon our forces would be so devastating and so severe that I shutter to think of such a battle. This is why preemption is key. This is why President Obama's lack of action is so disturbing. Once again, a Liberal Internationalist President, an appeaser, makes America appear to be some helpless, pitiful giant to the world.

After witnessing the horrors of World War II - another conflict which could have easily been avoided had the Western powers acted to preempt the rising Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan Axis Powers before they became empowered and emboldened rather than appease them - Winston Churchill, the only man who tried seriously to preempt Nazi Germany, stated these prophetic words on the need for preemption in order to avoid another catastrophic world war: "if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse cause. You may have to fight when there is no hope for victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."

The world is indeed a far scarier place now and that's thanks to President Obama and his insanely naive foreign policy. For those of us desperately clinging to our wallets in the Age of Obama, we may have to now try and shield our faces with the other hand from a nuclear blast in our near-future. If you are a two-bit, third-world, pot-belly dictator this is definitely change you can believe in!