Posted on 10/14/2006 1:28:55 PM PDT by Arec Barrwin
Published: Friday, October 13, 2006 Is it time to consider killing crazy Kim?
By Austen Kassinger
Since when did assassination of foreign leaders get taken off the table?
After years of killing off third-world leaders that threatened American interests, international norms have shifted, Today, the idea of exploding cigars is considered quaint, if not outright passe. But with Pyongyang's announcement late Monday night of a nuclear arms test, perhaps it's time to reconsider.
The notion that someone ought to just put a bullet through Kim Jong Il's head tends to elicit disapproving frowns. Apparently, it's too crass a tactic, a faux pas on the international stage. But if he himself is so rude as to threaten the lives of millions with the touch of a button, the etiquette of the game has changed.
History would tell us that the idea of forgoing self-preservation in order to "play nice" is a relatively modern one: Julius Caesar was one in a long line of men murdered for reasons far less grave than, say, destruction of the planet. While modern sensibilities have, fortunately, bred in us a healthy respect for free and fair elections and the rights of men to determine their destinies, Kim Jong Il disregards these principles at will.
North Korea isn't Iraq, where the evidence of WMDs was imprecise at the time and just plain wrong in retrospect, and it isn't Iran, where foreigners engineered a coup in Iran in 1953 in a blatant attempt to protect oil interests. Does the phrase "a nuke went off while you were sleeping" not ring any alarm bells, even in the padded hallways of the United Nations? Forget the failures and mistakes of the past, from exploding cigars to shock and awe, and recognize that we are trying to stare down a mentally deranged murderer. Anything we do in reprisal is liable to set Kim Jong Il - and his nukes - off.
At this point, even the conciliatory South Koreans are on edge: After a decade of sunshine, the weather may be changing to cloudy with a chance of nuclear fallout. Under the leadership of Kim and his father, Kim Sung, North Korea has wallowed in abject failure. When contrasted with the economic advancement of its neighbor, and all of Asia, the decimation of the North Korean economy is especially painful; North Korea essentially subsists on foreign donations and the outsourcing of nuclear weaponry to other dangerous regimes (Iran). This is a regime that has decided that mass starvation is an acceptable cost of obtaining nuclear weaponry, a regime whose lack of concern for its people is so extreme that for a time it actually terminated the U.N. World Food Program. Would anyone suffer more if Kim Jong Il were to kick the bucket?
That the current regime is bizarre and unpredictable is impossible to deny: We're talking about an administration that, in a move right from Roald Dahl's children's tale "The Twits," whittled down the legs of the Americans' chairs each night after talks because the American height advantage shook their self-esteem. No, we don't know who will replace Kim, and perhaps his successor would be just as hellbent on joining the nuclear club. However, Kim's lunacy and possession of WMDs have made him more dangerous than other belligerent despots. Iran has at least nominally agreed to take a seat at the bargaining table, and Saddam Hussein, as we have since discovered, did not have the capabilities we attributed to him.
Although the veracity of North Korea's claims is in doubt, Pyongyang's departure from the typical nuclear pathway of hedging and denial to one of overt zeal for firing weapons is horrifying. The foreign ministry declared yesterday that "if the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases the pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures" - and this only in response to the threat of sanctions. If such a minor punishment could lead to nuclear war, are we supposed to do nothing at all?
I am not suggesting that we shoot Kim tomorrow; rather, that the idea of assassination ought not to be summarily dismissed. Perhaps even Miss Manners could be convinced that when your crazy neighbor actively threatens your life, it is not the time to bring brownies to his door or start a petition to give him the cold shoulder. It's time to run him out of town.
Austen Kassinger is a freshman in Davenport College.
I would break the ceasefire. Is it worth it for such a small, meaningless act? As a practical thing, who knows what despot would replace this despot? Could be worse.
I do think this is the correct thing even though it is satire.
Bush Mulls Bombing N. Korea ‘Back to the Food Age’
by Scott Ott
(2006-10-10) — Even as President George Bush insisted that the U.S. would continue to pursue diplomacy in the North Korean nuclear crisis, he added today that every option is still on the table, including the possibility of “bombing them back to the food age.”
“It breaks my compassionate conservative heart that Kim Jong-Il’s people are starving while he’s blowing millions of dollars on weapons of mass destruction,” said Mr. Bush. “If it weren’t for U.S. and United Nations food aid, he’d have a massive famine on his hands.”
The president suggested that a carefully executed bombing campaign, or a Special Ops military unit, could return the country to “the food age” — a time when the Korean people could feed themselves without assistance.
“Sometimes,” the president said, “it takes guns to make butter.”
Taking action is
what Muslims do. The West will
arrest and try him . . .
As a point of information when did we ever do this? I know about Castro's exploding cigars but aside from that when have we ever gone around killing off third world leaders? (Or even first world leaders)
Assassination of foreign leaders is at best unreliable policy. One is never certain how much of the difficulty lies with the leader and how much he or she is merely a front man for the real problem. Iran's Ahmadinejad is a perfect example of this. Nor are results always predictable - the South Vietnamese government never really did recover from Diem's assassination.
While it does not surprise me that a freshman at university is under the impression that the U.S. has slaughtered inconvenient Latin American leaders wholesale it isn't actually the case. People have been repeating that Salvador Allende was so assassinated for so long now that serious historians are about the only people to believe otherwise, on campus at least. The trouble taken to capture Manuel Noriega where a simple bullet would have done the job seems to me to indicate quite the reverse. Danny Ortega is still drawing breath, as is Hugo Chavez. The U.S. is much more often (and accurately) accused of supporting, or at least not opposing, a number of two-bit tyrants because they're "our son-of-a-bitch." As usual, the accusers on the left want it both ways.
I don't think it's likely to happen with Kim any more than it did with Muqtada al-Sadr, another fellow whose appearance might, IMHO, be improved by a .45 caliber hole between the eyes. It would be nice if problems were that easily solved, but they usually aren't.
I will bet anyone here, the best hamburger that Burger King sells, that if Kim detonates another nuclear weapon, some Chinese sniper will drill Kim a new anus in the middle of his forehead. Not only will there be a regieme change in North Korea, I predict a sudden termination of the bloodline of Kim...
I realize a lot of people here don't have much faith in the UN, and neither do I, but today's Security Council resolution was a very big deal for the Chinese. North Korea would do themselves very well to quietly back down, because the Chinese are really not in a charitable mood for their little yellow brothers...
Kim?, Cowboy Bob wrote:
I think it should be left to the Chinese.
Well, I agree, but how do you get him to stand in front of a tank in Tienneman square?
According to Francois Rabelais, among the Latin books studied by Pantagruel was one titled "Concerning the things that ought to be passed over in silence". I'd say that the discussion of this subject was surely belonging there, in the footnotes. "Pity that he endures".
The history of assassination is that it is mostly tried by someone close to the person on which the attempt is made. Maybe that's the way to go.
But we should definitely try to knock off Kim Jong "Jabba The Hut" Il.
I'd say hire a Jewish hit squad.
I can't believe I agree with something written in the Yale News Daily.
At least he would't be ronery anymore.
Great graphic.NK looks absolutely barren in comparrison to the south.
Way ahead of this guy I considered it years ago. I am already considering Irans president.
Contrast this clear thinking freshman to the loons at Columbia University that wouldn't allow the Minutemen to speak and violently rushed the stage.
I thought the same thing. Other than that, I thought it was an excellent piece.
I think you are right.
He's a friggin' loon, sure. But his death would change little, since an NK army general would probably take control.
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