Bellicose Threats and Orwellian Rejoinders
"This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat."
"North Korea's weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community. We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the United States homeland and our allies."
Dana White, spokesperson, U.S. Defence Department
"[North Korea's nuclear force is] to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the U.S. and for preventing its military invasion and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the U.S."
"[Trump's description of Kim as] Rocket Man [ensures] our rocket's visit to the entire United States mainland inevitable all the more."
"[The American president is] a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency], his finger on the] nuclear button."
"[Trump's] reckless and violent words [have insulted] the supreme dignity [of North Korea]."
"[Trump has transformed the White House] into a noisy marketing place [and attempts to turn the United Nations] into a gangsters' nest where money is respected and bloodshed is the order of the day."
"[Trump would] pay dearly [for his threat to] totally destroy [North Korea]. [The North's response] could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific."
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho
"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!"
"North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development is a grave threat to peace and security in our world and it is unacceptable that others financially support this criminal, rogue regime."
U.S. President Donald Trump
Donald J. TrumpVerified account @realDonaldTrump
Iran just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel.They are also working with North Korea.Not much of an agreement we have!
President Trump's United Nations address of last week was notable for his coherent and justified statements of regret and disgust at the actions of regimes that have destroyed the stability of their very own nations' trusts (Syria and Venezuela) as well as those whose clear support for terrorists, supplying them with weaponry and opportunities to wreak havoc and destroy hopes (Iran and North Korea) and the position of the United States in working alongside other nations to bring them to account (China) may result in measures to limit the damage they wreak.
Verbal commitment was made to remedial and protective action by the United States against those plotting to upend the global community's security. It was a good speech, particularly emanating from the mouth of a man not normally given to concise and practical utterances, but it was, for all that, only a speech. Bolstered, since Iran's response was to test another ballistic missile, and North Korea's stepped-up threats, by a show of American military force in joint exercises with South Korea.
It is still show-and-tell, with no direct action to quell the unease being felt in the Korean Peninsula, nor in the Middle East, with Israel clearly in the range of Iran's new and improved rocketry. American B-1 bombers alongside fighter jets flew international waters close to the North Korean flight zones and beyond the Demilitarized Zone, furthest than such warplanes have ever flown north in a hundred years; its purpose clear enough, as a direct warning.
It's doubtful that either Tehran or its close ally Pyongyang blinked. They know bluster when they see it and hear it since both are masters at it. It is when those bombers, equipped with conventional but powerful explosives are used to destroy both countries' arms and research sites as Israel has done in the past, that those threats will be taken seriously enough to persuade each of those belligerent nations that it is time to back down and back off.
Kim Jong Un has been clear enough in his cheerful pronouncements of his intentions. To build a missile powerful enough to strike anywhere in the United States with nuclear tipped missiles. As a crude way to project threat and power to nudge the United States over on the world stage to make way for another super power vested in the persona of a megalomaniac tyrant of a country struggling with a national pathology of power and prestige belying its state of endemic poverty depriving its population of a normal existence, it would be a comic performance if it were not so bleakly sinister.
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| A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer deployed from Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, prepares to take off from Andersen AFB, Guam, Sept. 23, 2017. CNN |
Farce aside in its delusional use of language and turning meaning and reality inside out, the threats are all too real, and casting counter-threats and schoolyard demonstrations of hoped-for intimidation in a situation calling for immediate and direct action to cut North Korea's ambition down to the size more approximating its place in world affairs, and this time with the reluctant assistance of its mentor-state China, is long overdue.
If China does undertake to yank its 90% of the North's income through trade to impose reality on a delusional juvenile delinquent with the means to kill hundreds of thousands near at hand in the close future, well and good. Should that reluctantly imposed effort fail, other, more persuasive measures must be undertaken where mass casualties will be assured, but far less so than should North Korea proceed unregulated to its goal.
That conclusion will guide the Islamic Republic of Iran to a wake-up understanding that its goals are next to be addressed.
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| A TV grab taken on September 23 from state broadcaster IRIB shows a Khorramshahr missile being launched from an undisclosed location, a day after the missile was first displayed at a high-profile military parade. |
Labels: Ballistic Missiles, Conflict, Iran, North Korea, Nuclear Threats, Threats, United States
posted by Pieface @ Monday, September 25, 2017
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