Posted by Dan Ewert : 8/09/2003 01:02:00 AM (Archive Link)
You gotta love North Korean saber rattling. They recently warned the U.S. to keep their little nuclear issue away from the UN. Specifically, they said, “The U.S. intention to bring up the nuclear issue on the peninsula for the discussion at the U.N. at any cost is a grave criminal act to hamstring all the efforts of [North Korea] for dialogue and escalate the tensions on the peninsula. Any move to discuss the nuclear issue at the UNSC is little short of a prelude to war.” Of course, taking this to the UN would be no reasonable call for war. However, NK wants to keep the UN out of the picture and so it threatens the U.S. with war.

You would need a calculator to keep track of how many times Kim Jong-Il’s folks have threatened us with war for some reason or another. They always do it because it’s the one and only card they have. They have zero political and economic leverage on the U.S. The only thing they can do to get our attention is to use that one bargaining piece, the threat of war. It’s starting to get ridiculous, though. It brings up images of a crotchety old man laying in bed with a shotgun. He can’t do anything reasonable to anybody who annoys him so he threatens anyone who comes into the room with his shotgun. Extreme, but it’s all he can do.