Face up to North Korea Now on Use of Atomic Weaponry

Open letter to the Federal Administration, Military, and Congress:

EIN News says, "North Korea Threatens Nuclear 'Holy War'. North Korea's armed forces minister says his country's military is ready for a holy war involving nuclear weapons after the South conducted large-scale military exercises. (net.au)"

This is a typical bullying situation. We have heard much in the news recently about bullying. Most of the rhetoric is confined to children and schools. There is a ridiculous discussion of passing laws to control it. The fact is that bullying is a part of life, just like love and hate. They are uncontrollable emotions. Only the actions therefrom can be controlled. For that, we have laws, such as assault and battery.

There are bullies in the schoolyard and also on the broader international scale. North Korea is a bully. It threatens dire consequences unless it gets his way.

I tell my kids that you cannot pacify a bully by acceding to his requests. You must not allow him to steal your lunch money. He may be bigger than you and threaten physical violence, but you must stand up against him. You will likely get beaten up but you can do considerable damage to him in the encounter. It is attitude that counts and it is almost guaranteed that the bully will no longer continue bullying you after the encounter.

The situation of North Korea bullying is more complicated. Their threat of physical violence is undefined, with respect to the recipient, but the implication is South Korea. The US is involved, because South Korea is our friend. We even fought a war against North Korea to retain the freedom of South Koreans. However, that's history. We must look at things more pragmatically in terms of the present situation. We have no actual moral obligation to defend South Korea, any more than we have a moral obligation to defend any other country in the world. Our primary responsibility is to the citizens of the United States.

North Korea is said to have a nuclear energy bomb, which we know by previous experience in our own production and use is a terrible weapon of destruction. North Korea's threats to use the atomic device is its basis of bullying. We must accept the challenge. They may actually try to use it. We hope not, but it could happen. Consider that sooner or later someone in on the world will detonate another nuclear device just as we did against Japan. We must stand up to the bullying of North Korea now.
No one What if North Korea is crazy enough to take the first step by detonating a nuclear device on the Korean Peninsula? We must retaliate, and we must say so before hand in the hope that it will deter North Korea from taking the initial action. We have shown considerable weakness in the past, which will further weaken our hand in the initial rhetoric. In short, the North Koreans may not believe this but we should do our best to convince them of our resolve. What is our resolve? If they detonate a nuclear device over a populated area, we will use better devices in wiping out the whole population of North Korea, with hopefully as little ancillary destruction as possible.

We certainly don't want a complete international nuclear war, which would essentially destroy all world population, but for that to happen, China and Russia would have to be participants. To avoid that, we must have serious talks with China and Russia beforehand to determine whether they would generally be in agreement with our intention to confront the bully or whether they in turn would contribute to the bullying by threatening use of their own atomic weaponry. That would be a case for reconsideration of the secondary bullying, because the stakes would be too high. It would be mutual destruction. A bullied kid can live with a bloodied nose to counteract a bullying situation, but if the confrontation would lead to the death of both contestants, the stakes are too high.

The world can presently live with an absence of South Korea and North Korea, if that appears necessary. It can't continue if we are all gone.

If we don't take action now, the bullying action of North Korea and acceding to their demands will eventually place them in a position of extreme atomic military power, equivalent to the US, China and Russia. Confronting the bully at that time would be impossible. We confronted the Nazi bully in World War II, but the stakes were low. Not all populations were at risk. Mutual atomic construction is another matter. It is suicide.

Face up to North Korea now or it becomes worse if not impossible.