NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
COMMENTARY
July 8, 2006
Rockets' red glare
With his gift for stating the obvious reasonably truthfully, President Bush told a press conference in Chicago yesterday that the U.S. had a “reasonable chance” of shooting down the North Korean Taepongdong-2 launched on the 4th of July, had it not gone haywire just after launch. However, “Our anti-ballistic systems are modest. They are new.”If, as the Aegis trackers indicated by analysing its angle of ascent, the thing was headed to the vicinity of Hawaii, the Americans would certainly have tried to intercept it. The world’s leftoids and gliberals could then gloat if they missed, and feign anger if they hit it, for it is a settled principle on that side of the political spectrum that anything the U.S. does to defend itself is warmongering. But sane people are beginning to realize why the U.S. is building anti-ballistic systems, and sane people in Canada should realize why we should be helping. I have written before about the uselessness of diplomacy in dealing with such as Pyongyang, or Tehran, or Ramallah. Attempts to buy them off with aid and other assuagements only buys time -- for them. Cutting them off has little effect, either, for their own allies quickly fill the gap, as both Saudis and Iranians are now doing for intransigent, terrorist-ruled Palestine, and as China will do for North Korea. But at least it transfers pointless costs. There is an idiotic notion about, that the North Koreans are isolating themselves by firing rockets. I fear even people in the White House half-believe it. It would be more accurate to say they create crises for a living. They earn their keep by “running interference” on behalf of China, and thus pinning down a great deal of force that is needed to counter the rapid Chinese military build-up, and in particular their thousand-missile threat to Taiwan. The North Koreans earn hard currency from Iran, the partners and chief sponsors of their missile development programme. For their own safety, Iran and North Korea between them consciously play a game of “monkey in the middle”, provoking crises in alternation to distract the U.S. administration back and forth between them. To a lesser extent, Russia also finds both Iran and North Korea convenient pests for the West, which is why Russia, like China, will consistently employ its veto at the Security Council to prevent any Western action being sanctified there. Thus, taking the matter before the United Nations, as President Bush is promising to do, can achieve nothing more than make the reality of enemy alliances a little clearer, to those who have eyes to see. In essentials, it is the same story with Hamas in Gaza, which now has longer range Qassam rockets, and has started firing them into the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. At the time of writing, they hadn’t killed anyone yet, but sooner or later they will get “lucky”. And with the Iranians now doing everything in their power to enhance the military capabilities of both Hamas, and Hezbollah, they should soon have bigger rockets that can reach Haifa and Tel Aviv, and cause real carnage. What will happen will happen. My guess is that the Israelis will realize they have no choice but to resume their occupation of all three “launching pads” -- Gaza, West Bank, and southern Lebanon. For the near future, the fourth possible launch pad, Syria, can be dealt with as the Israelis did the other day. The IAF sent four F-16s to fly acrobatically low over President Bashir Assad’s holiday palace in Latakia (while he was in it), at supersonic speed, using the sonic booms to remind the little rat of his mortality. Well, you could call that a form of diplomacy. But no one has suggested occupying North Korea. In the absence of reliable, or even much unreliable intelligence, it couldn’t be done without risking huge loss of life, mostly in South Korea but possibly also in Japan, as the dying regime flung everything it had at any reachable target. And, as in the Korean War, we would soon find ourselves staring at the Chinese fist beneath the North Korean puppet. Moreover, even Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and southern Lebanon is a holding action; for in the longer run Iran is the launching pad of much greater concern. So what are we going to do? As far as I can see, we wait for Armageddon, while praying that the regimes in Iran and North Korea may suddenly collapse. I would advise my reader to pray hard. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top