I get home from work, spend a little time with my family, play with my dog, have my cat yell at me, and while I sit and enjoy a hot cup of coffee, this is my reward:
"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."
A more fatuous presidential call to arms is hard to conceive. What "strong international response" did Obama muster to North Korea's brazen defiance of a Chapter 7 -- "binding," as it were -- U.N. resolution prohibiting such a launch?
The obligatory emergency Security Council session produced nothing. No sanctions. No resolution. Not even a statement. China and Russia professed to find no violation whatsoever. They would not even permit a U.N. statement that dared express "concern," let alone condemnation.
Having thus bravely rallied the international community and summoned the United Nations -- a fiction and a farce, respectively -- what was Obama's further response? The very next day, his defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. Such is the "realism" Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy.
I really don't want to read any more.
"Fatuous"? Is there any commentator out there more fatuous than Charles Krauthammer? I suppose the depressing answer to that question is "yes", but, at least for this morning, the answer is an unequivocal "not by a country mile!".
In the first place, what else does Krauthammer expect? For Obama to invade? For the US to stop the North Koreans from launching a missile, which they have every right to do as a sovereign nation, would require far more than mere chutzpah on the part of the United States.
I really can't fathom what goes on between the guy's ears.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates - who was George W. Bush's Defense Secretary as well - indeed made drastic cuts in the nonsensical and largely nonexistent missile defense program. And it's about twenty years passed due for such cuts. Even if this Godelian bit of nonsense actually worked, what possible relevance would it have for a rocket system that barely scraped the outer rim of the atmosphere? Does Krauthammer believe the North Koreans - who have a million or so troops poised within an easy day's march of the capital of South Korea, and have in their arsenal some of the most powerful and concentrated artillery in the world - would shrug their shoulders at such an outrage and affront and say, "Well, the US shot down our missile. I guess that shows us!"
Frustration, thy name is reading idiocy like this.
