North Korea - A Coming Showdown

There are indeed monsters in this world, and one of them is the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-il. In the next couple of days he is readying to launch a missile capable of reaching the United States. The UN has condemned North Korea, and the US has threatened "stern action." What exactly the UN and the US will do is up for debate. Given our foreign policy so far of making nice with evil men bent on destruction (see Iran, the Taliban, and our refusal to connect the words "Islam" and "terrorism"), I don't hold out much hope that our response will be much at all, giving yet another round of this ongoing conflict to Kim Jong-il.

The simplest statement of both logic and diplomacy is the "if-then" statement. If party A does X, then party B will do Y. It is now time to lay out our response to Evil in the simplest, clearest terms available. "If you launch this missile, the full military might of the free world will descend upon you until you and your evil cronies are dead." This is the exact statement we, and the UN, have been loathe to make. It is exactly the kind of statement that you will always be loathe to make if you do not have guiding principles in your life beyond a vague desire for peace, because then everything is just a matter of compromise between the two parties involved.

I will pause here for a moment - please take some time to search the name Neville Chamberlain and the name Adolf Hitler. Hitler you know; Neville Chamberlain was the British Prime Minister before - and during the early days - of WW2. His successor you have heard of: Winston Churchill.

Here is a starting point, comments made by Mr. Chamberlain less than 1 year before WW2 began:

http://www.historyguide.org/europe/munich.html

"Peace in our time" is the phrase for which Mr. Chamberlain is famous.. He met with Hitler again and again in the 1930s, refusing to interfere with Germany's growing evil and aggressive expansion. I fully understand that the souls of the millions of dead from WW1 haunted England and France in this period, and their terrible memory paralyzed England and France from acting against Germany. What a lot of people don't realize is this: In the late 1930s, as Hitler became increasingly bolder in his lust for power, his military might was a sham. If even just England or France individually as late as 1939 had called his bluff, he would have had no choice but to back down. But Hitler knew his opponents. He correctly judged their reluctance to act, and the world paid a heavy price.

So here we go again. Don't kid yourselves; the Islamic world is watching this also, judging the response of the West to this threat. At some point we have to draw the line, and we have to be prepared to back up our words with action. We cannot afford to let the containable evils of this world - such as North Korea - become uncontainable. And we cannot afford to allow our enemies see that we are weak, unwilling to act.

As Americans, are we called to peace, or are we called to defend freedom and uphold justice? Endowed by our Creator will certain unalienable rights, do we have the moral responsibility to ensure that freedom to others when it stands within our power? I do not want war. I do not seek war.

But neither do I seek peace that comes at the price of selling our collective soul. Kim Jong-il is an evil man, the head of an evil regime. The people of North Korea suffer under his yoke. The line must be drawn here. And our response, should that line be crossed, must be decisive.