WhatFinger

Have we taken missile defense seriously enough?

What if Kim Jong Un actually does try to nuke us?

By Dan Calabrese ——--March 7, 2013

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Of course Bowl Cut Jr. is crazy. Of course he blusters all the time. Of course North Korea pulls this crap every time they want relief from economic sanctions, more food aid, whatever. Of course no self-respecting pundit is going to invite ridicule by saying, oh dear, maybe they mean it this time.
Yeah. I get all that. But that had better not be the way the White House views it when the leader of a nation that everyone knows is advancing toward nuclear capability actually says, on the record, that he is going to nuke the United States.
An unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry said the North will exercise its right for "a preemptive nuclear attack to destroy the strongholds of the aggressors" because Washington is pushing to start a nuclear war against the North. Although North Korea boasts of nuclear bombs and pre-emptive strikes, it is not thought to have mastered the ability to produce a warhead small enough to put on a missile capable of reaching the U.S. It is believed to have enough nuclear fuel, however, for several crude nuclear devices.
Such inflammatory rhetoric is common from North Korea, and especially so in recent days. North Korea is angry over the possible sanctions and over upcoming U.S.-South Korean military drills. At a mass rally in Pyongyang on Thursday, tens of thousands of North Koreans protested the U.S.-South Korean war drills and sanctions. "Now our enemies are trying to make additional sanctions against us, but we can never accept this," said Ri Kum Il, a Pyongyang citizen at the rally. "We will make a preemptive nuclear attack against our enemies wherever they are and turn their strongholds into a sea of flames." Who is Kim Jong Un? He is the totally untested, inexperienced son of a mad man. He runs what is quite possibly the most despotic and sadistic regime on Earth. His entire nation is essentially a prison in which the inmates are required to constantly pay homage to him. All his pedigree is evil, and he has none of the experience or seasoning that would provide the wisdom to exercise restraint in his actions even as he blusters about turning the strongholds of his enemies into a sea of flames. Does this mean he is going to actually nuke us? Not necessarily at all, of course. What it means, however, is that this is the scenario for which you prepare when you design and deploy a missile defense system. Even during the Cold War, no one seriously thought the Soviets would just decide one day to fire nukes at us. They were evil, but not crazy. They understood mutual assured destruction. They wanted to survive just like we did. Missile defenses are to protect us against the rogue leader who has the weapons but not the stability to understand how to be responsible with them. So how seriously has the Obama Administration taken missile defense? The Heritage Foundation points out that Obama's commitment to missile defenses overall is woefully inadequate, although it actually focuses a little more on the North Korean threat than it does on the broader strategic imperative of missile defense:
The Obama Administration missile defense program is overwhelmingly biased against defending the American homeland against long-range missile attacks. This bias is most prominent in the MDA’s funding profile, as Representative Turner stated during the March 6 hearing on missile defense.[15]According to Representative Turner, the MDA’s funding profile for FY 2012 through FY 2017 shows that the Obama Administration plans to spend more than three times as much on regional missile defense as on defending the homeland. Given this imbalance, Congress is all but compelled to respond by increasing the commitment to homeland defense. Rebalancing the missile defense program does not mean that the U.S. is abandoning its commitment to defend its forward-deployed forces or its friends and allies against missile attack. Indeed, it recognizes that a strong alliance structure depends on upholding the principle that the security of all alliance members is indivisible. By securing the U.S. position to assist its allies, a strong defense of the U.S. homeland will bolster America’s commitment to defend its friends and allies. Accordingly, Congress needs to increase the 30 interceptors based in Alaska and California to 44 interceptors, as originally planned by the Bush Administration. The plan should also include procuring enough additional interceptors for testing. This would increase funding for the GMD program by roughly $200 million above the Administration’s requested level for FY 2013. Congress should also include language in the report accompanying the National Defense Authorization Act stating that it intends to increase Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program funding after FY 2013, in contrast to the Administration’s projections. Further, the U.S. needs a better geographic balance in its homeland missile defense capabilities. The current GMD system is focused more on countering North Korean long-range missiles and defending the western portions of U.S. territory. Existing Department of Defense (DOD) and NASA facilities should be extended to provide missile defense testing and deployment options for U.S. Aegis ships along the East Coast and an Aegis Ashore site along the Gulf Coast. The overall capability of such a system would also provide the foundation for countering short-range ballistic missiles launched from ships off the U.S. coast. This threat includes missiles that could carry electromagnetic pulse (EMP) warheads. The Independent Working Group proposed an East Coast test range in its January 2009 report.[16] In January 2011, NASA’s Wallops Island launch facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore and three East Coast Navy ships participated in a missile defense tracking exercise.[17] This is a step in the right direction toward establishing a broader missile defense testing and exercise facility on the East Coast. Since then, Independent Working Group members have concluded that the Gulf Coast also needs protection, which could be provided by locating an Aegis Ashore site in this area.
The point here is not to panic over the probably empty words of a punk. You and I can laugh all day long at Dennis Rodman's new BFF and we will probably not be shamed for doing so. But the national security team at the White House had better be taking him very seriously, and planning for any conceivable scenario. They don't have to ackowledge publicly that they're doing that, and indeed they shouldn't. But they need to do it. The problem, however, is that you don't start doing it when the guy makes noises. You start doing it the first day you take office, when you develop a serious policy for missile defense, building on the work of your predecessors. All indications, however, are that Obama chose to step backwards from the work of the Bush Administration because missile defense is not really a priority to them, as it does nothing to aid them in the social engineering and income redistribution that is their real priority. That being the case, we had all better pray that Kim Jong Un is every bit the empty windbag we all think he is.

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Dan Calabrese——

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.

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