Shoot It Down!

By Alan Caruba

When North Korea launches its intercontinental ballistic missile called the Taepodong, Japan and/or the United States should shoot it down. News reports suggest it could occur as early as 6 PM, April 11.

Japan has more at stake being much closer to North Korea, but the United States has its reputation on the line. If it takes no action, the world will conclude it is gutless and its leadership position will be weakened. Shooting it down will not set off a war, but it will signal that America is not going to continue being played for a fool after years of having acceded to North Korea’s blackmail schemes.

The Taepodong is an ICPM and a very big risk to America’s west coast, to Hawaii, to Japan, and other targets. The first one was launched in 1998 so the North Koreans have had plenty of time to improve their technological mastery. The same, of course, can be said for their nuclear weapons.

In 2004, William C. Triplett II, a former chief Republican counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with more than thirty years of experience working on China’s threat national security, wrote a book, “Rogue State: How a Nuclear North Korea Threatens America.” I doubt anyone in the Obama administration has read it.

It is uncanny how a nation so poor that it cannot feed its own people—other than its million-plus military—can find the money to build ICBMs and develop nuclear bombs. That answer is staring everyone in the face. “Communist China serves as its life support system. Beijing will not let the regime in North Korea die,” wrote Triplett.

The Chinese have a term for it. It’s called “killing with a borrowed knife” and involves having another nation do its dirty work. “It is true that North Korea is the front man delivering the missiles to terrorist countries,” wrote Triplett, “But behind North Korea, the Chinese are enriching themselves by selling parts, service, production tools, training, and the development of future models.”

It’s worth noting that before the Chinese in the mid-1960s, it was the Russians—then known as the Soviet Union—that had helped North Korea establish a small five-megawatt nuclear research reactor at Yongbyon, sixty miles north of its capitol of Pyongyang. In time the Chinese would provide the assistance for a growing program. In the 1980s, the regime began to build three newer and larger nuclear power reactors.

It is ironic that, despite the capacity to produce electricity with nuclear power, North Korea remains in darkness when night falls.

The U.S. has shown a weak hand in dealing with North Korea. In the 1990s the Clinton administration engaged in classic appeasement, standing by for eight years while the North Korea-Chinese missile export joint venture moved ahead. No American administration going back to the days of Jimmy Carter has done much to restrain the North Koreans and the United Nations has an even worse track record.

There are eight known nuclear bomb explosion sites in North Korea. In 2003, it withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, expelling the IAEA inspectors. In 2006, it tested a nuclear device and fired off six missiles, including a Taepodong II. Since 2007 the usual useless diplomatic kabuki dance has been conducted between North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the U.S.

President Obama needs to “grow a set” and give the order that the missile is to be shot down when it is launched. Japan may do so for us. It would be a breach of U.N. Security Council resolutions. It is manifestly a threat to our national security.

If we did shoot it down what would China do? Nothing. It would issue a statement denouncing the action and then it would be back to business as usual. It would, however, send a message to them and the North Koreans that the U.S. is not a paper tiger.

If the Obama administration takes no action regarding the missile, it will no doubt find an excuse to ship 240,000 tons of food aid for “humanitarian” reasons. It’s been done before. It didn’t change or slow down North Korea’s missile and nuclear program. It just gave them more time to perfect it.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Less Talk, More Action - Send North Korea a Message

North Korea, China's Hidden Dagger

By Alan Caruba

The Korean War ended in a stalemate in 1953. Having begun on June 25, 1950 with the blessings of Joseph Stalin, an armistice agreement on July 27, 1953 left the peninsula divided between the Republic of South Korea and the Peoples Republic of North Korea. How long ago was that? Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected largely on the promise to go there and secure an end to the conflict

By the time it was over the Red Chinese had intervened and American casualties were around 54,000 with 103,000 wounded. The North Koreans and Chinese were estimated to have lost ten times that number. The war was immensely unpopular with an American public that was still recovering from World War Two that had ended in 1945.

To his credit, President Truman did not hesitate to commit troops. Within two days after the invasion, Americans were fighting another war in Asia. The United Nations provided cover and the conflict was officially a UN action.

It was a proxy war, part of the long Cold War that had begun at the end of World War Two. The Chinese got involved when Gen. Douglas McArthur’s strategies put U.S. troops close to their border. He wanted to finish off not just the North Koreans, but the fledgling communist Chinese government as well. Truman relieved him of command after he neglected the fact that U.S. armies fight under civilian control in the form of an elected Commander-in-Chief and authorization from Congress.

In time, China for reasons of proximity and other factors became the power that controlled North Korea. Under Kim ill-Sung, known as the “Great Leader”, a Soviet protégée of Stalin’s, and his son Kim Jong-il, the “Dear Leader”, North Korea has evolved into the classic rogue nation. It was named one of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil.”

China provides life support for North Korea, the supplier of food and energy. In his 2004 book, “Rogue State: How a Nuclear North Korea Threatens America”, William C. Triplett II, noted that “communist China is central to all North Korean issues, from human rights to weapons proliferation.”

Whatever North Korea does is sanctioned by China. This fact has been largely shielded by U.S. policy from the American public. North Korea is known in diplomatic circles as “China’s hidden dagger.” The phrase is taken from an ancient Chinese military text called “36 Srategems.” It means the covert use of another country to annihilate your enemy. North Korea threatens South Korea and Japan, and by extension the U.S. which is committed to come to its defense.

American administrations have negotiated with North Korea and each has learned that they will not adhere to any agreement, using negotiations to secure bribes of all kinds, including one in which the U.S. agreed to build two nuclear facilities there! Recent news revealed they have increased their ability to produce nuclear weapons to the utter astonishment of U.S. intelligence agencies.

Its nuclear program was begun by Moscow and Beijing converted it to a weapons program. Triplett said that Beijing uses North Korea as a proxy distributor of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles to terrorist nations that include Iran and Syria. They in turn, provide weapons to their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Like Iran, no sanctions and no threats of military reprisal have ever had any serious affect on North Korea.

Writing during the George W. Bush administration, Triplett said “There is no endgame strategy. North Korean aggression and provocations still go unpunished.” Together, the North Koreans and China “have successfully bogged any progress in endless diplomatic meetings and conferences while North Korea’s nuclear research marches on.”

America is in no position to fight another war on the Korean peninsula and is dependent on China (and Japan) to purchase its securities to keep its economy functioning in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. America’s manufacturing base has largely been undermined by the transfer of many of our industries to China.

Americans have largely forgotten the threat of communism.

The latest North Korean attacks are China’s way of reminding the U.S. of its dilemma and dependence.

The failure to secure a victory over North Korea in the 1950s, too much dithering since then, and too much distraction fighting recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have combined to render America a paper tiger who, despite our vast military power, will not or cannot pull the trigger.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

It's Always "Earth Hour" in North Korea

For all those Green morons calling on us to turn off our lights Saturday evening from 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM to celebrate "Earth Hour", this is what it looks like every night in North and South Korea. The North is in the grip of a Stalinist dictator and the South is a thriving democracy.

Like fire, electricity is truly a gift of the gods. It is the difference between the Dark Age and the present age...but not for everyone. Much of Africa is in darkness. too. People who hate civilization and the humans who created it are welcome to live out in the wilderness or in some primitive backward country where they burn dung to cook their meals.

If America doesn't start building more coal-fired plants, nuclear plants, and other generators of electricity, we too shall live in darkness when the sun goes down. Be warned, the present administration is doing everything possible to make that future happen.

-- Alan Caruba

Hostage Taking

By Alan Caruba

The taking of hostages is so commonplace that we only take notice when a former President of the United States is compelled to be an accomplice to a “photo op” in order to free two Americans.

Why the two young women thought they could enter the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea without extensive prior negotiations with this nation of international thugs defies understanding, but that they worked for former Vice President Al Gore’s television channel, Current, adds to the mystery. They caused their government a lot of trouble.

I am increasingly of the opinion that Americans who put themselves at such unnecessary and generally stupid risk should be left to suffer whatever fate befalls them. While the State Department can and should initiate efforts to get them out, going out of our way to accommodate rogue regimes hardly seems worth it.

Contrast this with the young Israeli, Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage in the Gaza Strip by Hamas since his capture in 2006. Yes, three years ago. In July, Hamas said that Israel has to release more than 1,000 Arab and Palestinian prisoners. The Palestinians so routinely have taken Israeli soldiers hostage that it is part of the “normal” relations that exist and Israel has in the past traded large numbers of terrorist prisoners for one or more of their own soldiers.

Iran is currently holding three American hikers hostage who they say strayed into their territory. Our troubles with Iran began in 1979 when that nation broke every international law by taking 53 American diplomats hostage and holding them for 444 days. Hostage taking is their idea of initiating a dialogue. It is what passes for diplomacy with these thugs.

If the United States wasn’t so damned civilized, I would love to see us take Mamoud Ahmadinejad hostage the next time he attends a United Nations meeting and Hugo Chavez, too. We could liberate two entire nations if we did. And it might cut down on Barack Obama’s travel plans. He’d have to do all his apologizing for America from the White House.

In July three members of Iran’s elite Quds Force, a unit of Iran’s military and intelligence establishment, who were seized in Iraq by the United States forces and held for more than two years were turned over to Iraq and returned to Iran. We were, however, engaged in a war at the time and Iran has been manufacturing the devices that kill our soldiers, so these guys were prisoners of war.

It strikes me that we live in a world not that dissimilar to earlier, more primitive times, in which taking hostages was an ordinary aspect of discourse between tribes or governments or just gangs seeking bargaining tools who just happen to be human beings.

It can be argued that a superpower like the United States cannot afford to stand by idly when our people are taken hostage. If we do, we’re told, it undermines our perceived power to do something about it, but generally speaking the U.S. always negotiates as opposed to staging a military action that could trigger the hostage’s murder and other ramifications. When Jimmy Carter finally got around to doing anything, the military mission was a disaster.

The Guantanamo quandary of prisoners taken on the field of battle will likely be resolved by the Obama administration by letting most of them go, although that has encountered difficulties because few nations want to accept them on any terms. Even U.S. states have made it known they do not want them in their prisons. They are not, however, hostages. They are “enemy combatants” swept up in an “asymmetric war” where the enemy does not wear a uniform.

Clearly, hostage taking cannot be taken lightly. Much of the world depends on tourist travel and, for that, tourists need to be confident they will not be seized and/or killed. Even so, I doubt many tourists are visiting the Sudan or Somalia these days. Mexico is a hotbed of kidnappings, but they seem to leave the touristas alone for the most part. However, if you are making travel plans, you can feel confident visiting Switzerland or Vatican City.

Hostage taking is, of course, not a joking matter, but it has been so much a part of history that, unless you are a valuable bargaining chip for some nation or group, you can and should pretty much kiss your rear end goodbye if they grab you.

Don’t expect for it to end any time in your lifetime or beyond.

Communism Kills

By Alan Caruba

On June 16, a reception will be held to celebrate the launch of the Global Museum on Communism at the Romanian Ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C. Other events have preceded the effort to ensure that the millions of victims of Communism in the last century are not forgotten.

I have no doubt that an invitation was extended to President Obama, though I doubt that he will be among the guests. After all, the man who has appointed some fifteen “czars” to run the affairs of his administration seems to have an affinity for direct rule over accountability to the Congress or the Constitution.

In an excellent, recently published book, “United in Hate”, by Jamie Glazov, the author notes in his preface that, “Throughout the twentieth century, the Western Left supported one totalitarian killing machine after another. Prominent intellectuals from George Bernard Shaw to Bertolt Brecht to Susan Sontag venerated mass murderers such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh, habitually excusing their atrocities while blaming America and even the victims of the crimes.”

Glazov noted that, after 9/11 leftists like “Jimmy Carter, Noam Chromsky, Michael Moore, and Tom Hayden, once again reached out to bloodthirsty tyrants bent on human destruction.” Who can forget Sean Penn’s globetrotting to defend the likes of Saddam Hussein or Hugo Chavez? Inherent in the Leftist view of the world is the embrace of despots.

If you ask people how many have died from communism oppression they tend to have either no idea or a vague notion that it’s been a lot. “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression” is a chilling recounting of the toll that communism has taken.

Here are estimates of the numbers of victims:

65 million in the People’s Republic of China
20 million in the former Soviet Union
2 million in Cambodia
2 million in North Korea
1.7 million in Africa
1.5 million in Afghanistan
1 million in the former Communist states of Eastern Europe
1 million in Vietnam
150,000 in Latin America

These grim statistics include executions, intentional destruction of population by starvation, and deaths resulting from deportations, physical confinement, or through forced labor.

Leftists tend to find reasons to excuse or ignore these atrocities. A Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Walter Durante of The New York Times during the rise of Stalin managed to overlook his deliberate starvation policy imposed on the Ukraine. Jane Fonda famously lent herself to the propaganda of the North Vietnamese during the U.S. war to defeat a communist takeover.

A lot of Americans, mostly the younger ones that have passed through our government schools, think that there are no more communist regimes in the world and do not make a connection between them and the repression of the people under their control even as fairly new dictators like Venezuela’s Chavez emerge.

Efforts to rescind restrictions on a communist dictatorship 90 miles from the U.S. border, Cuba, have been initiated by the Obama administration. The response to one of the worst Communist nations, North Korea, has been mostly temporizing and downplaying of the threat they represent to major allies.

It is understandable that the nation’s attention has been focused on the Middle East and the rise of the threat of Islamism, but Communism is still alive and a force in the world even as it tries to present a less threatening face to it. It is a deception.

Since October 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution has spawned the deadliest ideology in all of human history. In less than 100 years, Communism has claimed more than 100 million lives and it continues to enslave one-fifth of the world’s population.

Conservatives understand the threat. They oppose Barack Obama because his life has been filled with Leftists and his calls for the redistribution of wealth, his support for labor unions, his attacks on Wall Street and efforts to secure government control of the nation’s banking system, and to impose a nationalized healthcare system come right out of the Communist handbook for the control of our lives.

A memorial to commemorate the victims of Communism stands just two blocks from the U.S. Capitol building. A museum, much like the Holocaust Museum, is in the works. We must never cease to oppose Communism. We must not forget those who gave their lives in Korea and Vietnam during the Cold War to oppose its spread.

We must not allow our government to yield or fall to its siren call.

For more information about the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, go here:
http://www.victimsofcommunism,org.

America's Enemies

By Alan Caruba

Listening to President Obama one might think that America doesn’t have a single enemy that could not be turned into a friend if only he was given the opportunity to just talk to them. He is a great believer in diplomacy even though diplomacy has rarely stopped a war if one party was determined to wage it. War doesn’t need the consent of both.

Perhaps because I was born just prior to the outbreak of World War II and grew up aware of terrible things happening in both Europe and Asia, followed by having an older brother who served during the Korean War, plus my own service in the U.S. Army, my attitude about wars has been shaped by a lifetime in which I cannot recall a minute when America wasn’t at war, engaged in a war, or threatened by a war.

To this day I have considerable antipathy for “peaceniks” and war protesters even though, as the ill-fated Vietnam War dragged on, I joined a march or two. If ever there was a wrong war in the wrong place, Vietnam was it. For those unfamiliar with it, it was essentially a civil war into which the U.S. inserted itself due to a “domino theory” that, if Vietnam fell to communism, all the other Asian nations would as well. At the time, the Cold War was still raging since the end of WWII and Chairman Mao was still in charge of China.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t plotting against you, so it’s always a good idea to take a very general survey of those nations who wish us ill.

After a slow start, the U.S. is contemplating putting North Korea back on its list of terror-sponsoring nations. I suspect many Americans with no memory of the Korean War during the 1950s dismiss North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile capability. Not only will this thugocracy sell its WMDs to anyone, but the renewal of the Korean War is never more than 24 hours away. The U.S. is committed to intervene.

Iran, despite being on the other side of the globe, is working toward having its own nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems. As far as the Middle East is concerned, that’s a war just waiting to happen.

Americans seem to have forgotten that Saddam Hussein fought a war with Iran for eight years, settled for a stalemate, and then invaded Kuwait. If ever there was a good reason to fight a war to rid the region of this troublemaker, I cannot think of one. Now the problem has shifted to Pakistan, under attack from an enemy of its own making, the Taliban. Since Pakistan has nukes, it cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of fanatical Islamofascists.

Right next door India keeps a wary eye on Pakistan. Bordering Pakistan to the north is Afghanistan, a nation of tribes that, though occupied over and over again, has resisted all invaders for centuries. Just because 9/11 was planned there doesn’t mean the U.S. needs to maintain a military presence there. The prospect of an effective central government is quite distant despite the money, military manpower, and other efforts the U.S. is making.

So the enemies we can identify include any and all Muslims who support the view that Islam must rule the entire world. There are more than a billion of them.

Russia is no friend to the United States, but Russia is no friend to Europe or China either. Almost entirely dependent on the export of oil and natural gas, its fate rises and falls with the cost of a barrel or cubic foot of both. The fall of the Soviet government and the loss of its satellite nations in Eastern Europe have not significantly brought about a change of attitude in the Kremlin although much of the population would be more than happy to embrace the free market capitalism of the United States.

China is no friend either even though it is highly dependent on its ability to manufacture and export its goods to the United States. Our current economic woes worry the Chinese who own billions in U.S. treasury bills along with the fact that Americans aren’t buying as much of their stuff lately. China has perhaps the largest espionage effort regarding the U.S. of any other nation in the world.

Americans have been slow to respond to yet another enemy, Mexico. The U.S. has been literally invaded by Mexicans though they came looking for jobs and a better life. The result, however, has been enormous financial burdens on all aspects of our society from schools to hospitals to welfare and to crime. There are an estimated 12 million illegal Mexicans and others from south of the border and Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leaders, wants to push through another amnesty bill.

The last amnesties only resulted in a greater rush to enter the U.S. Only a handful in public office will address the fact that the Mexican government has openly encouraged this invasion because the money sent home is a significant part of its economy. It is a major trading partner, but it looks to become totally controlled by the narco lords.

We have been slow to say or do anything about Venezuela, led by the dictator, Hugo Chavez. This likely has much to do with the oil that nation exports to the U.S. Chavez, however, is closely allied with Hezbollah which, in turn, is allied and controlled by Iran. Chavez has been buying up a lot of weapons of late and it has nothing to do with defense and everything to do with his bad intensions. Once a democracy, Venezuelans are now totally under the control of their government.

The U.S. just got around to arresting two former members of the State Department who had allegedly been spying for Cuba for thirty years. President Obama wants to lift restrictions on that dictatorship that have been in place for at least 50 years. Since the Soviet Union fell in the 1990s, Cuba has fallen on hard times, but it is still an enemy.

Africa is fairly dormant though Somalia has fallen to the Islamofascists. The U.S. has conspicuously done little to relieve the horrors in Darfur, inflicted by the Muslim Sudanese government. Overall, there is little likelihood that the U.S. will become embroiled in a war in Africa. It too is a significant source of oil.

If there is a common theme to our present threat levels, it is oil and, more precisely, the failure since the 1970s of the U.S. to access the abundant reserves of our own oil in the interior of the nation and from its offshore continental shelf. Since the Obama administration is hell bent on covering the U.S. with wind turbines and solar panels, we shall remain hostage to oil-producing nations.

The enemy that is only beginning to make himself known to Americans is President Barack Obama who has swiftly created an administration that ignores its many cabinet departments in favor of “czars” that have been ceded power over all elements of our nation. They rarely hold any press conferences, nor do they seem responsive to the inquiries of Congress. The only function of the cabinet secretaries appears to be to stand behind the President when he makes various announcements. No wonder he greeted Hugo Chavez with a big smile.

Taking control of automobile companies is unconstitutional. Giving bailouts to them is unconstitutional. Permitting the Federal Reserve to print money without regard to the inflationary impact this will have is reckless. Voting for a “stimulus” bill without reading or even debating it is reckless. Running up the national debt is reckless. Putting the value of the U.S. dollar in doubt is criminal negligence.

Trying to take over the nation’s health systems and to require all Americans to purchase health insurance flies in the face of free market capitalism and cedes control over the most intimate aspects of our lives to the government.

We now have a Homeland Security Department that identifies any American who disagrees with the Obama administration as an “extremist.” This includes people who oppose abortions, oppose illegal immigration, support the Second Amendment right to own and bear weapons, and veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorism is no longer part of its vocabulary, but “man-caused disasters” is.

If Americans don’t besiege and change Congress to reverse these assaults on the economy and the Constitution, this nation will fail and our liberties will be memories.

How NOT to Defend America

By Alan Caruba

Does anyone believe that we don’t live in an increasingly dangerous world; one in which nuclear weapons are proliferating and worldwide Islamic terrorism threatens our nation and others?

The first months of the Obama administration bode ill for the safety of the United States. Calling on the United Nations to rebuke North Korea for what North Korea has always done, fire off missiles and test atomic bombs, is as useless a response as could be imagined. Consider this approach in light of the administration’s cuts to a much-needed missile defense system for the homeland.

Organizing a serious inspection system of every ship entering or leaving North Korean waters would go much further to reducing its ability to ship its weapons to others with bad intentions. Is it an act of war? Is routinely using U.S. national holidays to demonstrate its belligerence a signal of their intentions? They have already said they do not intend to abide by the 1953 armistice agreement.

What has been Iran’s response to President Obama’s extended hand of friendship? They have sent their warships into international waters, although it can be argued they want to protect the oil tankers on which their economy depends. They have tested new longer range missiles, making it clear they can now target Israel and others in the region. They continue to work on developing nuclear weapons.

In a recent commentary, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, warns that the Obama administration has dispatched a diplomat to Russia to negotiate a new bilateral treaty to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with the possibility of reducing by as much as a third of what is left of our arsenal of nuclear weapons. You can bet the Kremlin is delighted with this prospect.

In another move, Gaffney warned that the Obama administration wants to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that was rejected by a majority of the Senate a decade ago. The treaty would permanently prohibit the U.S. from underground nuclear testing. Good news for North Korea, Iran and every other nation that wants to threaten us.

At the same time, while babbling endlessly about “energy independence”, we live in a nation that sits atop vast reserves of coal and oil. Since the 1970s, however, successive administrations have taken steps to ensure that we can neither mine, nor drill for any of it.

Not a single new oil refinery has been built in the U.S. since those years when the oil industry had windfall profits taxes imposed and other measures that deterred the prospect of domestic exploration and development.

We have a President who is on record opposing the building of any new coal-fired plants to provide for our growing need for more electricity and has rescinded any exploration for oil or natural gas reserves along our vast continental shelf.

Thanks to the environmental organizations the United States has allowed ideology to trump common sense regarding our energy needs and the arms agreements the Obama administration is pursuing would leave us unable to fulfill our obligations to the many nations that depend upon our nuclear umbrella to protect them.

The Obama administration has a Transportation Secretary who wants the government to “coerce” everyone to abandon automobiles in favor of mass transit and bicycles.

We have an Energy Secretary who says the answer to a non-existent global warming is to paint the roofs of all buildings white to reflect the Sun’s radiation.

The administration has a science advisor who wants to shoot soot or something else into the atmosphere for the same purpose.

We have an Environmental Protection Agency Director and an environmental advisor to the President who believe that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” instead of a gas that is vital to all life on Earth.

We have a Congress that is contemplating a ludicrous Cap-and-Trade bill that would impose a tax on the emission of carbon dioxide on all energy producers and users for the purpose of deterring global warming at a time when the Earth is now ten years into a cooling cycle. It would destroy an already fragile economy.

As General Motors and Chrysler ready themselves for bankruptcy and huge downsizing measures, the Obama administration has imposed a new standard for gasoline use in automobiles that will require that they be smaller and more dangerous. Nor is there any indication that Americans want to purchase or drive such models.

A recent Rasmussen telephone survey revealed that 75% said that finding new sources of energy to reduce our dependence on imported sources of energy should be the goal of our government.

And, finally, we have a President who has rather casually said that the nation has run out of money.

Does any of this suggest that Congress and the White House have abandoned anything that resembles common sense? Has the unconstitutional looting of the national treasury done anything other than to debase and devalue the dollar? Are we less safe now that we no longer have the robust national security policy of the past eight years?

The Obama administration, in concert with Congress, is seeking to disarm the nation at the very time we need to expand our military capabilities. The same administration is seeking to impose “global warming” mandates and restrictions that threaten our economy.

Ideology, whether it is about the environment or about national security, endangers our nation at every turn.

North Korea 'Nukes' Obama Blather

By Alan Caruba

There’s one thing to be said about North Korea; it knows how to make the United Nations, President Obama, and all talk of ending nuclear weapons a very bad joke.

Presidents since the days of Harry Truman have been talking about a world free of nuclear weapons and that is just not going to happen. They are possibly the best deterrent on Earth when it comes to the potential of being invaded. Like the Colt revolver in the days of the Wild West, nukes are the great equalizer among nations.

Every time India and Pakistan get really angry at each other, someone in the room reminds their respective leaders that the other has nukes. After that, it’s a nice chat between diplomats over a cup of tea and some lovely cookies.

Japan, a nation that knows something about being nuked by two atomic bombs, has been reluctant to add nukes to their arsenal. The increasing belligerence of North Korea, however, is likely to change that. The umbrella of protection that the United States has provided since the end of World War II has been giving way to the realization that Japan needs its own defense capabilities.

Meanwhile, at the United Nations we witness once again how utterly useless it is. When you have China sitting as a permanent member of the Security Council, you’re not likely to get any action regarding North Korea. It provides China with the leverage to make the West and other nations worry a great deal about sales to nasty people in Iran and elsewhere.

It would not have surprised me at all to learn that, after letting the North Koreans begin building a nuclear facility in Syria, the Chinese slipped the map coordinates to the Israelis.

Why no President has ever simply sent in the Air Force to bomb the known North Korean locations of missile launch sites and facilities is answered with one word: China.

What makes this even worse is the long record of “humanitarian” aid that North Korea has received from the United States over the years.

A 2006 State Department report reads as follows:

“Since 1995, the United States has provided over $1.1 billion, about 60% of which was paid for food aid. About 40% was energy assistance [oil] channeled through the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the multilateral organization established in 1994 to provide energy aid in exchange for North Korea’s pledge to halt its existing nuclear program.”

“U.S. assistance to North Korea has fallen significantly over the past three years, and was zero in FY2006. The KEDO program was shut down in January 2006. Food aid has been scrutinized because the DPRK government restricts the ability of donor agencies to operate in the country. Compounding the problem is that South Korea and China, by far North Korea’s two most important providers of food aid, have little to no monitoring systems in place.”

North Korea is not just “a rogue nation”; it is a gangster nation that has long engaged in every form of criminal activity you can name. In addition to its weapons program, it is a major counterfeiter of U.S. and other currencies. It has imprisoned countless thousands of its own citizens in labor camps.

I am reminded that George W. Bush named it as one of his “Axis of Evil” that everyone got upset about; naming Iraq and Iran as the other two elements. I already miss his refreshing candor.

This is what President Obama will do: NOTHING

This is what the United Nations will do: NOTHING