So Kim Jong Il, who seems to have more Cylon blood in him than most of us, is firing rockets which is making Japan and the rest of the world nervous.
Still…it could have been worse.
The satellite is transmitting the melodies of the immortal revolutionary paeans ‘Song of Gen. Kim Il Sung’ and ‘Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il’ as well as measurement data back to Earth,” it said, referring to the country’s late founder and his son, its current leader.
It could have been Narn opera.
PAD
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yeah –
bunch of sci fi geeks could launch a rocket that transmits Kilingon opera!
or worse… they could be trying to beam an overriding signal of “Stop or my Mom Will Shoot!” on a continuous loop!
Or “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.”
Now they’re saying that the rocket and whatever payload it had landed in the ocean…so whatever it’s playing is only annoying the fish.
Hard to believe that North Korean technology, from the country that brought us famine induced cannibalism and Pulgasari, would fail, but there you are.
I’m sure Kim Jong-il is literally shaking in his boots over the expected response, which include a harshly worded editorial in the New York Times and a stern rebuke from the President to, quote, “Cut it out.”
I am of the opinion that when someone tries to provoke you, you ignore them. You take their capacity to waste billions of dollars on potential WMDs seriously, but you don’t panic the way they want you to.
Never mind that Iran successfully launched a satellite two months ago, and no one noticed. And Iran scares me a lot more.
Some of the missiles that America developed in the early days failed, too. We learned from those mistakes. Korea will learn from theirs, too.
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Plenty of people noticed Iran, by the way. Part of the reason that the US is reaching out to Syria right now is to exert more pressure on Iran.
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We have to do more stuff like that. Not panic, not make a show of force, but keep talking to the countries we have problems with and their neighbors. We spent several years of the Bush administration ignoring Korea and it only made things worse.
Bill Mulligan says:
April 5, 2009 at 3:52 pm
“I’m sure Kim Jong-il is literally shaking in his boots over the expected response, which include a harshly worded editorial in the New York Times and a stern rebuke from the President to, quote, “Cut it out.” ”
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“And what a bowel-churningly terrifying finger-wagging that was…!”
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How come there’s never a leather clad hero with a honking great starship around when you need one?
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Cheers.
Or worse than that…”Donald, Where’s Your Trousers?”
Billions and billions spent on anti-missile technologies, ‘Star Wars’ projects, and no one was able to stop them. Looks like the nay sayers were right about the technologies being far from up to scratch.
I don’t think anyone tried to stop it. can’t complain about a device’s ability if you don’t bother to press the on switch.
I believe Japan was prepared to do some shooting down if anything looked like it was going to land on them, but otherwise everyone seemed content to let it succeed or fail on its own merits (with most betting on “fail” happening).
StarWolf, we have anti-missile weaponry. We didn’t use it this time. It wasn’t a failure of technology, but of will.
After all, it wasn’t like it was transmitting Vogon poetry…
J.
We have a version of the technology, but the military is not claiming that it’s 100% done yet.
Or a medley of the complete works of Rick Astly….
Of course, it could have been *much* worse:
It could have been Vogon poetry…
Shall I be the first to say it?
“America… fûk yah!”
Well, left alone and with enough money and dedicated effort most countries could develop the kind of stuff they’re talking about. America went to the moon with tech that’s 40 years old by today’s standards, so while it may be rocket science it’s not metaphorically “rocket science”…
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It bothers me somewhat that countries still seem to end up being led/ruled by people who are, as far as I can tell, crazy as outhouse rats and twice as bloodthirsty.
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Admitting my own ignorance, anyone tell me why Russia and China are so reluctant to condemn these guys when the UN Security Council discusses them?
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I think discussion and dialogue are better ways forward than flat out military intervention – which includes shooting down their rockets – but ultimately if it’s the few guys at the top who are the problem I can see ways of taking them out of the equation that don’t involve full scale invasion…
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Cheers.
I think they see North Korea as a means to annoy the USA and Japan without doing it themselves and potentially drive a wedge between us. Japan can’t be too happy with how this played out–we had one general say we COULD knock the missile out of the sky and then another official clarifies that we WON’T unless it heads over OUR territory…message to Japan; you’re on your own. Thanks for the anime.
You could well be right, it just sounds like a fairly juvenile approach to 21st century realpolitik if that’s what it is. I was hoping(?) there was something a bit more pragmatic involved… Ah, well… so it goes.
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Cheers.
Good try with the pop culture reference, PAD. Only six years behind pop culture.
Nice attempt at trolling. Over fifteen years behind the curve.
PAD
Good try with the comeback attempt, PAD. Only 40+ years too old to do it effectively.
And it only took you a week to come up with that response, Goodtry. As your name says…
Admitting my own ignorance, anyone tell me why Russia and China are so reluctant to condemn these guys when the UN Security Council discusses them?
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It largely has to do with what they perceive as being the alternative to a communist North Korea. China and Russia both have a considerable amount of influence and financial connections with the nation. The ties date back to the Cold War when they backed the North Koreans. They did so primarily because they did not want a democratic United States ally right at their borders where missile bases could be installed. China and Russia have traditionally been willing to back North Korea until the state becomes a threat even to them. When North Korea tested a number of missiles and conducted an underground nuclear test China was more than willing to back UN sanctions.
What we might see come out of this is Japan and South Korea become fully fledged members of NATO. At present they are at contract status, which limits exactly what the United Sates can do in retaliation. One of the ideas of NATO was to give the United States a “back door” into war. Basically, if a member of NATO is the victim of an aggressive action, the United States can, by international law, state that the aggressing party has declared war on the United States itself. We can then go in without fumbling with red tape and accusations of interventionism and similar aggressive tendencies.
Also, in case there is confusion, a big part of this was North Korea swore up and down it was launching a satellite when everyone assumed it was a ballistic missile test. The latter was obviously true as the missile made no attempt to enter stable orbit, detach a satellite or do anything resembling a space installation launch. Even still, the missile failed. I should note, some people are more concerned about a sort of “Third World Manhattan Project.” Korea develops working missile tech, Iran enriches uranium, extra parts and designs are sold by Russia, or less likely China, and somebody winds up with a complete system.
Way off subject again, sorry about that– but the RSS feature to this site still isn’t working. Do you plan to add an RSS option so I can try to “add” it again in my reader?
I’ve always thought a possible solution was to just hand over North Korea to China. Just tell them, hey, it’s yours. How they take it is no great concern.
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Normally I don’t like the idea of a country falling inder the iron heel of Chicom oppression but in the case of North Korea that would be a major step up and it isn’t like there’s any likely scenarios where they end up as a democracy.
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Maybe we could trade it for Tibet. And Belgium, just to scare everyone. Keeps them on their toes.
Belgium? Didn’t you guys get enough world bad press for going after the oil? Start trying to corner the chocolate market and we’ll really get rude on you! 😛
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Cheers.