(Observer) — We don’t hear mere saber rattling on the Korean peninsula. Sabers are local, short-range weapons. The dreadful noise in east Asia is something far more potent: the provocative July 4 blast of a North Korean missile capable of striking North America.
South Korea’s Sunshine Policy to coax North Korea to end its nuclear quest? The Clinton Administration’s Agreed Framework of economic carrots and heavy oil to encourage regime moderation? Two decades (or more) of rational U.S. appeals to China to help curb the noxious Kim regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and to help terminate Pyongyang’s cyclic bouts of military attacks on South Korea?
These soft power gambits may have thrilled the editorial board of The New York Times, but they didn’t stop North Korea’s dictatorship. The Kim regime now has an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in its arsenal—one that threatens Anchorage, Alaska, and perhaps Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Eight years ago, on July 4, 2009, North Korea conducted a missile test. July 4 launches are clearly messages to America.
