The Ball Keeps Rolling Downhill Even After the Machine Says "TILT"

Mark "Insert Scabrous Nickname That'll Wow 'Em on the Playground Here" Levin:

Last evening on my radio show, I suggested that in dealing with North Korea's nuclear test it was time to go back to the Cold War model of Mutually Assured Destruction; that we assist Japan and South Korea in developing nuclear weapons; and that we also arm Taiwan.

Say, aren't those...what's the word? Democracies? Don't they get to vote or somethin'?

We need to arm our allies in the Pacific Rim in response not only to North Korea's nuclear ambitions, but to limit China's ambitions. North Korea is a satellite of China, and North Korea couldn't survive without China's support, let alone develop nuclear arms. China's protestations today make for good reading, but they are meaningless.

It's like trying to stop a leak coming from behind a wall...Mark "The Men in Black Hack" Levin finds the point about China and still ends up with his pants all wet. Mutually Assured Destruction? At this point it's Assured Destruction of any state that used nukes in any non-US-approved way (the sole exception being Israel, which, of course, doesn't have any). To reach "mutual" we'll have to give up about half our arsenal, even before we start quibbling about just what, if anything, is "assured" about North Korea's supposed nukes.

Now, if we required a regional response to Kim, land-based weapons would not be the answer, even assuming that what headline writers in this country insist about the Japanese would ever become the reality with enough actual Japanese to turn into a genuine nuclear weapons program (they're a little pressed for space over there--maybe they could squeeze a few silos into the Hiroshima Peace Memorial). Land-based nuke sites are more-or-less agreed to be pretty fucking good targets for nuclear attack, and that's without mentioning the sort of provocation China would see in arming Taiwan (they're funny that way). And we're talking about two island nations and a peninsula. We can put ICBMs and nuke-tipped Cruise missiles on submarines these days, Mark. Those are boats that go under the water. And come back up. No, really. You don't have to hold your breath or anything.

And "limit China's ambitions?" Okay, we're gonna give you a Gold Star for clawing your way to the 20th Century by the end of the paragraph, but China's ambitions in the 21st Century are unlikely to be thwarted by anyone in the foreseeable future, excepting maybe China, and certainly not by the United States of America, which really needs the replacement for its own slave labor. And if you'd like to thank someone for that state of affairs it would be the armchair Buck Turgidsons--such as yourself--who've pissed away sixty years of diplomatic opportunities because it's so much more satisfying to make a muscle in the bathroom mirror and pretend that this time you'll get to keep your lunch money.