North Star Writers Group

Last month, North Korea got the world's attention by launching several missiles in violation of international law. None of them got very far off the ground, but with the lessons learned from the failures (presuming they indeed were failures and not intentional aborts), the most brutal and cruel dictatorship on Earth came one substantial step closer to having the ability to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. And the range on these weapons is sufficient to hit Alaska, Hawaii and even the West Coast.

So what was the response? A lot of bluster and lip service and the usual "threat" to get the utterly impotent U.N. (Useless Nations) to issue even more of the same. The last time we went round this track, it gave Saddam Hussein time to move whatever weapons he may have had into Syria or elsewhere. (And it's presently accomplishing zilch with Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) Unfortunately, this time we're not talking about older materials that, with any luck, might not have worked anyway (not that it was a chance that could be taken regardless). This is a much more dangerous situation, and waiting is most assuredly not going to make it any less so.

We know that North Korea has the nuclear materials for the warhead. You can thank the Clinton Administration for that. They were dumb enough to get played by a lunatic dictator with Chia Pet-hair and a fetish for dressing like Ernst Stavro Blofeld of the early "James Bond" movies. (Sure, we'll take an evil thug at his word. He wouldn't lie, after all!) But that's water under the bridge now. However he came by the stuff, he now possesses it and must be dispossessed of it. If not, then every nation within range will have to take preventive defensive measures. Some, like Japan, already are.

It cannot be good for the stability of the entire Asian Pacific rim to have every nation brandishing weapons (not to mention ever more nervous trigger fingers), just in case. It reminds me of a line from Hunt for Red October by the American Ambassador to the Soviet Ambassador: "Can't you see how having your submarines and ours, your ships and ours, close together is inherently dangerous?" Placing all those weapons in close proximity, in the hands of people not accustomed to them....well, let's just say they have a way of going off when no one intends for them to.

Far better to not travel down that road in the first place, and stop this before it gets any more out of hand than it already has. There can be no arguing that the regime of Kim Jong Il has any legitimacy. He oppresses, starves and kills his own people, having turned the entire country into one abominable torture chamber, so much so that many try to escape into China at risk of punishment worse than death. Let me repeat that. North Koreans are willing to sneak into a communist dictatorship at the price of unfathomable torment should they be discovered, caught and returned. That is how awful life in Hell on Earth is.

Perhaps the only bigger crime is that the world has ignored the horrific plight of the North Korean people and let them suffer so much for so long. (Including, most appallingly of all, their South Korean brethren. Apparently their cushy lifestyle can't be crimped by unthinkable evil just a few miles to the north.) It's past time to come to their rescue. Some will argue that Kim will take out Seoul, or that innocent North Koreans will be killed, should we try to remove him. Waiting changes this how, exactly? It only raises the price and the stakes that much further, in the expensive currencies of blood and death. (And insofar as the North Korean people go, if any were killed they might at least be put out of their misery once and for all. Those who think this a silly statement clearly haven't any idea what kind of evil really gets perpetrated north of the 38th parallel.)

It's not going to be easy, but the right thing to do virtually never is. Nor will it be without cost, but the right thing to do is virtually never free. It must be done. And we must come up with the moral will to see this for the imperative that it is, and accept and complete this difficult task. Or accept that we will have effectively told the world that getting nukes makes you untouchable. (Yeah, that's going to keep them from proliferating. Not.) I fear that, for our part, we no longer have what our forefathers showed at places like Normandy. We would rather turn a blind eye than do what must be done. I sincerely hope my fears are unfounded - for the War on Islamic Terror, for Iran and for North Korea.

"If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly." --MacBeth, Act I, Scene 7

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This is Column # DKK19. Request permission to publish here.