Missile Attack 2006

If you haven't seen Team America, the time is now. North Korean foolishness is among the many items of ridicule, alongside overblown Hollywood blockbuster cheese, American arrogance, and numbwit celebrity actors. With the events of the past few days it's impossible not to think about the puppet version of Kim Jong Il from that movie tossing Hans Blix into a shark tank and singing about a crazed, tyrannical loneliness.

So what to make of the news that the tinpan dictator is now blowing up fish in the Sea of Japan? Does any sober human being imagine that sternly worded statements from the U.S. State Department will have any effect? What about the glowering stare of Condi Rice - who does a better 'pissed off' than any Bushie?

Crazy people change the game entirely. Even the appeasement crowd must eventually concede that there is nothing, ultimately, that works when you mix nuts with angry. Clinton administration officials have been on the news channels in the past couple of days suggesting vigorous bilateral negotiations -- a Clinton specialty, we might recall. But if we actually bother to review the results of our last efforts along those lines we might be less enthused. Dear Leader lobbed his last Long Dong in 1998, even while squeezing two light-water reactors from Mrs. Albright and company. Not exactly "getting to yes".

In response to something unrelated (global warming) John Derbyshire of The Corner coined the hypothesis of collective imprudence, which might apply to North Korea. It simply states that "no large collectivity of human beings (nation-state or larger) will ever act to avert an obvious calamity until that calamity begins to cause really major, dramatic, unignorable damage". And maybe it's a self-validating hypothesis, but it's alarming to think we are such a lazy species -- motivated either by material lust or the need to snatch our asses away from the fire at the very last minute. But what's really causes us trouble is the intuitive tendency of psychotic jackasses like Mr. Jong Il towards exploiting the HCI for maximum advantage.

Let's just hope there are no accidents. If one of these medium range missiles goes clattering into downtown Tokyo it will be very illuminating to see how one of the great warlike nations of the last century responds to a clear and present danger. And by the way - show of hands. Does anybody aside from fringy progressives still think Ronald Reagan's kooky 'missile defense' scheme is still a lousy idea? Didn't think so.