While I’m normally a member of the amen choir with regards to Fred Kaplan’s views on the DPRK, this time I found myself wondering when the sermon would be over. He seems just a little too giddy about the Big Bottle Rocket that turned out to be something of a dud.
Third, he could have tested the missile and watched it fail. That would have been the worst possible outcome, and that’s what happened yesterday. It’s like a bank robber who gets everyone’s attention by firing his gun at the ceiling—and a little flag with the word “Bang!” pops out of the barrel. The only effect is that he’s no longer taken seriously.
Kim Jong-il, these past few years, has adroitly played his otherwise miserable hand because of two cards that everyone believes he holds—nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Yesterday’s dud raises the possibility that the missile card’s a bluff, that there may be (as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland) “no there there.” The next tempting step is to wonder about the nukes. We know that he has enough plutonium to build some bombs, but has he built them? Can he build them?
2 Comments
Well they have but implementation keeps getting stymied by whiners (like you?)
Well they have but implementation keeps getting stymied by whiners (like you?)
You see that Shelton? You and other so-called bloggers are personally responsible for the failure of the free world to force the DPRK to collapse.
You jerk.
Seriously, that comment makes Shelton-hating a caricature of itself.