iLook China

What Richard Fernandez wrote about the current situation in Korea for Belmont Club of Pajamas Media was wrong. He wrote,” Barack Obama … is beaten before he starts” as if the only response is to declare total war on North Korea to punish them for what they did.

Anyone who studied and understands Sun Tzu’s The Art of War knows that retaliation of North Korea would be a lose-lose situation for everyone involved.

What was lost? Two South Korean soldiers were killed and a dozen injured. There was no invasion or huge loss of life.

Let us not forget that the Korean Conflict never ended in the 1950s. North and South Korea are technically still at war and these flare-ups are a continuation of that conflict.

The problem with invading or bombing North Korea is that millions of Koreans on both sides of the DMZ would die.

Then Fernandez spends time on North Korea’s nuclear weapons and writes about nonproliferation indicating that if Obama doesn’t use force to punish North Korea, then Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore will eventually take steps to acquire nuclear weapons making the world a more dangerous place.

Obama is not a cowboy from the neoconservative, nation-building hawks of the Bush Whitehouse.

Instead, Obama has borrowed a tactic from President Theodore Roosevelt. Obama talks softly but carries a big stick, and America’s enemies and allies in Asia know this.

After all, in 2010, President Obama sent another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and you seldom win shooting wars without shedding blood.

The Nation says, “The Obama administration is trying to kill its way to victory in Afghanistan.”

In fact, Obama still uses the infamous Blackwater to find insurgent targets in Pakistan. The Nation says, “These are not people that believe that Barack Obama is a socialist, these are not people that kill innocent civilians. They’re very good at what they do.”

“Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated, The United States has expanded drone bombing raids in Pakistan,” The Nation says. “Obama first ordered a drone strike against targets in North and South Waziristan on January 23, and the strikes have been conducted consistently ever since.”

“The Obama administration has now surpassed the number of Bush-era strikes in Pakistan and has faced fierce criticism from Pakistan (without Obama backing down) …”

One comment to Richard Fernandez post about Korea says China would come across the Yalu River as it did in the 50s. That’s also wrong since America could destroy North Korea without a ground invasion. It could all be done from the air. Then we could ignore North Korea.

In fact, Mao ruled the China of the 50s. When Mao died in 1976, revolutionary Maoism was repudiated and the Maoists swept from power.

Then in 1982, China wrote a new Constitution with term and age limits for politicians. Since Mao died, China has had four presidents because the law says the president of China may only serve two five-year terms. The 1982 Constitution also has an article of impeachment.

Today, China is an open market, hybrid capitalist, socialist republic that spent the last three decades building a modern China. That could all be lost by sending troops across the Yalu River to support North Korea as Mao did.

Imagine what would happen if the US destroyed the Three Gorges Damn with cruise missiles.

Then there’s what Time said last year. “South Korea, backed by the U.S., doesn’t want war, because the North has some 13,000 artillery tubes aimed at Seoul and more than 10 million South Koreans living within 30 miles of the DMZ.

“North Korea, backed by China, doesn’t want war because if it comes, it all but guarantees the collapse of Kim’s regime, which is also the family business.“

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

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