Stopping Nuclear Terrorism
On Friday, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, to be released in February, will focus on nuclear terrorism. This will be the first time the review makes countering this threat a central goal of the country’s nuclear planning.
What is the best way to stop nuclear terrorists? Of course, we can — and should — break up al-Qaeda cells, secure loose nukes, and scan our cities for tell-tale signs of radiation. Yet if that is our emphasis, we are playing a losing game.
Why? On an average day, people successfully smuggle 21,000 pounds of cocaine and marijuana into the United States. On an average day, 29,000 trucks, 1,100 buses, 27,000 cargo containers, and 295,000 cars cross into America. On an average day, 124,000 pedestrians enter our country legally and another 1,500 people do so illegally. Should we be confident that, in the midst of all this traffic and over the course of decades, we will be able to find disassembled nukes, softballs of uranium, and oranges of plutonium? We may catch shipments now and then, but all it takes is one failure to change the course of history.
Yet we are not doomed to suffer a nuclear detonation on our soil. Terrorists, as capable as they are, cannot enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium. In other words, they cannot produce fissile material, the cores of nuclear devices. They can steal such material, but that is also an extremely difficult task, even in chaotic Pakistan, whose army has been penetrated by terrorist sympathizers. As a practical matter, nuclear terrorists need to purchase uranium or plutonium, and the most likely seller is North Korea.
In April 2003 in Beijing, a North Korean diplomat told one of ours that his country reserved the right to sell nuclear weapons. Pyongyang has a history of carrying through on its threats. This decade, it has sold to Iran weapons-grade uranium, which spilled on the tarmac of the Tehran airport in May 2004, and a nuclear reactor, which the Israelis destroyed in the Syrian desert in September 2007. Iranian technicians reportedly witnessed both of North Korea’s nuclear detonations, in October 2006 and May of this year. There is evidence that the North has sold plutonium to Iran and, by way of Pakistan, uranium to Libya. There is one inescapable conclusion: North Korea poses one of the gravest threats to the international community.
This is all the result of appeasement since the Korean War, of ”reasonable” diplomats, of seeking ”negotiated” ways out of conflicts, of talking incessently about ”peace” – the world is headed to hell because of liberal BS. War is how you get peace, you utterly & completely defeat your enemies. Today, the West is governed by a bunch of spineless invertebrates, self-interested scumbag politicians, & wacko Leftist ideologues.
Bush should share some of the blame for not pulling the trigger on A. Q. Khan and others. According to Eric Prince, the CEO of Blackwater, his assassins were trailing and planning a hit on him but Bush pulled the plug. Which is worrying since Bush constantly gets pegged as being the most hawkish president in America history yet not even he had the balls to carry out the necessary dirty work to keep us safe. That man is too dangerous to freely roam about and would be killed ASAP if we had any brains. And his story is typical of a larger problem in the West. We invite countless millions of people from every corner of the world, including from hostile nations, to get free access to our top universities and science facilities in the name of “reaching out” and they turn right around and use that training to stab us in the back. That suicidal nonsense needs to end. Our colleges and businesses should be filled with our own citizens. Not the citizens of foreign countries.
Mr. Chang, you stated, “We deterred the Soviet Union for decades, but that was only because the Kremlin’s leaders were horrified by the prospect of horrendous casualties. We cannot assume the same about Kim Jr. After all, he adopted policies that could only result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of his fellow Koreans, and that is in fact what happened in the great famine of the mid-1990s. Therefore, we cannot assume that Kim can be deterred by the prospect of massive death.” If the Koreans really cannot be intimidated by a massive response by either the United States or South Korea, then we are hopelessly doomed to any form of extortion the North Koreans demand from us. Therefore, we are going to have to eventually draw the line in the sand somewhere, unless the Obama administration wants to give in to North Korea’s every demand. I personally do not believe this. The mantra from the Democrats (especially people like Clinton and Obama) has always been to apply pressure on China because it seems that China is the only country that can influence events inside of North Korea. That is pure junk. If North Korea really doesn’t care about what any other country can do to it, then it certainly won’t care about Chinese. Kim Jr. is just like any other petty dictator who wants to maintain power for him and his family. He values his own skin and nobody ever seems to wonder what would happen if we just say “no” to him. What if WE threaten a complete and total naval blockade of his country if he does not stop exporting nuclear technology and weapons? For once, call his bluff. If this guy is really as suicidal as everyone says he is, then he will eventually attack South Korea no matter what we say or do. So we may as well stand up to him now while we’ve still got the muscle, before Obama totally neuters our military. If Kim finally backs down, great. If he really attacks South Korea, it simply means that he was going to do that anyway and his nuclear program was only a pretext to going to war. Either way, by NOT standing up to this psychotic loser, all we’re doing is destabilizing the world with nuclear weapons and kicking the can down the road to let some other Congress or president deal with him. He will keep on trying to blackmail anyone who will listen to him because that’s the only bargaining chip he has to keep his collapsed economy going. We should also make it very, very, clear to him that if the United States is attacked by any country or group of terrorists that obtained their nuclear materials from North Korea, that we will not hesitate to reply in kind, holding North Korea responsible, and attack them with nuclear weapons as well. Kim has to understand that he will have a lot to lose if he continues playing this dangerous game. The question is, does our own president have the guts to play this high-stakes game of chicken as well?
I live in fly-over America. I don’t see what the fuss is all about. When the Mad Dog Mullahs think they can get away with it, they will provide one of their tame terrorist groups with a nuke. Nothing they do with it will bother me. Nuke New York? I’ll throw a party. Nuke D.C.? I’ll throw a bigger party. The survivors will call it a terrorist attack. I will call it justice, since it is only thru the efforts of New York (MSM) and DC (State Department) that the Terrorists have a nuke to set off.
There is a real simple way to deal with both the Norks and Iran. Negotiate by day, bomb by night. Every morning the Diplos can meet somewhere. The US diplos tell the wogs what we want to stop bombing. The wog diplos tell us yes and we stop bombing. Or they say no and we bounce the rubble some more.
I call it B-2 Diplomacy. If Bush 43 had used this in Iraq, it would have been quicker, cheaper and just as effective as putting 2/3′ds of the army on the ground. Eventually one of our smart bombs would have shared a space and time with Saddam. Briefly. Very briefly.
Scrape some of Saddam up to get a DNA match and we are good to go.
This technique would work quite well with ALL dictators. The Air Force tried, but they quit to soon. You keep bombing until you either get the SOB or he surrenders. Even if it takes years, that is quicker then an invasion and occupation.
Point all this out to the Wog diplos on day one (1). Then flatten the Despots palace that night. Let him hide in his bomb shelter. The next day ask his diplos if he slept well. Ask them how well he will sleep that night and every night for the rest of his miserable life.
We have time and Stealth Bombers. We can’t lose.
“A smile and a .38 gets you farther then a smile alone.”
- Al Capone
” Libertyship46:”
May I please encourage you to break up your long posts into paragraphs? You are severely harming the effectiveness of your well thought out views.
Barack Obama is not going to do anything to truly rebuke our darker skinned enemies. He is existentially committed to the notion that our allegedly white man imperialist policies are the cause of Kim Jong Il aggressiveness. We merely need to apologize and be nice—and everything will eventually work out. Turning the United States into a socialist utopia is Obama’s first, last, and foremost goal. The Korean situation essentially bores him to death.
Nuke D.C.?
A while back the History Channel has a episode about whether the country was ready for a disaster.
The used a terrorist nuking of Washington DC as the object of the study.
I could not watch that episode.
The smile that kept coming back really hurt the muscles in my face.
Stopping Nuclear Terrorism
Stopping > Surviving
Nuclear > WMD in the hands of
Terrorism > Suicidal Sociopaths
The survival of the US depends on
an efficient=unreliable infrastructure
vulnerable to a cascading failure started
by a single, relatively small disruption.
Replacing our worn-out, monolithic monster
with new, hi-tech, fault tolerant, modular
systems will be expensive; fortunately, we
can sell them to the rest of the world, and
do well by doing good.
to John Birther and Mike,
you both want America to get nuked because, I’m assuming, a bunch of liberals will be get killed? That’s what you are smiling about and throwing parties? You are both horrible America hating jerks. You are the problem. If you don’t like it in America then leave. Losers.
David Thomson, what world do you live in? Oh yeah, Korea is all Obama’s fault. Please read some history or really, just shut up.
“David Thomson, what world do you live in? Oh yeah, Korea is all Obama’s fault. Please read some history or really, just shut up.”
I do sufficiently know the history of both the Asian and African peoples—and the disasters resulting from white guilt. One must also add India to the list. Too many left-wing whites foolishly apologized for bringing Western Civilization to the natives (and yes, I will use this term). That is completely dumb. Western Civilization has nothing to do with ethnic and racial classifications. Matthew Arnold pointed out that it is merely the best that human beings have said and written.
Barack Obama has not worked out all of his hostility towards “white” civilization. The slanderous way he spoke about his white grandmother is a quintessential example of this rage. Obama instinctively blames the West for most of the troubles of the world. At the end of the day, a thug like Kim Jong Il is a victim of Western imperialism. We are supposedly responsible for his vile behavior.
“sassynola:
to John Birther and Mike,
you both want America to get nuked because, I’m assuming, a bunch of liberals will be get killed?”
No, what I want is for you to learn to read. I never said I wanted ANYONE nuked. I said it wouldn’t bother me if they were. Once you learn to read, you will realize that those two (2) things are not the same.
Then I said I would be happy if New York got nuked, even more happy if D.C. was nuked. Once again, that is NOT the same thing as wanting them nuked. I’ll bet your life would improve if you worked on your reading skills.
BTW, how would it hurt America to have New York vanish in a Pika-dan? New York IS NOT America. It’s not even a big part of America. Neither is D.C. With New York and/or D.C. gone America would be a better place.
America IS NOT a big pile of dirt between two (2) oceans. America is the Constitution and the 300 million people it protects.
Take those people and their Constitution and move them to any other place on Earth and within 3 (three) generations they would be the worlds sle superpower. It’s not the dirt that Makes America great, it’s the Constitution. The dirt here is the same as everywhere else.
I realize this is a difficult concept for someone who is functionally illiterate, but think about it. IF you can.
AS far as leaving, I did that during the Clinton years. This time I’ll stay and fight.
JBS: Maybe we could do it with a phone call? “Good morning, Bing Bang Bong, would you like to shut down all your nukes today? Or shall I do it tomorrow?”
Perhaps the prospect of their capitol becoming a parking lot would move the demonic despots a step closer to sanity?
Question: Will the New World Order destroy our economy more expeditiously by facilitating arms races around the world, or by establishing a Pax Americana? And, once they succeed in the destruction of our economy,(they will), how shall they then deal with the nuclear states of Pakistan, North Korea and Iran?
While I stop short of celebrating the “nuking” of any American city (fallout would reach into the heartland) I am convinced that withouth a serious change in policy we are going to see exactly that. Obama is playing a dangerous game and appears inept and weak to the likes of Il. I can see no diplomatic solution presenting itself in either the case of North Korea or Iran. When dealing with the insane concepts such as diplomacy only play into their hands. They will court us with the right hand while the left searches for the button. They are using diplomacy as a means to buy time and nothing more. We are ignorantly playing thier game on their terms. In such a scenario we lose.
I think Bush should also be blamed. As far as I can remember, is all started in his administration.
I live on the North Korean / China Border. North Koreans have no love for Chinese, they throw rocks at boats entering or leaving, shout insults…there is no love from North Korea towards China. The thought that China somehow controls / influences North Korea is simply not true.
We need to separate North Korea beliefs while under the supervision of their internal police and security forces, and then when those security personel are not there; there are two very divergent feelings about the “Dear Leader”.
As far as Uranium and Plutonium, the answer is very simple and has existed since the birth of the Nuclear Reactor; Thorium. If the Govt would stop screwing around and get its act together, Thorium solves all the issues and can incinerate both Uranium and Plutonium instead of storing it at Billions in cost and risk each year.
Terrorism; Leave the North Koreans to their own end. why do we need to involve ourselves and meddle in their affairs? as long as we present ourselves as the opposition to Dear Leader, he remains in power. Once there is no opposition, there is no reason for him to exist. The Military structure is justified to thwart an invasion. Remove the threat and the cost and social justification for that government ceases. There are Millions of North Koreans under guard for having the audacity to believe in freedom, give the rest of the population the same audacity and the govt falls.
If North Korea attacks or supports an attack, then draw a line in the sand, anyone steps over it is killed. End of story.
Foreign policy is simple if you have the guts to follow through with it.
I hope you do not believe a word I type;
Check it out for yourself:
The (real) expert opinion is that the US
is going to get nuked, sooner, rather
than later, due to proliferation to
countries with inadequate safeguards
on nuclear material and weapons.
This will serve as a wake-up call, and,
if the US can survive the resulting, ah,
civil disorders, goad us into preparing
for the true threat, which is biological.
You heard me right: The US can survive
the damage done by a single tactical Nuke,
or even a series, over time; One Plague
could finish us off permanently.
Since no defense is perfect, it will be
necessary to adopt a preemptive offensive
strategy: google ‘CoDominium’. :>
12. No it wouldn’t. Prevailing winds would take the fallout from an attack on the East Coast out to sea.
14. To do that, we need to build more nuclear power plants and actually reprocess our fuel. I’m all for it, but we need some action.
Terry, I am afraid you are right. Thanks for your comment.
Marsh, I am not sure we should have snuffed A.Q., but we could have reeled him in much sooner. We didn’t because we wanted to know the identity of his customers, but we let him operate way too long. And we let the Chinese protect him. The Bush administration deserves criticism for all of this.
Libertyship46, you wrote: “We should also make it very, very, clear to him that if the United States is attacked by any country or group of terrorists that obtained their nuclear materials from North Korea, that we will not hesitate to reply in kind, holding North Korea responsible, and attack them with nuclear weapons as well.”
Bush issued a “fully responsible” warning to Kim in October 2006, but Kim did not take it seriously. Kim continued nuclear exports, and Bush did not follow up by interdicting those exports. Dubya failed the American people, as Obama is doing now.
John “birther” Samford, you quote Big Al Capone. Arthur Waldron puts the same thought this way: “Smith & Wesson beats four aces.”
Robert, you wrote: “They will court us with the right hand while the left searches for the button.”
This is brilliant. Many thanks.
small home, North Korea started its bomb program in the 1960s.
alex, yes, the North Koreans dislike the Chinese, but Beijing supports the Kim regime and, when it wants, can get Pyongyang to act, especially because China supplies 90% of the North Korea’s oil, 80% of its consumer goods, and 45% of its food. During the last 15 years, the North Koreans have not crossed Beijing when it counted.
We should oppose Pyongyang now because, although everything you say is true, the North is supporting Iran, and Iran matters.
M. Report, thanks.
So far, biological agents, although deadly, could not deliver a knock-out blow. They are hard to weaponize and deliver, fortunately. Do you disagree?
Even bubonic plague, scourge of the Middle Ages though it was, killed about half of Europe at most. Biological weapons are very dangerous, but only a fool or a suicidal man makes a highly contagious bio-weapon, lest it blow back in his face. Islamic terrorists may pull a stunt like that, but North Korea won’t. Kim won’t build anything he can’t control.
wow! it was unexpected point of view! but i want to tell you that to compare cocaine with uranium is not quite lawful. 1-uranium is radioactive and it is possible to mark it with equipment, and drugs-not.
2.-i think that nuclear weapons is much more serious problem so it will be sponsored much better.
3.-Israel is involved in this and they are very professional in such things.
so i hope you are wrong)) and the prob will be fixed.
@ 24. Gordon Chang: Bio-war KO ?
The longer answer was deleted, so:
Not yet, but soon, and available
to terrorists or even individuals.
before we worry too much about dis arming the North Korean, we should dis arm the Nazi Israeli government. that would help the middle east. I am not sure what Obama can do but Bush certainly did not dis arm them…
Israel will abandon its nuclear arsenal when Jesus tells them it’s safe to beat their nukes into fuel rods because He will enforce Peace, and not a moment before that.