When it comes to North Korea,it’s good to know that our military has its priorities straight
The headlines have been deeply disturbing: North Korea, led by an unstable 20-something, has reinstated war against the United States and South Korea after a fifty-plus year hiatus in active hostilities. Admittedly, North Korea hasn’t fired any shots yet, but its rhetorical volleys have been incendiary. Just yesterday, it cut the single communication line that ran between North and South Korea.
Although the full scope of North Korea’s nuclear capability is a mystery (indeed, the full scope of its entire military is a mystery), we know that it’s spent the last fifty-plus years building weapons aimed at Seoul. Even if 90% of them are duds (entirely possible given North Korea’s fizzled rocket exercises living standards), the 10% remaining could wreak havoc on the densely populated South Korean peninsula. Japan would also be in North Korea’s cross hairs.
With the war drums beating, the United States Navy is hard at work keeping a sharp eye on the most significant threat to the United States — climate change.
No, that’s not one of my typos. That’s really what Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III said. Even the très liberal Boston Globe seemed taken aback:
America’s top military officer in charge of monitoring hostile actions by North Korea, escalating tensions between China and Japan, and a spike in computer attacks traced to China provides an unexpected answer when asked what is the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific region: climate change.
Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, in an interview at a Cambridge hotel Friday after he met with scholars at Harvard and Tufts universities, said significant upheaval related to the warming planet “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.’’
“People are surprised sometimes,” he added, describing the reaction to his assessment. “You have the real potential here in the not-too-distant future of nations displaced by rising sea level. Certainly weather patterns are more severe than they have been in the past. We are on super typhoon 27 or 28 this year in the Western Pacific. The average is about 17.”
Put aside the fact that huge bodies of new, verifiable evidence show that all the hysterical climate models were grossly exaggerated. Nature is just doing what nature has always done. But even if you too believe that climate change is imminent and apocalyptic, right now you need to stay focused on the fact that, with North Korea threatening imminent nuclear hellfire, our Navy is concerned focusing its efforts on hypothetical threats twenty or more years down the line.
Since I’m a big fan of the Navy, I absolutely refuse to believe that Admiral Locklear has drunk that deeply of the Kool-Aid. This must be some elaborate double-blind technique. I can think of two sneaky reasons to explain this idiocy: The first is that the Navy is deliberately ignoring North Korea in order to show that the U.S. is a strong big dog, disinterested in a little dog’s inane yapping. In other words, Locklear is engaged in an elaborate power play. The second is that this is a ruse to hide the fact that the U.S. is planning a major and immediate response if North Korea sends so much as a toy dart over the Demilitarized Zone. Even as the North Koreans think that we’re dumb as rocks, we’re planning a big defense or assault.
I hope I’m right. Otherwise, our nation is in deep doo-doo.
Hat tip: Ace of Spades