Threshold of War

Months without writing and here I am with two posts in as many days.

But this Saturday before Easter is a weighty moment. We stand at the brink of war. And it will be an ugly one. Only a miracle can prevent a major conflict. Christians...on your knees.

Everyone is in an impossible position, particularly relating to the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

Kim Jong-Un has been strutting and huffing and puffing, as well as ignoring and/or taunting its neighbors, the UN and the US for years. Now the hard point has come and he cannot back down without losing a large amount of “face”. It might end his regime.

He must fight if the US doesn't back down. He will lose. But it will be expensive for the rest of us.

At the same time the US cannot bluff and cannot allow Jong-Un to call its bluff. To do so would cede almost all influence in Asia to North Korea. A nuclear capable North Korea, with a half-crazy dictator at the helm and no one capable and/or willing to stand up to him, could call all the shots in the region.

Not good.

How did we get here? Well, it is the result of a hapless and limp-wristed US foreign policy. No. It is not all Barack Obama's responsibility. It merely culminated with his wandering policies and his penchant for getting rolled by foreign leaders.

It really started with Jimmy Carter and his kid-glove handling of the socialist regime in North Korea. Well, in other places as well. But the war will start on the Korean Peninsula. It won't end there, but that is where it will start.

When the US goes weak at the knees, the dictators and international bullies of the World are emboldened and start to flex their muscles. Though the situations got tamped down some during the Reagan and G.W. Bush years (Saddam Hussein getting dragged out of his hidey-hole and hanged cooled the ardor of a lot of troublemakers) the only way to really re-can a can of worms is to get a bigger can.

And we have gotten to the point in North Korea, and are close to it in the Middle East, where the only bigger can available is the use of force.

I wish to be wrong. I pray for a miracle. I see no other way out.