Fat Man

Ironically, the only two atomic bombs ever dropped in anger (U.S. on Japan in WWII) were named "LittleBoy" and "Fat Man" ... both apt discriptions for Kim Jong Un.

Was MacArthur Right?

                              "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away ..."

Back in 1950 after North Korea had invaded South Korea ... and the ROK/UN forces with the considerable help of the United  States under General Douglas MacArthur had, within the year,  pushed the Norks back to the Yalu river, the Chinese Communists entered the war with massive hoards of soldiers ... some not even armed. MacArthur felt that this aggression required that the U.S. respond with tactical nuclear weapons against these massive Chinese armies. For his outspokenness on this issue, he was fired by President Harry Truman.

The question now poses itself ... was MacArthur right? The real decision point was whether MacArthur's action would have started a world-wide nuclear conflagration? I think that this is a difficult question. But my best guess is no ... because the U.S. was so far ahead of every other country that China and Russia would not dared to respond in kind. China was 14 years away from having an atomic weapon and Russia only had had them for four years ... and was three years away from the H-bomb.

So, what might have been the result if Truman had given MacArthur his leash? One, we would now have a unified Korean peninsula with no Kim Jong Un and his atomic madness. Number two, China might well feel more reticent to challenge the West militarily. And three, China might even have followed Japan's path toward demilitarizing as a result of the trauma it experienced at the Yalu river.

Yes, there were risks involved under MacArthur's strategy ... but were they any larger than what we face today?

The Next Caliphate

The Muslim religion has often had an unique proselytizing strategy ... either convert to our way of worship or we will kill you. And this impetus has been abetted by the promise that any Muslims dying in the pursuit of this end will be richly rewarded in the afterlife. These unyielding stratagems have worked at least twice in the past ... first when the Bedouins helped Islam conquer almost half of the known world and, secondly, during the growth of the Ottoman Empire. For a bloody maddeningly complicated and a maddeningly bloody exposition of this history of Islam, see: Wikipedia Entry.

Now Islam appears to be entering another ascendancy with the creation of multiple radical sub-sects spread throughout the Mideast desiring finally to create the ultimate world-wide caliphate. This, interestingly, corresponds with the leader of the free world, the President of the United States, having grown up in a Muslim world, clearly exhibiting a sympathetic prejudice to this quest. And, for some mysterious reason which escapes me, much of the rest of the Western progressive movement seems to be following in lock-step with our fearless leader.

And since there are something like 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, this is not a trivial threat. Even if only 1% of this this populous is radicalized, this still means 15 million bad guys are to be dealt with ... the ones who may be naively trying to recreate this caliphate. Fortunately for the rest of us ... some 7 billion of other religions or no religion ... there are at least three major countries which are not ready to rollover to this existential threat ... Russia, China and India. I am tempted also to include the United States and France, but not quite yet ... perhaps after the next presidential election. The rest of  Europe, particularly Germany, seems still to have the scales firmly attached to their eyes.

I can't believe that, given the firepower of the protagonists mentioned above ... and the demographic imbalances ... that this will turn out well for the caliphate antagonists ... particularly if the protagonists can garner the gumption to resist. Of course when Iran gets atom bombs ... combined with those that Pakistan already has ... this shifts the odds slightly.

Afterthought: The motivation for many liberals (Western European politicians, the Clinton Foundation, John Kerry and much of the Obama administration) to embrace Muslims and Muslim causes may be little more than money ... 30 talents of silver ... the cash crumbs that fall from the oil-rich tables of Mideastern potentates.