And with this latest salvo of seven missiles shot into the Sea of Japan, North Koea became a much, much worse problem.

The article linked in the headline assumes very little. And that is a dangerous thing to do when dealing with a dangerous nation like North Korea.

What is dangerous is that the United States has no grand strategy on how to deal with North Korea, so any "options" are essentially just loose talk, something this country doesn't need, especially with the possibility of North Korean nukes reaching the mainland.

We can no longer pretend that entering into negotiations with North Korea will yield any of the basic aims of the US, namely, cessation of their nuclear program. It should be clear after 12 years of useless and self-deceiving negotiations, this regime in North Korea will not abide by its agreements under any circumstance.

And 12 years is a long time, enough to move a nuke program long sufficiently where the regine has no incentive to cease its ongoing military buildup.

So, with that let us press forth a grand strategy in dealing with North Korea.

The first premise is that in the end North Korea is a political problem. No matter whatever damage North Korea can militarily bring against the south, it is the element that suffers the most in North Korea, need and deserve a political solution. That means election and reunification.

But elections without a regime change are simply kowtowing to the insanity of the situation, consideration and courtesy of the current regime can never trump the only real solution: regime change.

In 2002, Predident George Bush began to float the idea of a regime change in Iraq, a proposal that was welcomed by many conservatives, so much so, that an actual debate ensued that fall which led to Bush getting the authorization he needed to go to war to topple Saddam.

It made sense to do so: Iraq was constantly violating the terms of the 1991 cease and had in fact light up its air defenses against American combat aircraft, an overt act of war. As it was, Iraq turned out to be rather unfinished business, given that Saddam was on the hunt for CBR weapons, and, as it is now revealed, was providing material asistance to Al Qeada and to Afghanistan's Taleban regime.

The paralells here are quite acute. North Korea has failed to abide by any agreement to stop their nuclear program, and even when multilateral talks were in session, the North Koreans continued to abrogate their agreements in such a way that make them a considerable threat.

The pronouncement this week of a threatened North Korean nuclear strike on the US in the event of the US defending itself should have been the last straw. North Korea, for better or worse has declared war and its intention to wage nuclear war once it has its weapons.

So, it is up the the US to get the promised political change underway and the only way to do that is for a joint congressional resolution outlining exactly what the president may do to effect regime change and a democratic political solution on the US. There is no other way, and there can be no shrinking from this duty, if congress is to abide by its oath to defend the constitution of the United States. We are fairly certain that North Koerea will not go quietly. We should understand that it will in all likelyhood invade or first strike the South, then point to the US as the main reason.

This is a Korean and thus a political problem. We should no longer stand troops in the country and allow an insane government to threaten them with nuclear weapons without responding. To do so without trying to press for a political solution would be to throw them away.

For all the talks of possible responses, they will be useless without clear intent from the Congress of the US of its objectives and the only acceptable objective from an American standpoint is a political solution, a regime change.


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