So it’s been a stressful week here in America, hasn’t it? Our progress in Iraq has been going just about as well as my professional tennis career, and then we get to round out the week by learning that not Iraq, but North Korea has managed to develop some sort of nuclear bomb. Here all this time we’ve searching the Middle East with a fine-toothed comb, bombed and rebuilt, and never managed to find anything more than their leader hiding in a hole in the ground, and it turns out there was a completely different crazed leader that we should’ve been worrying about! Now what was it that Mom used to say about keeping all of your eggs in one basket?
Now I’m going to warn you right off the bat that this week’s column is probably going to run a little short because honestly, should we really be all that surprised that there are other countries out their developing nuclear technologies that can be used in warfare? We already have them, so one would reason that it makes only good sense that anyone who would even think of combating us would want to have something similar in their own arsenal. I know – not exactly along the lines that any of us want to think about, but let’s be realistic here for just a moment. Regardless of what you want to attribute our presence in Iraq to, you can’t deny that said presence could certainly be seen as unsettling for other countries who haven’t always seen eye-to-eye with the United States. Over the past years, nations and even our own citizens continue to be amazed at the lengths that our government have gone to with “The War on Terror” and if I were one of those nations who isn’t exactly on the President’s Christmas card list, I’d be a little concerned about whether or not I might wake up the next morning with a military presence on my front door, too…
I guess I’m a bit conflicted on this because although I don’t necessarily feel comfortable with them having a bomb, A) it doesn’t really surprise me that they do; and more importantly B) I fail to see the logic where it’s ok for us to have them, but not anybody else. And I know that a lot of people deem this kind of talk “unpatriotic,” even though I think that’s a load of crap, but how is it fair for us to go to such lengths to defend our ideas and beliefs, and then get all bent out of shape when somebody else does the same? Sure, most will declare it a defense issue because we can’t defend against someone as easily if they have equal or better guns than we do, but at the end of the day it’s still a double-standard to me. We believe we’re “safe” when we have the bomb and everyone else is a step behind us, but how can another country also feel safe from the other side of the line when they’re not “allowed” to hold a defense mechanism of their own?
Right now it’s hard to say what North Korea’s plans for these technologies are – certainly we’ve always had a conflict with their methods inside their own borders and some might simply see this “test” as a warning for us to mind our own business. It’s worked for China, and some might argue that their regulated lives are the polar opposite of those here in the States, so perhaps in the height of Bush’s War on Terror, Korea just wanted to step forward and say, “Leave us alone, okay?” Of course, there’s always the threat of their planning an invasion of their own, but at the same time, knowing that we’ve got missiles pointing right back at them, it would never make much sense to start a fight knowing that you wouldn’t be coming out of it alive.
Granted, no one ever said that extremists are ever known for making sense and that’s often what starts a World War in the first place, but at the end of the day I think I’d rather sleep on the notion that even the most regimented of nations would rather just be left to their own devices than die out in a war that will destroy the masses…
The thing is, at the end of the day, I’m not as much disturbed about North Korea having nuclear weaponry as I am about anyone having nuclear weaponry – ourselves included. When I live in a country that’s gone to war against the wishes of the popular mass and it’s that select few at the top who get to decide whether or not to nuke, that’s just as worrisome to me as seeing a country like North Korea with such capabilities because at this point, I honestly don’t know where either side is coming from. And I hope we all never have to find out, but only time can tell how else these conflicts are going to get resolved because at least up to this point, talking hasn’t exactly been very high on the agenda.
Maybe our government will prove me wrong this time and realize that they can’t walk into this one guns shooting and egos flying high – I hope so because I’ve thought about it a lot and I just don’t see things working any other way. Whether we like it or not, we now know where one of the world’s greater threats stands technologically and it’s likely going to be our move to influence what they do next. The only thing that’s for sure – in nuclear warfare, no one really wins. It’s a scary time to be alive, my friends…
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