All Kim Jong Il wants to do is talk, so he'd have you believe. Why, oh why, won't the US talk with him one-on-one? He's so ronery.

This, historically, is his one and only stall tactic that he's used successfully in the past to confuse his neighbors and frustrate us into giving him concessions. We pat him on the head like a child that's acting out and subsequently lose respect at home and abroad.

Jack has a commenter who mentioned an op ed piece in today's Washington Post by Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, assistant secdef and secdef under Clinton, respectively, which advocates preemptive destruction of the Taepodong II missile. "We should not conceal our determination to strike the Taepodong if North Korea refuses to drain the fuel out and take it back to the warehouse." They also suggest the reactions of the other members of the 6 stakeholder countries and a potential retaliation scenario.

The United States should accordingly make clear to the North that the South will play no role in the attack, which can be carried out entirely with U.S. forces and without use of South Korean territory. The United States should accordingly make clear to the North that the South will play no role in the attack, which can be carried out entirely with U.S. forces and without use of South Korean territory. South Korea has worked hard to counter North Korea's 50-year menacing of its own country, through both military defense and negotiations, and the United States has stood with the South throughout. South Koreans should understand that U.S. territory is now also being threatened, and we must respond. Japan is likely to welcome the action but will also not lend open support or assistance. China and Russia will be shocked that North Korea's recklessness and the failure of the six-party talks have brought things to such a pass, but they will not defend North Korea.

The United States should emphasize that the strike, if mounted, would not be an attack on the entire country, or even its military, but only on the missile that North Korea pledged not to launch -- one designed to carry nuclear weapons. We should sharply warn North Korea against further escalation.

On a retaliation scenario of invading South Korea:

An invasion of South Korea would bring about the certain end of Kim Jong Il's regime within a few bloody weeks of war, as surely he knows. Though war is unlikely, it would be prudent for the United States to enhance deterrence by introducing U.S. air and naval forces into the region at the same time it made its threat to strike the Taepodong. If North Korea opted for such a suicidal course, these extra forces would make its defeat swifter and less costly in lives -- American, South Korean and North Korean.

I agree with the sentiment that we absolutely must insist on the DPRK ratcheting down their sabre rattling and that we must present a forceful front. These two men are smarter than I am, without a doubt, and absolutely have access to more intel than I do, but I can't help but respectfully disagree with their characterization of the reactions of our allies / other members of the 6 party talks as well as the invasion scenario. The possibility of invading N.Korea is ridiculous, honestly. If the Iraq war proves anything, it's that we can have a successful military engagement and be completely hamstrung by our "allies" and popular opinion. And that's not even getting into actual forward-thinking rationale. I'm not suggesting that there'll be a guerilla resistance by short, malnutritioned pompadour wielding men, but that, except for our active military, our resolve is so shaken that any post-missile destruction military action's outcome is literally an unknown. No longer does a victory mean we win.

Further, this last iteration of relying and pressuring our "allies" such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to do anything but help superficially is completely disheartening. South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia will not sit idly by, shocked at DPRK's recklessness, if we destroy DPRK's missile capacity. They'll be shocked at our recklessness and they'll complain in all the ways they can: to the UN, to each other, to Iran, to our press. The collateral damage won't be the military base on which the missile resides, but America, itself. This is consistent with the Einhorn quote in Jack's post:

Robert Einhorn, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said a U.S. shootdown of a North Korean missile on a test flight or a space launch would draw "very strong international reaction" against the United States. [msnbc]

If Kim Jong Il can just feint with a nuclear delivery system instead of picking up the phone every time he wants to talk, and we do nothing about it while also having our machismo pushed into a corner, we're setting a bad precedent: If you have nuclear weapon capability, you are actually at the big boy's table, even if you're not. This particular threat by DPRK is forcing proving the efficacy of the nuclear card. What'll we do if Iran claims they can enrich their own uranium and sees no need for the IAEA's additional protocols?

Kim Jong Il and the DPRK leaders need to go. They've worn out all their diplomatic welcomes. I believe we have an opportunity in this DPRK act of aggression, even though we've got very little political clout to enact it - make South Korea, Japan and China request US military action, as the emir of Kuwait did, during the first Gulf War. This won't avoid retaliation or ensure any sort of regime change, but it will place the ultimate responsibility upon the countries of the region rather than the moral burden of preemption on us. We can't just serve notice and fire off a cruise missile without knowing that Kim Jong Il's neighbors will accept the collect call.

South Korean anthropologists who measured North Korean refugees here in Yanji, a city 15 miles from the North Korean border, found that most of the teenage boys stood less than 5 feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds. In contrast, the average 17-year-old South Korean boy is 5-feet-8, slightly shorter than an American boy of the same age.

The height disparities are stunning because Koreans were more or less the same size — if anything, people in the North were slightly taller — until the abrupt partitioning of the country after World War II.

"I just can't respect anybody that would really let his people starve and shrink in size as a result of malnutrition," President Bush told White House reporters in October [2003].

Link to the Taepodong Musudan-ri (Taep’o-dong-2, Musudan-ni) missile launch site in DPRK w/ Google Earth: