The Armies of the North

I am at a total loss when it comes to understanding the infinite details of politics in Asia. Like any other public school kid, I know the basics: the 38th parallel, the policy of containment, nuclear weapons, cold war, yada yada yada. However, like any other public school kid, I find myself woefully uneducated regarding current events and real life in communist China and North Korea.

What I do understand, I understand from a Biblical perspective. Jeremiah and Ezekiel speak of great armies coming from the north to attack Israel-- Biblical scholars have often drawn connections between these prophecies and the continent of Asia. In modern terms, they've focused specifically on Russia and China. The idea of Russia and China (along with their communist associates in the region) attacking Israel makes complete sense, given the fact that they're communists, and they're allied with militant Islamic countries in the Middle East. Russia, for instance, has sent troops, weapons, and military equipment into the Palestinian-occupied Gaza Strip, in order to "train" the "Palestinian Army." Without a doubt, Russia, China, and North Korea are supplying the entire Islamic Middle East with weapons of mass destruction to be used both on Israel and the United States forces stationed in that territory.

So, what is the United States doing about it? Over at One Free Korea the most recent blog posts indicate that the U.S. is doing more to help rather than hinder the enemy. Massive food donations to the starving millions in North Korea are going unchecked, leaving Kim Jong-Il to roll in the grain while his people are being systematically starved to death. When it comes to North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the United States is engaging in multilateral "talks" with the nation. Talks. These people have nukes, and we're sitting down to tea and krumpets. According to Logical Conclusions: North Korea, Iran, and unintended consequences published on the CATO Institute's website in 2003:

"North Korean and Iranian leaders likely noticed that the United States treats nations that possess nuclear weapons quite differently from those that do not possess them. That is not a new phenomenon. Just six years after China began to develop nuclear arms, the United States sought to normalize relations, reversing a policy of isolation that had lasted more than two decades. U.S. leaders show a nuclear-armed Russia a fair amount of respect even though that country has become a second-rate conventional military power and a third-rate economic power. And Washington treats Pakistan and India with far greater respect since those countries barged into the global nuclear-weapons club in 1998."

Has the United States's attitude changed in the past 2 years? According to an American Foreign Press report published on December 5, 2005:

"In recent years, US-South Korean ties have been strained due to differences over how to rein in North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and how to reshape the US-South Korean military alliance.

The United States is in the process of reducing its forces on the Korean peninsula from 37,000 troops to 25,000 by 2008 and withdrawing them from the frontline with North Korea to bases south of Seoul."

Instead of attacking a huge source of the problem in the Middle East, thereby cutting the insurgents' weapons supply in the jugular, we're following a policy of appeasement and alliance with the North while we hang the South out to dry. Instead of fighting on the offense, we're fighting on the defense and we're using the wrong weapons. We're "talking" when we should be shooting-- a lot and quickly. Instead of ensuring the safety and well-being of our troops, our nation, and Israel, (along with the millions of innocent citizens in the region) we're made to act as if we're sitting ducks in the line of fire. Ridiculous.

Free North Korea, liberate countries from communist regimes, and you'll have a safer Middle East by default. As I've argued before communism and Islamic terrorism are joined at the hip, yet the world still refuses to acknowledge it. Only now are conservatives and conservative groups waking up to the fact that the policy of containment popular during the Cold War proved fertile breeding ground for the relationship between communists and Islam. However, it's not too late.

Scanning further down into One Free Korea, I found this clever post citing former CIA Director James Woolsey's comments on the un-political correctness of the recent film Team America:

"[Filmmakers] Parker’s and Stone’s special gift is to see the pompous, the absurd, and the self-important through the eyes of the young and to caricature these with Chaplinesque comic sensibility. The Middle East — where there is plenty of pomposity, absurdity, and self-importance — is a place where satire and ridicule can be particularly powerful weapons, especially with young people. We should not fight the spirit of rebelliousness of the region’s youth but go with it. It is now the case, and sometimes we even deserve it, that we are that spirit’s target, but we should do our best to help it focus heavily on the real and entrenched enemies of young people’s freedom: the Middle East’s pompous totalitarians."

The war we are in is a war of ideas where words are weapons, but they are also the fuel that burns the fires. Democracy began as an idea. America began as an idea. Israel began as an idea. These ideas fueled fires in the souls of men and women that were so powerful that nothing, not pain, not suffering, not the fear of death nor death itself, could extinguish their faith in and their hope that these ideas could--and would-- become realities. Knowing and believing in all these good things must give us the understanding that "the tongue is mightier than the sword." Use your words. All of us may not have guns, but we do have our voice.