He's gonna get a bomb
First we had the bomb and that was good,
'cause we love peace and brotherhood.
Then Russia got the bomb but that's OK,
'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way.
Who's next?
Well France got the bomb but don't you grieve,
'cause they're our allies - I believe.
Then China got the bomb but have no fears,
'cause they can't wipe us out for at least five years!
Who's next?
Egypt's gonna get one too, just to use on You Know Who.
So Israel's getting tense, wants one in self-defence.
The Lord's our shepherd says the psalm, but just in case -
We're gonna get a bomb!
Who's next?
Well Indonesia said that they, were gonna get one anyday,
South Africa wants two, that's right.
One for the Black and one for the White!
Who's next?
Well Luxembourg is next to go, then who knows maybe Monaco?
We'll try to stay serene and calm....
When Alabama gets the bomb.
Who's next, who's next, who's next, who's next?
Tom Lehrer
Well North Korea has gotten themselves a nuke, and whatever the world decides to do about it, Kim Jr. is being treated like a major player, which seems to be what he wanted all along.
To me it seems like being a small country with one or two nukes is like holding a pistol on a roomful of men armed with machine guns. Sure you could do some damage for a second or two, but...
Now that North Korea has one, does anybody doubt that Iran is not far behind? The most optimistic predictions had an Iranian bomb from 5-10 years off. Now they can just buy/ borrow one.
Still, small countries make convenient targets, i.e. it's not difficult to plaster the whole damn place with comparatively little of the arsenal of any of the Big Three nuclear powers and they know this.
What we've got to wonder about is:
1) Are either of these guys crazy enough to openly use one on us or any friend of ours? Well if either one did, it would likely only happen once. Afterwards there'd be a salutary example that the world would remember for a lo-o-o-ong time.
2) Would either try to funnel some nukes to terrorists with no fixed address, while maintaining deniability? Oh dear, this offers some problems. A response might be to announce in advance that any unexplained nuclear bombing would be followed by the bombing of: Tehran, Damascus, Pyongyang, Paris... (just kidding, sort of).
3) If Kim Jr. and Amenaboo-boo are really crazy or out of touch enough to try something like that, would the people around them let them get away with it? Because a country has a suicidal psycho leader does not necessarily mean that he's surrounded by suicidal psychos.
Well we'll probably wind up trying sanctions for a while. Who knows, if China's on board it might even work. On the other hand, millions more Koreans are going to starve to death because nobody's got the juevos to calculate the "terrible arithmatic" that Lincoln spoke of. And starving men do tend to get desperate.
'cause we love peace and brotherhood.
Then Russia got the bomb but that's OK,
'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way.
Who's next?
Well France got the bomb but don't you grieve,
'cause they're our allies - I believe.
Then China got the bomb but have no fears,
'cause they can't wipe us out for at least five years!
Who's next?
Egypt's gonna get one too, just to use on You Know Who.
So Israel's getting tense, wants one in self-defence.
The Lord's our shepherd says the psalm, but just in case -
We're gonna get a bomb!
Who's next?
Well Indonesia said that they, were gonna get one anyday,
South Africa wants two, that's right.
One for the Black and one for the White!
Who's next?
Well Luxembourg is next to go, then who knows maybe Monaco?
We'll try to stay serene and calm....
When Alabama gets the bomb.
Who's next, who's next, who's next, who's next?
Tom Lehrer
Well North Korea has gotten themselves a nuke, and whatever the world decides to do about it, Kim Jr. is being treated like a major player, which seems to be what he wanted all along.
To me it seems like being a small country with one or two nukes is like holding a pistol on a roomful of men armed with machine guns. Sure you could do some damage for a second or two, but...
Now that North Korea has one, does anybody doubt that Iran is not far behind? The most optimistic predictions had an Iranian bomb from 5-10 years off. Now they can just buy/ borrow one.
Still, small countries make convenient targets, i.e. it's not difficult to plaster the whole damn place with comparatively little of the arsenal of any of the Big Three nuclear powers and they know this.
What we've got to wonder about is:
1) Are either of these guys crazy enough to openly use one on us or any friend of ours? Well if either one did, it would likely only happen once. Afterwards there'd be a salutary example that the world would remember for a lo-o-o-ong time.
2) Would either try to funnel some nukes to terrorists with no fixed address, while maintaining deniability? Oh dear, this offers some problems. A response might be to announce in advance that any unexplained nuclear bombing would be followed by the bombing of: Tehran, Damascus, Pyongyang, Paris... (just kidding, sort of).
3) If Kim Jr. and Amenaboo-boo are really crazy or out of touch enough to try something like that, would the people around them let them get away with it? Because a country has a suicidal psycho leader does not necessarily mean that he's surrounded by suicidal psychos.
Well we'll probably wind up trying sanctions for a while. Who knows, if China's on board it might even work. On the other hand, millions more Koreans are going to starve to death because nobody's got the juevos to calculate the "terrible arithmatic" that Lincoln spoke of. And starving men do tend to get desperate.
posted by Steve @ 10:49 AM
5 Comments:
At 2:01 PM,
Unknown said…
Word is that it wasn't realyl a nuke - just a thousand tonnes of conventional HE. Done to ruffle feathers and extort a bit more cash.
Coupl eo fthe other further out conspiracists are tying this into a plot to win Bush the next election and life the value of the dollar.
HT
At 2:46 PM,
Steve said…
I read that too this morning, that Japanese monitors hadn't detected a radiation signature.
If it were true, I could imagine two possibilities: 1) that Lil Kim was running a bluff, or
2) that he demanded that his guys produce a bomb pronto - and you don't dissapoint the Supream Leader if you value your life and that of your family.
I think this is likely what happened in Iraq. Remember that Saddam was sure acting as if he had WMDs, guys running out the back doors while the UN inspectors came in the front etc.
Sure fooled us! That'll show those Yankees.
At 4:35 AM,
Richard said…
I do not know if your tongue is in your cheek, but Saddam did not fool us.
Had we been fooled, we would never have treated him the way we did. We invaded because we wanted too and we knew his broken down old conventional army was all he had.
If you remember the drumbeat up to the war, they would throw up a lot of stuff and try to see what would stick. There was one shill talkshow host in Boston who announced that they might have found the footprint of an Iraqi lab in the anthrax that was the scare du jour and then he breathelessly intoned, "and if it did come from an Iraqi lab, we are at war with Iraq." Cut to a break. Couple of days later, no more mention of, who was it, that babe, Ann Thrax.
Monsieur Kim has provided us with just enough ambiquity and enough pre sited artillery on Seoul that we ain't touching him.
Also, the intel on NK is about as good as it was on Iraq. It appears that the French and German governments were about the only ones fooled in the latter case.
At 6:34 PM,
Strongbad said…
You are all idiots. Also, most of you have bad use of words. For example: the use of the word "too" from tvo.
At 5:52 AM,
Steve said…
Wow! This post is ancient by blogosphere standards. You must be pouring over my blog. Always nice to have a new fan.
BTW "tvoh" is what we call a nom du cyber in the game, not a misspelling. And that sentence should probably be "most of you use words badly."
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