Hillary Clinton has gotten herself into an insult match with North Korea:
North Korea launched a scathing personal attack on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday after she likened the leadership in Pyongyang to “small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention.”
At a meeting of southeast Asian nations in Phuket, Thailand, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman blasted Clinton for what he called a “spate of vulgar remarks unbecoming for her position everywhere she went since she was sworn in,” according to the state-run KCNA news agency.
The spokesman called Clinton “by no means intelligent” and a “funny lady.”
“Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping,” the statement said. Read other colorful insults by N. Korea
Does North Korea have any idea what they are doing here? If they keep this up they’ll have to put up with nutty PUMAs seeking revenge for insulting Hillary. Ok, maybe it isn’t enough to deter North Korea. If David Letterman can withstand their attacks to avenge his jokes about Hillary’s pantsuits, I imagine that North Korea can handle PUMA protests.
I wish Clinton and Obama had chosen to simply ignore North Korea. But “let a problem alone” doesn’t seem to be in their playbook.
Fritz, the defense hawks’ argument on this line of thought goes roughly, ‘North Korea has millions of troops on the DMZ and economic weaknesses that make the threat of invasion real, the real threat of invasion increases the likelihood of nuclear attack should hostitilities commence, so the problem cannot be ignored.’
The issue of the Korean War and whether or not we should be defending the ROK against the DPROK at such a big discount is, of course, worthy of discussion. As long as we are, though, this is one area where the defense hawks have a point it is hard to refute. As long as we have a few thousand troops facing off against a few million and the war between North and South Korea is still officially ongoing, the threat of renewed hostilities makes it a good idea to avoid letting them have a bunch of nukes.
It’s also worth noting that manufacturing for quite a few American corporations is going on in the ROK these days and the American troops are essentially defending the factories making fridges and microwaves for GE and Kenmore as much as they are defending our noble and sovereign ally of South Korea. This means arguments against the Korean status quo are likely to be opposed by lots of corporate money.