North Korea, Iran, China.....and the 2008 Olympics

No doubt, the Democrats' #1 item of importance is Foleygate, I guess when you've North Korea firing off a 20-kiloton nuke, last week Iran’s Ahmadinejad ridiculed efforts to corral his own nuclear ambitions, the stock market was nearing an all-time high, the deficit is suddenly falling in near record fashion, falling gas prices might hit $2 a gallon. In Iraq, the U.S. military was taking on the Shiite militias, it only makes sense to discuss some creep. ;-)

Losers.

The chess match is on.

In case you didn't catch this, the Asia Times reported on October 6 that Kim Jong Il defiantly stated that "War is coming to US soil".

After praising Kim Jong-Il as "the greatest of the peerless national heroes Korea has ever produced," Kim Jong Il's spokesman Kim Myong-Choi explains that North Korea's current leader is "unique" because he "is the first to equip Korea with sufficient military capability to take the war all the way to the continental US."

All the way to the USA....

"Under his leadership the DPRK has become a nuclear-weapons state with intercontinental means of delivery," spokesman Kim continues. "(Dear Leader) Kim is certainly in the process of achieving the long-elusive goal of neutralizing the American intervention in Korean affairs and bringing together North and South Korea under the umbrella of a confederated state."

It gets worse.

"Unlike all the previous wars Korea fought, a next war will be better called the American War or the DPRK-US War because the main theater will be the continental US, with major cities transformed into towering infernos. The DPRK is now the fourth-most powerful nuclear weapons state just after the US, Russia, and China.

"The DPRK has all types of nuclear bombs and warheads, atomic, hydrogen and neutron, and the means of delivery, short-range, medium-range and long-range, putting the whole of the continental US within effective range. The Korean People's Army also is capable of knocking hostile satellites out of action.

"All the past Korean heroes let the Land of Morning Calm be reduced to smoking ruins as the wars were fought on its soil, even though they repelled the invaders. One of the two major aspirations of the Korean people has been the buildup of military capability enough to turn enemy land into the war theater. Kim has splendidly achieved this aspiration."

North Korea has just had its moment in the sun, it's China's turn to step up to the plate. Now that North Korea has defied just about every sane country in the world with their explosion of a nuclear weapon, the Norks' #1 ally, China, needs to act responsibly and prove that they are major responsible stakeholder in the world of international politics.

The "Chinese solution" to the long North Korean nightmare does not necessarily have to include military action; cutting off the aid could cause regime change. On the other hand, a cornered Kim could also strike out--at South Korea, where 30,000 US troops are essentially sitting ducks for a nuclear attack, and/or US ally Japan. North Korea has shown in the past that it is capable of firing a missle over Japan.

Meanwhile, China's nuclear arming ally, Islamist Iran, is instigating its ally, Syria, a country with which China enjoys close and deepening ties, to attack Israel. Or, at the very least, to threaten Israel with war ... in an effort to divert attention from Tehran's nuclear enrichment program and protracted standoff with the West.

At the same time, new reports from Sudan say the Islamic-leaning government is directly responsible for the massacre of hundreds of black Sudanese villagers in Darfur. Energy-starved China is the main foreign investor in Sudan's oil industry; and Chinese arms sales to the rogue regime, in the context of Beijing's aggressive "energy diplomacy," have fueled the genocide in Darfur, according to Amnesty International and other observers.

It's getting pretty hairy folks.

With the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games looming, one can only hope--for the sake of world peace--that rising China will seize the historic opportunity with which it has been presented, set aside its global grab for markets and raw materials, and cooperate closely with the US and other great powers to address the issues at hand in a truly meaningful--and responsible--manner.

Plus, there's an outside chance that I get to go the Olympics in Beijing in 2008, so for the sake of this gringo......come on China....git 'er done!