The Greatest Ever Commander Speaks!

Greater than Caesar!  Greater than Napoleon!  Greater than Nobunaga or Hideyoshi!  Greater than Alexander!  Greater than Genghis Khan!

That would be this guy, according to today's declaration of war against the United States and South Korea- a fat, petulant 29 year old with exactly zero military experience:

 As they say:

"They should clearly know that in the era of Marshal Kim Jong Un, the greatest-ever commander, all things are different from what they used to be in the past."

Okay, here is what is really going on behind this ridiculous bluster:  North Korea is a country that keeps its entire population in near starvation while it devotes practically all of its resources to its military.  Anyone with the slightest experience with dictators knows perfectly well that a large part of those resources are siphoned off into the pockets of top-level politicians and military leaders.  Kim himself is said to have five billion stashed overseas.

Kim's main job as "leader" of the country is to keep his people so petrified by the thought of invasion that they put up with this theft of their resources.  He knows perfectly well that if he fails at this simple task, he will disappear within days, at the hands of his own generals, who have no intention of seeing the gravy train come to a halt.  All of his belligerent talk is directed at his own people, not the outside world.

There is one problem, however, with this otherwise comforting news.  We are talking about a coddled 29 year old that has people all around him telling him that he is the military genius of the ages, in a country that, like the United States, undoubtedly has its share of Neocons urging him into any hopeless war that comes along.  In the hands of a Bismarck, or even a Kissinger, we could easily afford to write off all the fuming.  But in this case there is the outside chance that things could slip out of control, the North could engage in one provocation too many, and the game would be on.  Even Hitler made this mistake when he invaded Poland, and to his great surprise, Britain and the Soviet Union entered the war.  And anyone familiar with the manner in which country after country were sucked into World War I knows what the result could be.

Any real military action on the part of  North Korea would quickly result in its decimation and the destruction of its government.  But that would likely not come before horrible loss of life in South Korea, and possibly Japan too, and immense suffering in the North.  So as ludicrous as the behavior of the North Korean government is, they are playing with a loaded gun, and it could go off at any time. 

Comments

Dave Dubya said…
North Korea is a country that keeps its entire population in near starvation while it devotes practically all of its resources to its military.

If we don't make some serious changes, this will be where the USA is headed.
Green Eagle said…
Well, luckily for us, we already have the propaganda apparatus in place to make the American people love it.
Sam240 said…
Hitler wasn't too surprised by the Soviet Union entering the war in 1939. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, the German government expected the USSR to invade Poland, which is exactly what the Soviet Union did on 17 September 1939.

I think you intended to refer to France, rather than to the Soviet Union.
Green Eagle said…
I believe Hitler thought he had cut a deal with Stalin to divide Poland. Stalin always knew that Hitler would attack him when he was ready. He used the period of the non-aggression pact to pack up the entire Soviet industrial base and move it east of the Urals, where it was out of the reach of German attack. The consequence was that the Soviet Union had an almost limitless supply of military equipment. This turned out to be a fatal mistake of Hitler's- for once he ran up against someone even more devious and underhanded than he was, and in the end it cost him everything. Hitler's move into the Caucasus and toward Stalingrad in late 1942 was an attempt to cut the Soviet Union down before Stalin could complete his military buildup, but it was too late- the tide had swung against him, and by the end of January 1943, whether he realized it or not, Hitler's hopes were crushed.
Anonymous said…
RE: Green Eagle. What he said. Pretty darn good summation there.

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