I spent a little over 21 years in the armed forces, and during that time I was given regular briefings on what our military standing was in the world. Such things as how many bombers, tanks, submarines and nuclear missiles we had, in comparison to how many the Soviet Union had, were normally pointed out (we always had far less than they did in every category except helicopters), but other political aspects about all our adversarial countries were also discussed. I found it especially interesting how much we were able to learn about our potential enemies' secret activities by paying attention to their public behavior.
For instance, we didn't know the Soviets were cheating on the nuclear treaties until they started accusing us of cheating. They always listed specific things they firmly believed we were doing, which might even have caused us to think the Russians must have pretty good intelligence on our secret activities, except for one thing: we weren't doing any of that stuff. This led us to realize they were simply assuming we were doing the same things they were. After that, all we had to do was wait for them to accuse us of doing something nefarious to know specifically how they were cheating. (This, incidentally, is identical to the Democrats' behavior when they make accusations of voter fraud. They never bring forward any actual cases of anybody being caught cheating on a large scale; they merely accuse the other side of doing the same things they've been doing. The difference is the Russians finally wised up enough to stop giving themselves away. You may have noticed the Democrats still haven't).
Without divulging any 'Classified' information I'm going to apply the methods I learned back then to explain what is probably going on with North Korea now.
The biggest thing I learned is most our problems with other countries have been easily preventable at some early point, but instead of putting a stop to them right away we have always ended up letting them turn into larger problems. This is our nation's greatest disability. I call it Lefty Blind-ism. No matter how obvious any country's hatred is toward America, none of our left-leaning politicians will ever notice. Their natural tendency is to ignore the things they don't know how to handle, and the only way they'll see anything bad is if the news media starts pointing it out. Even then, chances are good they won't actually do anything substantial afterwards.
The only reason the North Koreans are still such a pain is because weak-kneed politicians in the past didn't want to upset either Russia or China by taking care of any particular situation when it was relatively easy. By easy I mean there was never any chance either Russia or China would have gone to full-blown nuclear war over Korea, certainly not since the mid-fifties, so the only thing our politicians were really scared of was getting yelled at by a few angry Communist leaders. Now, seriously, how little backbone must you have if you can't even withstand that? Geez Louise, you'd think any politician who was married could at least handle being yelled at now and again.
It's painful, but our political leadership has mostly been naive when dealing with countries hostile to us. In the case of the Soviets, our non-military leaders tended to be too trusting - the Russians violated every agreement our politicians got them to sign - but the stupidity displayed with that misplaced faith back then seems almost intelligent when compared to the baseless trust Democrat leaders have now placed in Iran and North Korea. These countries aren't just dangerous, they are far more irrational than the Soviets ever were.
Simply put, these guys are crazy.
Unlike the Russians, neither Iran nor North Korea have a limit on how many of their people they are willing to let die once they make a move to increase their power, and their thought processes over possible consequences are also completely different.
The Russians have long memories, and they pay close attention to tragic lessons learned in their past, especially as it pertains to military defeats. No matter what their interests are in other countries, protecting the motherland is always their first priority, so they make efforts to avoid repeating the same mistakes. One fine example comes from World War Two. The embarrassing loss the Russians experienced during the Russo-Sino War kept them from declaring war on Japan until after the Atomic Bomb was dropped. They were extremely cautious about giving the Japanese another chance to defeat them, and they were wise to be that wary. Diverting troops to a new front when they were already heavily engaged in other battles might have enabled the Axis Powers to defeat them.
Iran and North Korea, on the other hand, don't look to the past at all. To be blunt about it, neither one of them has advanced very much from any past they once had, so they only need concentrate on what they envision for the future. Working towards that future is all they care about, and the aftermath the Russians dread doesn't bother these guys in the least. Neither Iran nor North Korea care as much about the motherland as they do about their own objectives.
Subsequently, the approach they'll use when they decide to conquer territory will be very different from the way Russia subjugates other countries.
If North Korea can successfully push the bulk of its army across the DMZ and quickly conquer South Korea, their leadership won't be too concerned if their homeland in the north ends up devastated. They believe no Western country would dare inflict that same type devastation against South Korea, even after the north wins, so they figure they'll just put all their political and military power into the south after the two countries are "unified". (You better believe whichever 'Kim" is in power at the time will be nowhere near North Korea when this attack occurs).
What happens to the people remaining in the north is also of no concern to the leadership. There is nothing being done there that isn't done better in the south, so writing off the north will be no big loss. The problem is this is also what's going to drive the north to eventually attack. As soon as conditions in the north get bad enough, combined with a large enough military advantage, North Korea will attack.
Iran has different goals from North Korea, but the end result wouldn't be much different. It could, however, spread the destruction over a much larger piece of the planet.
Iran has a scary ideological vision of destroying much of the world so they can rebuild what's left under their fanatical philosophy. They don't really care if three quarters of the planet is rendered permanently uninhabitable afterwards. As with North Korea, they expect to be living wherever it's still habitable when it's all over. If what they do now might mean their ideology will be the only ruling power for the next thousand or more years, they'll consider any sacrifice worth the effort.
Iran is clearly the bigger threat, but North Korea is the warning bell to which we should be paying attention. Whatever Iran does later, you can bet North Korea will somehow be involved.
To help give you an idea how dangerous these two countries are, let me ask you a question.
Would you lock yourself in a room with two monkeys, and a live bomb, then give each monkey an operating detonator to play with? I'm willing to bet most people would say no, but what we're doing with North Korea and Iran is much worse than that. We've pretty much given them the detonators already, and the bomb they are playing with is destructive almost beyond all comprehension.
For once I'm surprised by leftist politicians. They ordinarily don't mind doing things which adversely affect the lives of common citizens, but they just about never put their own lives in jeopardy. This time they are. Our Democrat leaders are living wonderful lives right now, but a large NBC (Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical) attack would take it all away. Even if our leaders in Washington have shelters available the rest of us won't be allowed to use, there's no way the politicians who get to the shelters in time will ever be able to come back out to the same wealth, luxury and power they had before.
Why are they so willing to risk losing all that? Is it even possible they expect to still thrive no matter what level of destruction the country might endure? I'm tempted to say nobody could be that stupid, but the evidence says otherwise.
These folks are so foolhardy they truly believe they can solve all the world's problems by talking nicely to the bullies. It's an odd belief for them to hold since they have absolutely no examples from which they can draw upon to prove this technique has ever worked.
Since when did any one of these folks in their own lives even manage to avoid so much as a 'Swirly' or a 'Wedgy' in public school by using only nice talk? I guarantee none of them ever did. If they somehow avoided the abuse, it wasn't through pretty words. They either scared the bullies off, which is unlikely (nobody ever scared off a bully and turned into a wussy leftist afterwards), or they gave the bullies something of value (money/drugs/sex, take your pick), but what they never did was simply talk the bad guys into leaving them alone. Not once, ever, in the whole history of mankind has nice talk alone prevented an evil person from engaging in abusive behavior.
Go ahead, look for one successful incident. The search will take so long you'll have to pass it on to future generations.
Let's get back to the real world. A large NBC attack will cause enormous damage to our country, and, even if we ultimately fight our way back to victory, there are levels of damage from which we could never fully recover. Aside from the possibility chunks of the country could be rendered uninhabitable for years, there's the matter of the lives lost during the ordeal. Those lives can't magically be brought back, and future generations of people will also be lost with them. There's no telling how many significant future ideas or accomplishments would be taken away needlessly, and that's the worst part. The loss of those lives and ideas would be completely needless.
These type attacks are largely preventable, for the moment, and the only reason we might end up suffering such an event later is because leftist politicians keep making it easier for our enemies to hit us with one. Fine, the lefties can talk to our enemies as much as they want, if it makes them feel better, but there's no good reason to leave ourselves unprotected during the talks. It's downright moronic to keep reducing our defenses when the other side is clearly more hostile than we are. All this behavior does is encourage a future attack when the bad guys get sick of talking, and, when they do, I'm fairly certain which type assault they are most likely to employ.
For the purposes of this discussion, I'm not going to dwell on Chemical or Biological attacks. They are both much more difficult to carry out on a large scale than one particular type nuclear strike would be. The reason I know is because I was a member of the Disaster Preparedness Mobility Team for a few years, and I was trained to take charge of people's survival under all these attack scenarios.
The nuclear option I am most worried about is the EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) variety, and it is available, or soon will be, to both North Korea and Iran. It's also available to Russia and China, but, despite the fact they are more powerful than Iran and North Korea, they are less of a threat to us than the other two are, at least directly. Neither China nor Russia is willing to risk destruction of their homelands to obtain their objectives, but they wouldn't mind helping Iran or North Korea make such an attack - as long as they were reasonably certain they would never face any retribution themselves. We probably won't be able to prove it, but if such an attack ever does occur, it's a good bet Russia or China provided technical assistance.
What you need to know is an EMP strike won't knock down buildings or spread fallout over an area; it will just destroy everything electrical within range of the blast, and that range is very wide. Computers will fry, and that includes the ones inside cars and airplanes. Nonetheless, computers won't even be the primary target. The power grid will be what they are going for, and it's just about guaranteed they'll get it.
What's odd is there are things we could do to protect the grid, and the cost is extremely low when compared to most things the government spends money on. For some strange reason our politicians don't want to do it. It's a level of stupidity so enormous, it almost seems impossible stupidity alone could be all there is to it. One might start to wonder if some of our politicians actually want to see the grid go down. I can't imagine why they would, unless they truly believed this could somehow help save the planet, but I find it hard to believe they would be willing to give up their own comfortable lifestyles for such a fanciful cause.
I actually think the politicians are so narrow-minded they can't see the real threat. There are so many imaginary fears in their heads already, they simply might not have enough room to squeeze in a legitimate one, especially if it didn't match their current world view. Such a thing as a deliberate attempt to hit us with an EMP just wouldn't fit in with their previous well-established mindset. Somehow or other, they have gotten the idea nobody would dare unleash a normal nuclear attack upon us, and they don't see the difference between a regular strike and an EMP attack. They also don't seem to realize how devastating the loss of the power grid would be. Well, a lot of us do.
Just think about having to live for months on end without electricity. No TV, no radio, no ATM's, no phones, no working pumps for gas or water, and no frigging way to get money, food, or anything else you need.
Have you stopped to consider what you would do in such a situation? Look at where you live. How far will you have to walk to go hunting? How long will it take to grow veggies in your yard? How long can you live waiting for that stuff to grow, and how is any of it going to grow without water? Where will you even find water?
Hell, why bother worrying about any of those things? How are you going to keep other people from killing you and taking what little you have left?
Most of you won't. You'll probably die in the riots when everybody rushes for the stores, but, even if you survive all that, you'll still either starve or be killed within about three months. (This is especially true for those of you who are radical feminists and believe you don't need a man for anything. When things get lawless you'll find out how much power you really have. I'd wish you good luck, but saying good-bye would be more appropriate). Unless you are a prepper, with a good supply of food, water, and weaponry, or possibly lucky enough to be a farmer well outside a city, you have little chance of surviving.
Yeah, I know. There are people out there telling us not to worry because the police and military will be able to take charge. Just as in the movies, we'll all be saved when the cavalry arrives. By golly, they'll stop the bad guys and see to it we all get fed, you just betcha. Why, shucks, they ain't nothin' the gov'ment folks cain't do!
What a ridiculous fantasy.
The police and military will have to put up with most the same problems as the rest of us, and even if they have better access to fuel and supplies, those things will be extremely limited. There's also a good chance their vehicles will be just as inoperative as anybody else's. All the modern vehicles have computer chips in them and are vulnerable to a pulse. However, even if their vehicles were somehow protected against such an attack, they still wouldn't be able to do patrols for very long. Beyond all that, the idea of them bringing supplies to the general populace is simply absurd.
The military and police forces combined would be in the thousands, and the citizens around them would be in the millions.These forces would then have to break themselves up into groups, or else they wouldn't be able to set up enough supply points for the people to reach by walking, and after that they'd be so busy protecting themselves from the possibility of a panicked mob, they wouldn't be able to protect anybody who tried to walk back home with supplies.
Aside from which, who says the military won't have to be used to fight off a full scale invasion? There's no rule saying anybody who hits us with an EMP is only going to use one device and then go away. They may decide to hit us in more than one region, and they could either send in troops right away or just wait until we start rioting before they send in the invasion forces. For that matter, there's absolutely no reason to expect other countries wouldn't be interested in taking advantage of our resulting weakness. Those countries wouldn't even need to be involved in the initial attack. It's entirely possible North Korea and/or Iran could come in first, and then Russia and China could decide to start moving in later. They could even all end up fighting each other, and it wouldn't help us one little bit. No matter who'd win, we'd still lose.
Does that seem far-fetched? Well, let's analyze it. North Korea and Iran are making no secret of the fact they would love to see America removed forever as a world power, and they are both working hard to build up their own power. They each claim they only want nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, but neither one of them has built much of anything except facilities useful for weapons development. Where's the peaceful stuff?
For all the effort they've put into this technology, both countries should be completely energy independent by now, and North Korea especially should have their cities well-lighted at night. Look up the satellite images of North Korea after dark. Their country is almost completely blacked out. The fact is, there was more light produced by the fires inside an average army camp in the Civil War than North Korea puts out today.
If you looked at the situation from a military perspective, you'd realize North Korea has done nothing but make repeated threats with the technology they've developed thus far, so there must be a military purpose behind all the chest beating. They also don't mind putting on public displays of this technology, so the possibility they are preparing for war is hardly a secret. This means we should be looking harder for what their real secrets are. Their hidden agenda is where the real threat lies, and what most folks fail to realize is their periodic launches of missiles over Japan are classic misdirection. Our leaders would have us believe this is just to keep Japan from interfering in the event North Korea decides to attack South Korea, but what nobody seems to consider is there is very little likelihood Japan would ever feel any compulsion to butt in, anyway.
As we all know, Japan has a special interest in avoiding another nuclear explosion on their soil, and for that reason alone it is highly doubtful they would ever risk upsetting North Korea. On top of that, Japan has no love for South Korea, at all, so there would be no national desire on their part to get involved in the first place. In the second place, Japan's risk/reward ratio would be "All risk/No reward" so there's really no motivation for them to do anything militarily. Even so, if they inexplicably lost their minds for some reason and decided to jump into the fray, there's also just about no chance they would have any good effect. The Japanese army is actually a "Defense Force", and it isn't even equipped to fight any battles outside its own borders. Therefore, Japan is a non-player, and taunting it only serves as a convenient diversion.
No, I believe the missile launches are being done to advertise a product. North Korea is letting the bad guys of the world know where they can purchase exotic weapons, and we need to realize it isn't just going to be missiles. North Korea is also producing nukes and submarines. This is why they are the country we should be most closely monitoring. If Iran doesn't successfully manage to develop its own weapon systems in a timely manner, they will gladly turn to North Korea for procurement of the things they desire.
Here's how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Watching these two countries with satellites is our preferred method of 'spying', but the people working the satellites have to know when and where to look. If they get diverted into focusing their attention somewhere else, a submarine could sneak away. With a nuke, a missile, and a submarine, Iran, or any other evil regime out there, could move in close enough to the US to launch an EMP strike. Then they could get away before we'd figure out who did it. (Whether or not they would invade afterwards would depend upon the country doing it, and what their ultimate goals were. If all they wanted to do was keep us occupied while they invaded somewhere else, they might just go away. However, as I stated earlier, that would not prevent any other country from moving in).
Oh, sure, we have the technology to detect any unidentified subs before they could even arrive, but having that technology and actually using it effectively are two different things. This is one of those areas Democrat politicians are always trying to restrict. As of right now, I have no idea if anyone is even watching out for where North Korean submarines go. I hope they are, but the North Koreans don't seem to have any problems sinking South Korean ships whenever they get the notion. It doesn't seem possible we could be watching them and then let them get away with stuff like that.
Judging by appearances, we aren't really paying attention to them at all, and that's unfortunate. The less we pay attention, the more likely we are to be attacked. Now, where would somebody attack?
In this case, I believe the west coast would be the target, most likely California (Democrat politicians have no idea how tempting their state has become, thanks to situations they've unwittingly created), but I'm not discounting the possibility Iran could launch attacks against the east coast at the same time. It could even be a combined effort with North Korea, and they could each attack a different end of the country. There really is no limit to the possible ways we could be attacked, and that's why it's so stupid to keep turning a blind eye to it all.
That's about it. I hate to come across as a Gloomy Gus, but knocking out our power grid is incredibly feasible, and, if it happens, you can chock it up to our brilliant politicians' wise stewardship of our nation. Let's hear it for arrogance and stupidity! Yay! Yay! Yay!
If it never occurs, it'll either be from pure luck, or the Good Lord really is looking out for us.
Personally, I hope it's the Good Lord. I really don't like the idea we humans, as pitiful as we are, have managed to survive as a species for thousands and thousands of years on nothing but dumb luck.
PS: You know what? The more I think about how stupid our country has become, the less I feel like saying: Life to America! There's an old saying about people in Democracies ultimately getting the system they deserve, and I fear most people in this country actually do deserve what's going to happen to them. As for me, I don't deserve it at all, but, hey, maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the Millennial's finally realize what they've gotten into.
Here's hoping.
