While we’re all focused on Fox’s efforts to protect Dear Leader Donald Trump from the rule of law and the Constitution, let’s not forget that Trump TV is still promoting war against North Korea to its Fan in Chief.
Yesterday, the Your World show hosted retired four-star general and Fox News “strategic analyst” Jack Keane to out warhawk Secretary of Defense James Mattis on the subject of North Korea. A lower-third banner gave a hint of the messaging to come: SECY JAMES MATTIS: MILITARY OPTIONS READY TO GO ON NORTH KOREA. As if this is something we've all been waiting for.
But Keane wants more than “ready.” He wants to “go” already.
KEANE: I firmly believe that if you want to prevent war, then make sure you’re fully prepared for it. So what am I talking about? We’ve got the number one cyber offensive capability in the world, no one’s even close to us. We should be attacking North Korea’s information systems, command and control their finance systems, and their energy infrastructure. We should be taking that country down electronically.
Second, we should put in place a naval blockade of North Korea to cut off the back door that we know exists where he’s getting fuel and other supplies.
And the third thing is, we should start to bring our forces into the theater. If we’re saying we’re going to go to war to prevent him from having a nuclearized ICBM, we have to show him some of that capability.
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Let’s put in place some of those resources that we would need to thicken the defense in South Korea and load up those bases Naval and air bases with the capabilities we need, and then stop sending the military families to South Korea. … Troops only.
Fox has been gung ho for war against North Korea since at least last February. That’s bad enough. But given the outsized influence Fox has over him, this drumbeat should scare us all.
Agree 100%. There are so many horrors and dangers of this administration but those two matters are the worst. I’m afraid that everyone is so busy paying attention to Trump’s latest outrage, they’re missing the forest for the trees.
I would advise people to keep their eyes open for attempted provocations both at North Korea and in the Middle East this year. The former situation could heat up very quickly, given how the Olympics are being politicized this year. If NK does another test as I expect they will, on the eve of the Olympics, we could see the US suddenly pull out of the Games and see the international tension level get ratcheted up to 11. The latter situation has two powderkegs being primed to blow by the Pence group – one is the repeated provocations of Iran (in the hopes of getting them to walk away from the Nuclear Agreement that Tom Cotton treasonously attempted to stop before it was signed); the other is the intentional slap of transferring the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem – a move that will almost certainly guarantee an attack.
I believe it’s the fervent hope of the Right Wing that any one (or even all three) of these situations will explode into open warfare by this fall. In that scenario, the Right Wing can play the card of “We’re at war and we all must rally round the flag, and let’s not switch horses in the middle of the race, etc.” I don’t know that this will work for them, but I do know that they are quite willing to expend the lives of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) to attain their goals. They have a history of doing so, going back to the Gulf War and the Vietnam War. Never underestimate their ruthlessness.
Then let him. He can ride the first bomb down, after the manner of Slim Pickens in “Dr. Strangelove” . . .
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America is the only country who has used a nuclear bomb against an enemy. Never once during the Cold War was a nuclear missile launched by anyone. Despite nukes being the weapon nobody plans to use, everyone wants some as a defense against those who do have them.
You don’t have to be a general to know this. It’s so obvious.
Given that reality, North Korea isn’t developing nukes for a 1st strike. They’re trying to survive in a world against their sick, brutal dictatorship.
So the question left off the table by Cavuto and, therefore, never answered by war hawk Keane is how many people are you willing to sacrifice to keep North Korea from having defensive nukes? Certainly many thousand of South Korean civilians will get slaughtered if North Korea is provoked into retaliation. If the Trumpsters escalate this to a wider shooting war it could get quite bloody.
