Sitting here pondering heavy things: the war in Iraq, my son’s deployment early 2007, immigration and what kind of U.S. I will turn over to my granddaughter, job, family issues, etc., etc.

A little music to relax by.  Peter Gabriel, the first thing he did when he split from “Genesis.”  Solsbury Hill.  Go find an MP3 feed (can be found by doing a search of “solsbury hill mp3”).

An easy listen.

Note: This post has been updated with Nuclear Japan.

I wanted to wait and think a bit on the North Korea situation before I weighed in.  Here it goes.

There is a history of tension between Japan and North Korea.  North Korea is known to have kidnapped Japanese citizens before, and of course there is the fact that the recent flury of missiles is an expanded repeat of what happened prior to this (Kim Jong Il lobbed missiles over Japan in 1998).

I honestly believe that there is only one solution to Kim Jong Il: it is for Japan and/or Taiwan to go nuclear.  It would be very difficult for Taiwan to go nuclear.  China has too many eyes in Taiwan.  It would be quite easy for Japan to do it.

Japan has not gone nuclear before now because of a number of things (including but not limited to):

1. Being the first and only country ever to to be attacked with nuclear weapons, there is a psychological barrier with the citizens.
2. Japan believes (with good reason) that there is at least to some extent a blanket of protection from the U.S. just as there is with Taiwan.
3. The theory goes that if Japan went nuclear, it would start an arms race in the region.

I do not believe that any of these reasons are determinative.  Go do a Google search on “Japan go nuclear” and read for a while.  There is much discussion available on this subject, but most of it was written after 1998 and well before now (when Kim Jong Il fires more missiles over Japan and supposedly in the direction of the U.S.).  Some of the literature concludes that Japan will not go nuclear (for at least some of the reasons mentioned above).  But with the expanded missile program and several more years to work on nuclear weapons in North Korea, Japan might just be getting a little bit edgy.

It should be noted that there is some degree of enigma surrounding the Kim household and a line of succession.  There is also some speculation on potential mental illness that Kim Jong Il might be afflicted with.  So it is difficult to know exactly what is going on: Is this bluster to show the world that Kim Jong Il is still “the man,” and in charge of his country and that he will be around for some time?  Or is he trying to prepare the country for someone else in succession?

Either way, he cannot be trusted and he has shown that every time he has had opportunity.  Now back to Japan.  Japan knows this and must be thinking hard about the world reaction to the most recent blitz of missile launches.  Sure, the ICBM was a flop.  But all missile programs in history created flops before they created the real deal.

My position on Russia is that the reason for their reticence is that if they were to weigh in and begin to pressure North Korea, they know that they would be mostly ignored.  They are not the player on the world stage that they once were.  They weigh in on the same scales that Germany or France do, not on the scales that the U.S. and China do.  They know this, but it would be quite the public and international humiliation to weigh in and then be ignored.  It would announce to the world what they know but what they do not want the rest of the world to acknowledge; they have become mostly irrelevant.

No one else matters except China and the U.S.  China will not pull the reigns in because they are enjoying seeing the U.S., Japan and South Korea and Taiwan hand-wring over the shinanigans of Kim.  But this might just backfire on them.

The Google search you did above (“Japan go nuclear”) yielded many hits that opined in the negative due to such things as “they would have to reprocess their nuclear fuel to get the weapons-grade Uranium or the Plutonium.”  This objection is nonsense.  It amounts to no more than the objection for anyone going nuclear: you have to create the fissile material through reprocessing.  Okay.  So where is the problem?  This is just a technical issue.  Japan has good nuclear engineers.  Their commercial nuclear program demonstrates that.

Possibly the most interesting of the literature showing up from this Google search comes from a doctoral candidate at MIT, who authored a paper entitled “Why Japan Won’t go Nuclear (yet).”  “Yet” is the operative word here.  Once again, this paper was written prior to the recent spate of missile launches by Kim.

The weakness in this paper, I believe, is that it gives too much credit for public reaction, legislative gerrymandering, and world reaction to being able to stop Japan from going nuclear.  In fact, it seems to me that such a publicly stated intent would be profoundly unwise.  China probably would not allow it to happen.  If it is going to happen, it must do so discretely.  Then Japan would announce it to the world after it had happened — not before.

If Japan does go nuclear, it would signficantly change both the politics and the power balance in the region.  And this, to our favor and the benefit of democracies in the world.

Will they do it?  It is the perfect solution to Kim.  Will the U.S. discretely recommend to Japan that they be going in this direction?  How much backbone does the U.S. have on this matter?  As for an arms race in the region, this won’t matter much if Japan feels that their future existence is at stake.  What person would not run if his life was in danger?  The fact that running is hard work becomes irrelevant when your existence is at stake.

Here is a good article from MSNBC (I don’t usually like the stuff they produce) on warrior ethics.  It was worth the time spent reading it.  I would also mention a post I made some time ago on Calvin and Aquinas on war (most of the post was quoting Calvin, with a pointer to a paper in “First Things” on the subject of good wars).  This is an even better read, very scholarly and studied.  It may sound jingoistic to some people (who haven’t a foundation, or “world view” from which to launch the balance of their thinking), but there are good reasons for waging war and defending yourself and others.  The fathers of the church even call this a “ministry” to others.

Hmmm.  What would the folks over at Daily Kos think of war as a “ministry?”

The magnificent Riehl World View gives The Captain’s Journal a very polite nod and handshake and welcomes us to the world of conservative blogging (and according to Google Analytics, a few readers were turned our direction too).  A hearty thanks.

I have said before that I do not know, but suspect what happened in Haditha (the Marines engaged in a fire fight and employed approved and necessary room-clearing tactics designed to save Marine lives).  I will wait until the evidence is in.  And it better be conclusive!  But until it comes in, let’s play ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’

It comes from MSNBC.com, and its caption reads:

This image purportedly shows a room where some of the Haditha civilians died. A lawyer representing several of the families of victims provided the photo to media (bold mine).

At least they had the foresight to say “purportedly.”  Take a hard look at the alleged blood splatter pattern.  No, the one up above the bed head board and adjacent to the top of the window.  If I am not mistaken, this is remarkably consistent with someone jumping up in the air four feet and being shot at the apex of his ascent.  Note the fact that the report claims that the occupants of the room were not killed by a fragmentation grenade, but by gun shots.

So we’re back to that person jumping up in the air four feet.

I have said before that I do not know, but suspect what happened in Haditha (the Marines engaged in a fire fight and employed approved and necessary room-clearing tactics designed to save Marine lives).  I will wait until the evidence is in.  And it better be conclusive!  But until it comes in, let’s play ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’

It comes from MSNBC.com, and its caption reads:

This image purportedly shows a room where some of the Haditha civilians died. A lawyer representing several of the families of victims provided the photo to media (bold mine).

At least they had the foresight to say “purportedly.”  Take a hard look at the alleged blood splatter pattern.  No, the one up above the bed head board and adjacent to the top of the window.  If I am not mistaken, this is remarkably consistent with someone jumping up in the air four feet and being shot at the apex of his ascent.  Note the fact that the report claims that the occupants of the room were not killed by a fragmentation grenade, but by gun shots.

So we’re back to that person jumping up in the air four feet.

This is very moving — and a must read for those who care about our boys in harm’s way.

Farewell

The Strategy Page has this from July 6:

July 6, 2006: The large number of  charges brought against U.S. troops for crimes against civilians recently is partly coincidence (the rate of such incidents is much less than in past wars, but that is not considered news) and partly right out of the al Qaeda playbook. Making false accusations of atrocities, to attract media attention, is recommended in al Qaeda training documents, as a good way to keep the enemy off balance. After three years of defeats, al Qaeda, and their Iraqi Sunni Arab allies, are in need of some good news. Atrocities can be created, by forcing witnesses to make false claims, and to otherwise fabricate evidence. Anti-American media will not examine the evidence too closely, and will instead run with the story. That most of these claims turn out to be false is, again, not news, and the terrorists know it. Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes, to some at least, the truth.

On June 23 I said this:

Make no mistake about it.  The tactics of the future will be some or all of the following:

1. Beheadings
2. Kidnappings 
3. Body mutilations and torture of those captured or kidnapped (don’t ever forget that 
   

God bless Michael Fumento.  I am glad to see that someone is bringing the story home of our boys over there.  The MSM is too cowardly to go to Ramadi.  My son deploys early in 2007.  The sentiments that are expressed in the story are felt by me too, and my son is not over there yet.  I intend to print this and make my son read it before he deploys.  Keep up the good work Michael.  I follow you diligently.

G.I. PHONE HOME (OR AT LEAST E-MAIL)

Here I posted (among other things) that there would be an ingrained hesitancy now in the Marines’ room-clearing techniques and less overall willingness to defend themselves due to the charges brought against the Marines at Haditha (along with other similar instances).  At Haditha, I still believe (until it is proven otherwise) that the room was cleared using techniques that the Marines are trained on and which are approved by the brass.  The intent is to kill those in the room.  Read here and here.  The presupposition is that those in the room are enemy, and that the Marines are threatened.

Now we find out that:

In theory, the rules for “clearing a building” are simple: The person inside must have been conclusively identified as a combatant, and the threat must be confirmed as real.

But in practice, every case is different — particularly with an enemy that prefers to hide behind women and children, U.S. combat veterans say.

Marines who fought in Fallouja said later that the mere suspicion that a sniper was in a building was justification for calling in a tank or airstrike. Now the bar is higher.

“It’s not just one suspicion or one event [that is needed], but several,” said Lt. Col. Pat Kline, deputy director of one of the training programs.

The presence of civilians also has to be considered when deciding whether, for example, to enter a building by throwing in a grenade, as Marines did in Haditha.

“Because someone is hostile inside a house, that doesn’t mean the entire house is hostile,” Baczkowski said.

Read the full Los Angeles Times story here.

You mark my words.  This new “protocol” will mean the deaths of more Marines.  But hey.  The upshot is that John Murtha will be happier.