Self-restraint in North Korea

This has been stuck in my craw for the last day or so.

The unusually blunt warning, from Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the commander of American troops based in Seoul, came as South Korea’s defense minister indicated that the North’s missile, Hwasong-14, had the potential to reach Hawaii. 

“Self-restraint, which is a choice, is all that separates armistice and war,” General Brooks said, referring to the 1953 cease-fire that halted but never officially ended the Korean War. “As this alliance missile live-fire shows, we are able to change our choice when so ordered by our alliance national leaders. 

“It would be a grave mistake for anyone to believe anything to the contrary.”

You know what else is a choice? Making war.

There's something awful and dangerous about the idea that war is a default position, that it takes an act of will not to send thousands of soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen into combat to inflict death on a widespread scale.

 This is particularly true in North Korea, where it seems likely the regime is developing nuclear weapons as a means of protecting itself from interference from superpowers like the United States. The likelihood they'll actually start a war? Pretty low.

Which means we'd be starting a war for the purpose of ... making sure they can't retaliate if we decide to go to war with them. That seems like a terrible squandering of life in order to prevent an unlikely outcome.

 Listen, the North Korean regime is — as George W. Bush once said — loathsome. But if our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved this century, going to war against loathsome regimes doesn't necessarily result in a net improvement.

 But their provocations do not require an armed response. Anybody who tells you differently might have an itchy trigger finger.