North Korean Missile Testing...

Bush says, “What these firings of the rockets has done is, they've isolated themselves further, and that's sad for the people of North Korea.”

Japan has also said, “…this is clearly an act of provocation.”

Wow, strong stuff. But let’s break this down, shall we…

Kim Jung-Il is sitting in his palace. (Ok, I admit the guy is too much, an ego driven tyrant, I get that) and then one day he hears through the media that a large and powerful national leader says that he is essentially a terrorist “rogue” nation and part of everything that is wrong in the world. Hmm.

Then he watches in dismay as that same Super-Power invades another nearby “rogue” nation and overthrows it’s ruling regime.

That same Super Power then lies, cheats and finally bullies it allies to get it’s way into invading another one of these so called rogue nations, disposing the dictator and forcing a democratic system on it.

Gee, let’s work this out. You live on a street in which you like to keep to yourself (even if you are an asshole). One of your neighbor’s kids (We’ll call that kid Dennis) goes and throws a cherry bomb down the rich neighbor’s toilet (Ok, maybe a bad metaphor for 9-11 because the cherry bomb thing would be kinda funny) How about Dennis kills all the pets of the rich neighbor (We’ll call him Sam) in violent and disturbing ways.

Everyone on the street is shocked, and rightly so, especially the rich neighbor Sam. Sam’s wife pitches a fit and Sam’s manhood somehow comes into question. Sam then gets all of the neighbors together and talks about how the bad neighbors on the street are ruining everything for everyone else. One of those neighbors and houses is you.

Sam then goes to one of the bad neighbor’s house (We’ll call him Stan) kicks in the door, breaks a bunch of stuff in Stan’s house looking for that no good Dennis. Since Dennis was hiding in Stan’s house and Sam had a right to be pissed, everyone on the street kind of looked the other way.

Then Sam argues with the other neighbor’s about going to another bad neighbor’s house (We’ll call him Hank) and roughing him up. Now the other neighbor’s say, “Wait a second Sam, who the hell do you think you are?” But Sam is unrelenting, he bullies the weaker neighbor’s, lies to his own family and throws money at the remaining objectors. Then he kicks in Hank’s door and beats the living shit out of him.

Now you and the other remaining “bad” neighbor decide to buy a gun and some ammo then you go out and start practicing with it. And you’re labeled as the bad guy!

Of course this stupid little story is obviously over simplified and nukes are way more scary than guns and Kim Jong-Il is way more of an asshole than most neighbors but it illustrates some good points. We, the United States of America, brought much of this upon ourselves. We need to accept that responsibility first and foremost. Hopefully we can get this resolved because this is some potentially scary shit and could spiral into World War III. I’m suitably scared and I’m also facing the fact that my own government brought all of this about. How about you? Still don’t want to vote?