North Korea threatens dragon, light saber attack

I’m seeing headlines that say things like “North Korea Prepares Attack” and “North Korea Readies Missiles to Attack US Cities”. Yeah, I know that guy over there made threats to that effect, but if he’d threatened to unleash a hoard of flying mutant tigers or promised to utilize his intergalactic death ray, would the media run similarly misleading stories? “North Korea Prepares Flying Tiger Attack!” “North Korea Readies Apocalyptic Death Ray!” After all, they’re about as close to battling us with mythical beasts as they are to launching a rocket at our country. 

Sorry, call me recklessly dismissive, but I’m not the slightest bit concerned about North Korea. They’re a third world nation, mostly devoid of electricity, food and infrastructure. They would have difficulty hitting a US city with a rocket because, well, they don’t have a rocket that can go that far (a logistical technicality, I suppose). They can’t invade South Korea because half of their army would probably defect as soon as they made it south of the border. So why have we amassed a 7000 thousand strong nuclear arsenal, and maintained an enormous standing army, and erected military bases in sovereign nations all over the globe, if we still have to worry when some effeminate clown in a canoe threatens to shoot spitballs at us? At what point are we allowed to feel even the slightest bit secure? Ever? Oh, right, I forgot. We must always harbor a deep feeling of vulnerability so that we won’t ask questions when a vaguely defined government agency purchases a billion rounds of ammunition, or when government thugs at the airport pat down 4 year old children and paraplegic military veterans. 

The North Koreans talk tough, so what? We’ve been pointing guns at them for 50 years. They’re a little salty about it. That’s not surprising. I’ve heard it said that the main threat NK poses is in the possibility that they’ll funnel weapons to places like Syria and Libya. Yeah. That would be horrible. So, hey, someone tell Obama to stop doing that exact thing, OK? Dude’s been shipping guns and tanks to terrorists in the Middle East for the past half decade. Maybe we should tell him to knock it off before we worry about some impoverished primitive pseudo-nation doing the same.