(John Moody, Fox News) – The United States and North Korea are finally facing off this Easter weekend over Kim Jong Un’s insatiable appetite for courting danger. Here’s why President Trump is doing the right thing by taking a hard line.
While the rest of the world sits by, twiddling its collective thumbs and hoping that Kim comes to his senses, Trump has laid down a marker: test an underground nuclear device as you are threatening to do, and there will be consequences. The presence of a U.S. Navy strike force, armed with Tomahawk Cruise missiles, is the unspoken backup to Trump’s clear message.
The excuse for the North to conduct the test is morbidly fitting: Saturday is the 105th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-Sung, the current Kim’s grandfather. What better reason to plunge the world into conflict than to thank granddad for all he did?
Trump has raised the stakes in this showdown, unlike Barack Obama, who tried to give Kim toothless avuncular advice, or Bill Clinton, who was hornswoggled into a bad nuclear arms deal with Kim’s father, in 1994. Clinton promised then that the pact would bring North Korea into the community of civilized nations. Right. Guess it all depends on what your definition of is, is.