In his New York Times op-ed yesterday, University of Texas professor Jeremi Suri writes that the United States's best course of action during this whole North Korean affair would be to bomb North Korea and knock out their weapons capabilities. Probably slighting from North Korea's devious plans to wipe his home, Austin, off the map, Suri believes that, "the Korean crisis has now become a strategic threat to America's core national interests. The best option is to destroy the North Korean missile on the ground before it is launched. The United States should use a precise airstrike to render the missile and its mobile launcher inoperable."
Suri believes that the bombing would succeed for multiple reasons. It would discourage other nations like IRAN (gotta discourage that naughty boy) from doing the same kind of posturing. It would force China and the United States to come to an agreement about the balance of power in the pacific, and usher in a new area of communication between the sometime-rivals. And, finally, it would save Austin from its imminent destruction.
He envisions only great repercussions from this drastic, heroic bombing mission:
Destroying the North Korean missile before it is launched is the best of bad options on the Korean Peninsula. A prolonged crisis would undermine regional security and global efforts to stop nuclear proliferation. And a future war would be much worse. The most prudent move is to eliminate the most imminent military threat in self-defense, establish clear and reasonable limits on future belligerence, and maintain allied unity for stability - not forced regime change - in the region.
Or, the State Department could completely ignore the armchair ramblings of an addled war hawk and instead strengthen diplomatic ties to China by talking to them and not just dropping bombs on things (because the bombing thing always works out, right?).
But according to Private Jeremi, we should just bomb them and let god (and us, and the world thrown into a panic) sort it out.