The Insanity of North Korea and the Genius of Reagan

North Korea is utterly impoverished in the way only a hard-line Stalinist communist country can be impoverished.   They can't feed their own people, but they can develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.   There is a certain bias, I fear, in our estimations of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un.   We see him as comic, as a buffoon, laughably threatening to launch nuclear weapons.  

Well, maybe.   But people with nothing lose and leaders with death wishes scare the crap out of me.   Is this headline real?  

North Korea to 'launch missile TOMORROW' after warning foreigners to evacuate South

We can't afford to pretend that it isn't.

And that's why these paragraphs are both reassuring and instructive:

Japan today deployed missile-defense systems at three sites around Tokyo ahead of the possible missile launch, officials confirmed.

The country's defense minister has also reportedly put destroyers with missile interception systems on alert in the Sea of Japan. 

"As North Korea keeps making provocative comments, Japan, co-operating with relevant countries, will do what we have to do," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said today. 

"The government is making utmost efforts to protect our people’s lives and ensure their safety," he added. 

Japan’s armed forces are authorised to shoot down any North Korean missile headed towards its territory, a defence ministry spokesman said.
 

Remember when liberals ridiculed President Reagan thirty years ago for putting in motion the program to develop anti-ballistic missile systems?   They called it "Star Wars," and pushed the story that Reagan was an idiot to believe that we could ever be in a position to shoot missiles out of the sky.

Good thing he didn't listen to them, isn't it?   Insane leaders in rogue nations with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles is exactly the scenario the missile shield envisioned by Reagan was designed to defend against.   We take it for granted now.  

Just one more item on the long list of things liberals were wrong about.   Are they ever right?