....The Bombs Bursting In Air

Following current events these days stretches the boundaries of the adjective "surreal".  So much so that I could almost forget that I'm not an outside observer but am right in the same predicament with everybody else.

Take this statement of the day-glo obvious:

A source close to the U.S. intelligence community tells Newsmax that North Korea’s launch of a missile was, contrary to widespread reports, a big win for the reclusive communist state.

The three-stage Taepodong-2 missile was launched on Sunday, and according to North Korea was intended to place a satellite in orbit.

North Korea claimed the launch was a success and the satellite was in orbit broadcasting patriotic tunes. But American officials said the missile’s payload instead splashed into the Pacific Ocean after a flight of about 2,000 miles, and the New York Times termed the launch “a failure.”

But the close source told Newsmax the launch that North Korea’s satellite claim could well have been a “ruse” – with the real goal of the launch to test the missile’s range.

Naw - ya think?  What was your first guess, Cap'n Obvious?  But hey, we have to cut Newsmax's intelligence source some slack in all his glorious anonymity, since he's tipping the gray matter scales compared to the appalling credulity of the New York Times, which faithfully swallowed the NoKo's risible alibi of Kim jong-IL's becoming a competitor with Direct TV.  George W. Bush they never believed on anything, no matter how painfully honest he was, but Pyongyang they not only take at face value, but spin it in such a way as to pooh-pooh the NoKo ICBM test even in a military context.  Nothing to see or worry about here, folks, so move along.

At least until you get to the part about their honored guests for the occasion:

“A 2,000-mile shot is a significant technical achievement. And a test is a test. It provided North Korea with valuable data and experience, not to mention publicity to help it sell more missiles to Iran, Syria and other countries.”

Iran’s involvement in the North Korean missile launch is worrisome.

There were in fact reports that Iranian missile experts were at the scene of the launch.

Currently Iran’s most advanced missiles, the Shahab-3 and Sajjil, have a maximum range of about 1,200 miles. A missile with a 2,000-mile range could not only strike Israel with ease, but threaten Europe and other targets throughout the Middle East.

This would be the same Iran to whose nuclear weapons program Barack Obama may soon give his effective blessing:

Officials are mulling whether the U.S. will reverse course and allow Iran to carry out uranium enrichment to produce nuclear fuel only, not weapons-grade material, according to a report in London’s Financial Times.

Such a concession, being considered as part of a policy review by President Barack Obama, would be a sea change from the Bush Administration’s hard-line policy [heh] of forbidding uranium enrichment per se....

“There is a growing recognition in [Washington] that the zero [enrichment] solution, though still favored, simply is unfeasible,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, according to the Times. “The U.S. may still have zero as its opening position, while recognizing it may not be where things stand at the end of a potential agreement.”

Sound familiar?  It should; this is the same deal that Bill Clinton gave the NoKos fifteen years ago, which enabled the "Hermit Kingdom" to officially cross the nuclear threshold seven years later (and in reality, long before that).  And the mullahs have almost certainly churned out a warhead or two by now.

Ms. Parsi is wrong, of course.  "The zero enrichment solution" is entirely "feasible".  It simply will not, as it never has, come from pointless, futile, weak-kneed "diplomacy" with a demonic regime that hates us for what we are and seeks our destruction no matter what we do or say, and is all the more certitudinously convinced of their ultimate triumph with each "messianic" prostration proclamation and each weapons program that meets up-close and personal with the Chosen One's sole manifestation of "fiscal restraint".

As the Battlestar Galactica catch-phrase states, "All this has happened before."  The first time it got us Pearl Harbor and forty-five months of all-out global war.  The second time it got us 9/11 and three thousand dead American civilians.

Anybody want to start taking bets on what the trifecta will be?  That couldn't be any more surreal than watching my country skip loopily down the same primrose path to strategic disaster for the third time in as many generations.

Make that the fourth - Ronald Reagan was elected just in time to avert the radioactive consequences of Jimmy Carter's pacifistic idiocy.  Looks like that was just a deferral of the inevitable.

Doesn't get any more surreal than that.