McMaster: U.S. is Preparing for a ‘Preventative War’ with North Korea

This week, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was interviewed about the events thus far that have shaped the US’ current stance when it comes to North Korea and what war with that nation would look like.

General McMaster has been hesitant to speak at length about specifics, as has any of the myriad officers associated with the stand-off with North Korea.  Leftists have seen this as a weakness of sorts, claiming that they’re unwilling to talk about the options they are weighing because they know how unpopular those options are with the American people.  However, all these leaders under President Trump have made it clear that they will not discuss matters of national security with the press, and they certainly will not leak to the press any information that could compromise their plans.

The Left has gotten so used to leaking information to the Fake News Industrial Complex (FNIC) as well as their own leadership compromising their Top Secret, Confidential and Classified materials through carelessness and wanton stupidity, even going so far as to violate federal laws and protocol when it comes to handling such documents through unsecured means, that they cannot comprehend why the Trump administration won’t just tell them what’s going on, dammit!

McMaster spoke with Hugh Hewitt at MSNBC about the prospect of war with North Korea, and what it might look like.

H.H.: Let me switch if I can to North Korea, which is really pressing. And– and remind our audience, at the Aspen Institute ten days ago, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Joe Dunford, said, “There’s always a military– option. It would be horrific.” Lindsey Graham on Today Show earlier this week said– “We need to destroy the regime and their deterrent.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday, I believe, to North Korea, “You are leaving us no choice but to protect ourselves.” And then the Chairman of the Chief of Staff of the Army said, “Just because every choice is a bad choice doesn’t mean you don’t have to choose.” Are we looking at a preemptive strike? Are you trying to prepare us, you being collectively, the administration and people like Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton for a first strike North Korea?

H.R.M. Well, we really, what you’re asking is– is are we preparing plans for a preventive war, right? A war that would prevent North Korea from threatening the United States with a nuclear weapon. And the president’s been very clear about it. He said, “He’s not gonna tolerate North Korea being able to threaten the United States” if they have nuclear weapons that can threaten the United States; It’s intolerable from the president’s perspective. So of course, we have to provide all options to do that. And that includes a military option.

Now, would we like to resolve it short of what would be a very costly war, in terms of– in terms of the suffering of mainly the South Korean people? The– the ability of– of that North– North Korean regime to hold the South hostage to conventional fire’s capabilities, artillery and so forth, Seoul being so close. We’re cognizant of all of that. And so what we have to do is– is everything we can to– to pressure this regime, to pressure Kim Jong-un and those around him such that they conclude, it is in their interest to denuclearize. And there are really I think three critical things, came out of the president’s very successful summit with– President Xi of China that were different– that were different from past efforts to work with China, which has always been, you know, the– the desire, right, to work with China– on the– on the North Korean problem.

The “preventative war” is really the crux of the matter here.  Look at preventative war as what Adolf Hitler did with all the nations that he began invading as a prelude to World War II.  Germany routinely invaded neutral countries around Europe on the grounds of “prevention,” beginning with the invasion of Poland in 1939.  Hitler claimed that the Poles had attacked a border outpost first and therefore, in an effort for Germany to “prevent” an all-out conflict with them, they invaded and “disarmed the situation.”

The German leader did so again and again.  Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, arguing that the British “might” have used them as launching points for an attack on the motherland, or could have prevented supply of strategic materials to Germany.  Therefore, they invaded the Scandinavian nations.

The term that McMaster is using currently is a nice way to say that we will “bomb the crap out of them” until they have no capabilities left to counterstrike.  The underlying fear is that this will be devastating to South Korea.  That means that, in a series of strikes against North Korea in an attempt to take out its main missile capabilities against the US, Japan and South Korea, smaller, more insignificant missile launch sites, closer to the border in the south will be strategically ignored as the larger threats in the north will be focused upon by the initial strikes.  North Korea will be forced to use these lesser sites to strike at South Korea, most likely Seoul, because of its proximity and population density.  Remember when the Iraq War began, when Saddam Hussein’s military installations and capabilities were being pummeled and quickly diminished in lethality by US airstrikes, what did he do?  He ordered SCUD missiles launched not at US forces, but at Israel.  It didn’t even matter where, as long as they were hurting someone they perceived as having begun all this.

In the eyes of Kim Jong-un, South Korea, as a nation, is ultimately responsible for all this misery that he, his father and his grandfather caused inside their own nation.  Therefore, if a US airstrike is initiated, military officials are 100% sure that one of the first targets by North Korea will be its neighbor to the south, particularly if their long-range capability in ground-to-ground is decimated.  There will still be a focus on the submarine-launched missiles toward the United States and Japan, but South Korea will be the quick target.

HH: In 1994, when the first North Korean deal with signed, the people who executed it, Gallucci, Dan Poneman, Joe Wit wrote a book. And they quoted a general saying, “If there is a conflict,” called Going Critical, “there will be a million casualties.” A million casualties. Is that still a good estimate of what happens if– preemptive strike unfolds in North Korea, General?

HRM: You know, one thing about war. It’s impossible oftentimes to predict. It’s always impossible to predict the future course of events. Because war is a continuous interaction of opposites, a continuous interaction between your forces and those of the enemy. It involves not just the capability to use force, but also intentions and things that are just unknowable at the outset. And so I think it’s important to– to look at– range of estimates of what could happen, because it’s clear that at war, it’s unpredictable. And so you always have to ask the question, “What happens next? What are the risks? How do you mitigate those risks?” And– and obviously, you know, war is– is– is the most serious decision any leader has to make. And so what can we do to make sure we exhaust our possibilities and exhaust our other opportunities to accomplish this very clear objective of denuclearization of the peninsula short of war?

Isn’t it interesting that, during the Iraq War, body counts of the dead were tallied on CNN every day and night.  They had a special little box in the corner as a constant 24/7 reminder to the audience that “this is how many innocent people are being murdered by your GOP!”  Yet, when the Obama administration was engaged in many wars at one time, there never was a peep from the FNIC about how many “innocents” were dying?  Of course, that body count box on CNN disappeared quickly once Obama entered the Oval Office.  The point is, why weren’t these questions about “how many casualties” there could possibly be if war was initiated?

Regardless of the answer (because we all know what the answer is) it doesn’t change the fact that this is a really idiotic question.  How can any military expert, even the most skilled, predict how many casualties there will be.  The military is not in the business of killing its own soldiers.  It is in the business of winning conflicts.  We’re not talking about the Military Industrial Complex…different animal altogether.  But the military itself is in the business of safeguarding its forces, otherwise it loses its objective.  Congress typically limits the amounts of money spent on defense and military commanders are acutely aware of this.  Each battle is fought with the intentions of using as little ordnance as possible to facilitate victory.  This includes the use of military personnel.  We’re fighting in a century where electronics rule and military engagement is the most deadly in its opponent focus and the least attrition-inducing on friendly forces in the history of war.  The question then becomes “How many lives will be saved in this war event?”  That’s not the way this will be viewed, however, in the modern FNIC age of misinformation.

HH: How concerned should the American people be that we are actually on the brink of a war with North Korea?

HRM: Well, I think it’s impossible to overstate the danger associated with this. Right, the, so I think it’s impossible to overstate the danger associated with a rogue, brutal regime, I mean, who murdered his own brother with nerve agent in an airport. “I mean, think about what he’s done in terms of his own brutal repression of not only members of his regime but his own family,” McMaster added.

Excuse me for saying so, being a former member of the military myself, but that is one weak argument, General, sir.  If you wanted to convince the Leftist radicals who make up 99.9% of the MSNBC audience, that was definitely NOT the way to do it.  In fact, appearing on that network at all was a mistake in its infancy.  There is absolutely nothing to be gained by speaking to that information-deprived, intellectually dishonest and rabidly anti-American crowd.  A statement that gives justification for going to war as “he killed his brother” is ludicrous.

Whatever the effects, or lack thereof, in which this interview was supposed to result, the fact of the matter is, we need to refrain from doing interviews where the questions are specifically designed to trap the official.  When the interviewer is quoting people like Lindsey Graham, it’s definitely time to hang up the microphone and move on to a more receptive (and sane) venue.

Source:  ZeroHedge