As we went to press in the U.S. last night, morning was breaking at the Musudan-ri launch facility in the remote northeast of North Korea. It's possible we'll wake up to the news that Pyongyang has tested the long-range ballistic missile that is fully fueled and which U.S. satellites have monitored for more than a month.
If so, we hope we'll also learn that the U.S. responded by testing its newly operational missile defense system and blowing the Korean provocation out of the sky. What better way to discourage would-be nuclear proliferators than to demonstrate that the U.S. is able to destroy their missiles before they hit our allies, or the U.S. homeland. Even a miss would be a useful learning experience all around. . . .
In a similar vein is today's house editorial from The National Review Online:
Why would North Korea prepare to test a long-range missile in plain sight of U.S. satellites and the world? There is much head-scratching over that, but it really shouldnÂ’t be a mystery. Aggressive and erratic behavior is pretty much what the North Korean economy is based on. It is what has allowed Pyongyang to extort aid from the rest of the world as a prop to its criminal regime.
The proper response is to make it clear to the North Koreans that we arenÂ’t playing that game anymore. That means eschewing the Clinton approach of shoveling help to North Korea in the hope of ending the provocations. It also means using our missile-defense system against a North Korean missile launch, should it come to that.
The Taepodong-2 missile has the range to reach at least Alaska and Hawaii, and the gravity of a nuclear North Korea having this technology should go without saying. There is a wide expanse of ocean where such a test launch could fall harmlessly, but, on the other hand, the missile also could be directed toward U.S. territory. If it is (the North Koreans never issue the customary “notice to airmen and sailors” about the intended path of their ICBM tests), the Bush administration would be in the odd position of taking a lunatic regime’s word for it that a missile headed in our direction is innocently intended.
This puts us in an intolerable position, and if the missile comes within the performance envelope of our nascent missile-defense system, we should try to shoot it down. . . .
Works for me. Weapons free, boys, fire as you bear!