North Korea: the irrational actor

You know, law is built on the idea of the "rational actor." The rational actor is a person or entity that will act in its own best interests. They act more or less rationally; they have a positive reason for what they do.

So introducing the "irrational actor." The irrational actor is a person or entity that acts on what looks like impulse, whether or not their actions are apparently in their own best interests. They are, in a word, loose cannons.

Khaddaffi played the irrational actor for a while. Just a looney-toons, doing what comes natcherly, impuslively, without a thought to the impact of his actions. Supposedly. That is, Khaddaffi did somehow profit for his role as the irrational actor. For a while. Until Ronald Reagan just got fed up with it and bombed the crap out of him. We haven't heard too much from Khaddaffi since then, except for that bizarre spectacle he put on at the U.N. a year or so ago. We must conclude, on the basis of that, that he has completely lost his grip on reality -- if he had a grip in the first place.

So now comes Kim Il Jong or whatever. The lunatic who heads up North Korea. Lately he's been sort indiscriminately bombing South Korea, sinking South Korean ships, lobbing mortars over a small island.

China has long served as a kind of suzerain for Korea as a whole. I mean, over centuries. A suzerain is kind of a protector. And China also has stepped in when Korea got just so nutsoid even China couldn't deal with it. China would just take over until Korea could sort out its internal problems and prove it was capable of looking after itself. Then China would step back.

So now with Korea going nuts and shooting off rockets and bombs kind of willy-nilly, the USA among others has asked China to go have a quiet talk with the lunatics running North Korea. Heard just today that China finally has agreed to go have some kind of talk.

Meanwhile, the US is participating in "war games" in the Yellow Sea this week with South Korea. North Korea says that's why it's been so nervous lately. Actually, North Korea is less "nervous" than it is entirely "unstable." And that's why it's been behaving badly.

So, while we have air craft carriers and all that over there, why not just take out their high command? See, in a country with a dictator and highly centralized command-over-everything government situation, it's pretty easy to annihuilate them in one fell swoop. So, why not? The worst that could happen is that Kim Jung Un (the Un-Kim?) will pop up at the U.N. in a couple years, dressed like a polar bear or something, and rambling about God knows what.

Just a thought.

Save the Republic.

(P.S.: I've worked 60 - 70 hours in each of the past couple weeks, so now's my chance to make up for it with all these pent up comments. You don't have to read them all.)