Action needed, not patience
Time right to stop Kim Jong Un
With President Trump and his national security team calling all 100 U.S. senators in tomorrow for an urgent meeting on North Korea, the likelihood is the U.S. is contemplating military action against the rogue regime.
Decades of sanctions and “strategic patience” under the Obama administration failed to thwart North Korea’s lunatic dictator Kim Jong Un from accelerating his nuclear weapons program which, if left unchecked, may someday be able to target Hawaii, Alaska or the West Coast.
With catastrophic consequences.
U.S. Rep. Matt LoPresti (DHawaii) has recently called on his state to reassess its emergency preparedness for a nuclear attack.
Yesterday he told me, “There are some who don’t want to talk about fallout shelters and why we might need them again, but at a time when we have an unstable dictator that has, or soon will have, nuclear-armed ICBM capability and a new president with at best an unpredictable foreign policy, then we’re going to see more and more state legislatures looking at restocking and rei-dentifying old fallout shelters.”
He continued, “We in Hawaii are 100 miles closer to North Korea than we are to Washington, D.C., and would have, at best, a 15-minute notice before impact with inadequate missile defense systems. Failure to understand and soberly discuss real possibilities is not an option.”
Every state would be smart to evaluate its own emergency preparedness plan, given the stark reality that nuclear terrorism could happen in our lifetime.
And if it’s not North Korea harming the U.S. via a cataclysmic missile strike, it could be an electromagnetic pulse knocking out the power grid, throwing any American city into a tailspin. Security experts also fear that someday a terror-sponsoring nation or cell could ship a dirty bomb into a U.S. port in a cargo container with devastating consequences.
After the Islamic State attack in Belgium, European officials found surveillance video of both a nuclear facility and a nuclear scientist in the jihadists’ apartment.
When it comes to emergency preparedness in an age of terror and unhinged dictators — with nukes — we can’t afford to be a day late and a dollar short.
Yesterday, Massachusetts Emergency Management director Kurt Schwartz told me the Bay State doesn’t have any bomb shelters he’s aware of, nor does the state stockpile food and water. In an emergency, Schwartz said, provisions would be sourced and then distributed to the public. However, he did confirm the state has a nuclear and radiological detection plan in place.
Given the range of hazards we face, from natural disasters to acts of war, Schwartz recommends we all store enough food, water and critical supplies for at least three days. The time has come for all governors and emergency officials to evaluate our preparedness. As remote the possibility of a nuclear or biological attack, we can’t afford to be caught flat-footed.