CNN’s Camerota: If N. Korea fires at but misses Guam, consider it “Just a Missile Test”
“it certainly doesn’t have to be responded with force”
North Korea has threatened to fire missiles at Guam, a US territory home to thousands of US citizens and a major US Air Force base.
What if the missiles fell short or missed the island?
What’s the big deal? It’s “just a missile test.”
That was the thrust of CNN host Alisyn Camerota statement this morning:
“If these missiles, if they do this, and if these go into the waters off Guam, they don’t hit Guam, then isn’t this just another sort of provocation and a missile test? Does it have to be responded to with force?”
Camerota’s sloughing off the significance of missiles near Guam must be understood in the context of President Trump’s statement. He said:
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and the fury like the world has never seen.”
Firing missiles near Guam would surely constitute a “threat” to the United States. That is not to say that it would require an all-out attack on North Korea in response. But to react by saying, “oh well, just another missile test” and fail to employ some kind of force in response would be an unmistakable signal of weakness to North Korea, China and other bad actors around the world.
Panelist Gordon Chang agreed with Camerota’s suggestion that force would not be required in response to such an action by North Korea. He recommended cracking down on “money laundering.” Right. After decades of sanctions that did nothing to slow the North Korean march toward nuclear capability, targeting money laundering will stop them now. Of course.
The wisdom of President Trump’s “fire and fury” statement can be debated. But now that he has laid down that red line, America will back away from it at its peril. Yet that is exactly what Camerota was promoting.
The irony is that if North Korea did carry out such a missile launch, and the US did not use force in response, we can well imagine CNN out there criticizing President Trump for failing to enforce his red line.
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Are they just baiting the president? I mean in other words, if these missiles, if they do this, and if these go into the waters off Guam, they don’t hit Guam, then isn’t this just another sort of provocation and a missile test? Does it have to be responded to with force?
GORDON CHANG: No, it certainly doesn’t have to be responded with force. And I think there’s some non-kinetic options that we have that could really put the North Koreans and the Chinese on the back foot.
CAMEROTA: Meaning what?
CHANG: I think the one thing we should be doing is enforcing US law against money laundering.
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Comments
why don’t we just tell them to take a mulligan?
Fore!
I think they’re on to a “Shapiro”, which is what you take when you’ve screwed up your mulligan.
Utterly idiotic, sadly this is only to be expected from CNN.
If Whoa Fat deliberately fired missiles at America then he should suffer the consequences of his actions!
I think Camerota should be doing her show from Guam until the Norks perfect their targeting capabilities.
Is there room on Guam for the amount of dumbass she carries? We don’t want Guam tipping over because…..well it’s just not a good idea.
The intellectual dishonesty of these people is staggering. If there was a prison for such things, she’d be doing life.
Maybe there is such a prison: hell.
Meantime, mock and laugh at these fools, but don’t dignify them by debating them. Let the ‘undecided’ see your confidence – they’ll follow you.
After first stating that they would target the island of Guam* the DPRK has apparently now stated the intent to fire a missile with a target in the waters “near” Guam. Depending on how near “near” is, that could be an attack on the US if within the territorial waters of the US.
As for Camerota, what do we expect from a talking head these days, and a CNN one at that?
* Perhaps they hope to complete Rep. Hank Johnson’s tipping Guam over?
To come … just how close is enough ?
If a missile hits your neighbor, should you risk life and limb ?
McClatchy tells us … Hillary Clinton wants to be a preacher
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article166344802.html
… maybe she can help
Hillary a preacher? Sign of the Apocalypse!
Which Satanic church will she be a preacher to?
I don’t know, Idiot CNN, If I threaten to shoot you and miss, can I just call it Target Practice in court?
What if the missiles fell short or missed the island?
What’s the big deal? It’s “just a missile test.”
CNN host Alisyn Camerota
Typical CNN garabge!
Halfwit, dolt, moron, imbecile, simpleton, dunce, fool, ignoramus
It’s the old one free punch theory (transferred from Domestic Violence to international affairs).
Yup.
I’m sure that a spouse who keeps verbally threatening severe physical harm, then just punches his fist in the air, mere inches from his wife, would be dismissively ignored by the police as a jovial fellow who was just “practicing” in case he ever really felt the need to actually beat his wife.
Nothing to see here.
Move along.
Whether there’s “nothing to see here” depends on the sex of the person “practicing”. Your scenario is exactly what would happen if the sexes were reversed.
Just how f’n stupid can a CNN talking head be?
Don’t challenge them! Stupid is infinite with those people.
It’s not about ‘stupid.’ It’s about narcissism.
The ego disfunction with these people is such that they’d rather have everyone ELSE be blown up, than admit they don’t know what the hell they’re doing, or that their assertions are in furtherance of the narcissict cult they have so blindly joined.
Remember, these people are the cream (to them.) They can’t be wrong. Even if they’re proven wrong – they are never wrong. How can they be? They are the elite! They are the best! Remember: They get trophies, even if they lose.
The great irony will be when North Korea – or Iran – sets off a nuke in America, it will be these narcissists (living in NY, DC and LA who will get vaporized – and hopefully Trump will be out of town at the time.) Maybe that’s the silver lining in all this.
Or maybe they’ll wind up in a concentration camp, after enabling the likes of these lunatics allies of theirs:
Muslim Professor at CA University: “Genocide” of White Racists “Morally Required:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/08/muslim-professor-ca-university-genocide-white-racists-morally-required/
More stupid than your (or my) comprehension.
you can try to pull the tigers tail.
don’t be surprised at how quickly Tony responds.
THERE was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a Tiger;
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the Tiger.
The real issue is this: Kim Jong Un is holding Seoul hostage and using his entire country’s population as a giant human shield. Do we allow him to use this kind of terrorism to gain greater power or not? He made his choice. Look what appeasing Arab and Persian terror did for Israel.
I forget where I read it, but it seems like the right thing to do with Nork missles, is use either the THAAD battery, or an Aegis cruiser to shoot them down, if they are directed towards any US allies. The suggestion I saw was shoot down every test, regardless of where it is going.
Re: Geoffc:
This is good. However, since missile defense was disfavored by the Kenyan, do we have enough in stock to actually do this? How fast are they being built?
What happens if the missile hits Guam but fails to go off? Do we have to respond? What happens if Japan shoots down a missile? Do we have to respond? What happens if the missile hits CNN and takes out Wolf Blitzer? Do we have to respond?
Re: Jackie:
Hell, yes, if they hit CNN and take out Wolf Blitzer, we have to respond!
1. Ask U.K. to make Kim a knight;
2. Give him a medal.
if the missile hits CNN and takes out Wolf Blitzer
Were you trying to give me my daily smile or was it just accidental? Either way, Thanks!
Could we just not learn from Hank Johnson and tip the island over , then reset it after the dust settles ?
Well,ok, Allison you go and stay on Guam and let us know if the missles hit or miss.
I think the appropriate response to a North Korean missile firing towards Guam would be to launch a hashtag campaign in social media. There is no need to actually destroy the enemy’s war-making ability.
#Bring Our Island Back!
LOL: good one! 🙂
Every time you think a CNN pundit can’t offer dumber analysis, the cable network finds one to chip away at its remaining IQ point from the collective.
Destroy the rockets on the launch pads. North Korea specifically stated they would attack Guam, so why should we take the chance that they mean it?
If you want to wait until they’re 10 feet off the ground first, that’s acceptable too.
When would we know that it was only a test with no warhead on it? And if it is a known test and hits very close to Guam will that be a for the NK’s to make their next shot more accurate? If I pull a real gun on you in an alley and shoot at you and then yell it, “Was only blanks”, if you were armed would you then shoot back? I do not want any war with NK and I know the SK’s don’t want one, but there has to be some rules between countries to keep conflicts from happening. This moron doesn’t seem to understand any normal diplomacy or how to be a successful bully.
does it ever occur to Camarota and people like her HOW STUPID THEY SOUND when they say stupid things? Why is she a news reader and Mattis is Sec Def? Does she even know?
She’s right that such an event wouldn’t have to be responded to with force. If we wanted to, we could dismiss it as just another provocation, and refuse to be baited. Note that she didn’t say it we should do that, just that we could. I agree, such a situation would present us with a choice: to respond with force, or to resort to other means of making our displeasure known. Force would be an option, but only an option. The choice would be entirely ours, and should be made according to what seems to the president to be in our best interest, whereas if they hit us the decision would really be out of our hands, made by them not us.
I think you’re falling for the fallacy, and/or (perhaps correctly) ascribing to her the fallacy, that force can never be merely one option among many — that if there is a peaceful option available then force must be removed from the table. That isn’t true. Most of the time when we use force we have other options, but force is the best one available so we choose it. So long as we have moral and legal justification for it it’s a legitimate choice, and often the correct one. We needn’t wait, and it’s poor leadership to wait, until we are left with no other options; that is letting the enemy make our decisions for us, and he will make them for his benefit, not for ours.
Respond with a ‘test’ …
So by this liberal logic, if I take a swing at a guy’s face and miss I can try to excuse it by saying something like “I was just trying to shoo away a fly, don’t be mad bro!”
Yeah…..no! Just because you try to seriously harm someone and fail doesn’t mean you should be excused for the attempt. N.K. attempting to or (heaven forbid) actually succeeding in an attempt to nuke one of our bases over there in the Pacific IS an act of war and should be treated as such!
You don’t get to do that, but he can, if he likes. That’s all Camerota said, and she’s right. If Kim shoots and misses it would be up to us how to react, whereas if he hits us we will have no choice but to react with overwhelming force.
Thinking about things some I think I need to rework my analogy so here goes.
Say I go out one night the the bar with a couple. Night starts off fine and we’re all having a good time. But then some weedy little punk comes over to us and initially he’s kinda friendly but as we politely explain we want to be left alone he starts to behave a little rudely, cussing us out a bit and saying things like we ain’t so big and bad. Before things can escalate much further though a couple of his buddies come over and pull their friend off of us and back off to their corner. My groups feather’s are a little ruffled but we quickly laugh it off and get back to enjoying ourselves. It’s a bar, these things happen and there was no real harm done. A few minutes later though the punk is back, even more belligerent and this time with a bottle in his hands. Shouting things like “you guys ain’t so tough” and “I’m not afraid of you,” the punk is very agitated. The punk is clearly spoiling for a fight and before my group can say much of anything back to him he takes a swing at one of my friends. Now since the punk is also very drunk he misses by a mile. Before he can recover my friends and I quickly grab him and hold him until the bouncer can get over there to escort the punk out. Now my group’s fun has been ruined by the close call. Everyone is upset so we decide to just pay our tab and call it a night. As we’re getting up to go however the punk comes bursting back in through the door and this time instead of a bottle in his hand he’s got a gun. The situation predictably falls into chaos at this point. When it’s all said and done one of my friends is at the hospital in critical condition and it’s uncertain if he will make it, my other friend is fine, just got the cr*p scared out of him (and he’s got the stained underwear to prove it), and I was grazed but I’ll be fine. The punk after taking a few shots at us ran off and when the cops tracked him down had a shootout with them and he ultimately ended up looking like swiss cheese.
Could this whole situation have been avoided? Had we been friendlier to the punk when he first approached would things have gotten so out of hand? Should we have called the police when he took a swing at one of us with the bottle instead of having the bouncer throw him out? The real question though is: how far do you let a situation escalate when someone is being aggressive and threatening towards you or those you care about before you take firm steps to put an end to the behavior?
I think we as a nation have been very patient and somewhat firm (but not always) when it comes to dealing with N.K. Clearly though our efforts hasn’t been enough and now on the world stage we’re kinda at the point of dealing with an angry drunk (on his own power) punk with a gun. He hasn’t shot anyone yet, just scared our friends with some blanks, but the situation can’t be allowed to get much worse because it’s clear it won’t be much longer before he does actually try to shoot someone, especially if it doesn’t look people are going to give in to his demands. The worrying thing is is that it’s looking more and more like the punk is going to have to be given a severe beating before he’ll clean up his act.
D’oh! That first sentence should read: “with a couple of friends.” Hope that doesn’t cause too much confusion.
The answer is that in all the situations you describe, you have options. Force is one of them, a legitimate one if you choose to use it, but you have to decide whether it’s a good idea. It’s your decision, not his. In all those cases, I think your decision to handle it without force was the correct one, despite the unfortunate outcome that you could not predict; but you had the right to choose otherwise, and nobody who wasn’t there could gainsay you. But once he’s shooting at you you have no more options. You have to fight. And he’s the one who made that decision, not you. And that is all Cammerota said. So long as Kim doesn’t hit Guam we have options; we can decide whether and when and how to use force. If he hits Guam we will have no more options; we will have to fight him, on his schedule and not ours.
I don’t make many predictions…especially regarding what a psychopath might do…
BUT, I predict that the NORKS will NOT launch a salvo of missiles anywhere near Guam.
Why not?
The dog that didn’t bark in that CNN exchange: Obama didn’t clamp down on the money laundering when he was president. Now that he’s gone, CNN feels free to advocate it. Where were they the last eight years?
So how many split seconds would the US have to identify the landing zone of an incoming ballistic missile, to determine if the landing will be just a little to the left, or just a little to the right? Because trying to destroy it mid-air is going to come up.
One of the biggest tragedies to come from our modern news media implosion is the absence of real news about real stories occurring in the world today. We really have no idea what is happening in North Korea, or Iran, or Venezuela. Whenever these topics do make it onto the pages of our crappy newspapers or on cable news, the meat of the story is subjugated to relentless criticism of Trump and his imaginary crimes. I wish I knew what was going on in the world but until we get our news media back, we’ll never know for sure.
If Congressmen Hank Johnson is right and the missiles get to close, Guam could capsize!
Can we just kill Kim Jong-un already!
What Camerota is actually saying is that if all this singing and dancing is just more of Kim’s perpetual program to extort money from the West (meaning, the US), he’s not really looking for a war, since that would ruin the extortion racket and he can’t conceivably win such a war anyway.
And if the Chinese aren’t acting particularly nervous, Kim’s probably managed to convince them that nothing ugly is actually going to happen. If it’s all a show, the Chinese won’t care; if the Norks manage to con the West out of some cash, that doesn’t bother the Chinese.
So, one option is to do what past Presidents have done, even when not having to deal with a few nukes (real or imaginary), and that is shut up and pay the man. This may be shortsighted policy but is not a totally ridiculous statement.
Or … maybe she’s just an asshat.
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: —
“We invaded you last night—we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: —
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: —
“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!”
All right, which asshole downvoted that?
So if some “Dindu Nuffin” shoots his .45 at your kid, should you just write it off as a “test-fire”, “target practice”, or “warning shot” — and NOT respond with appropriate force — if he misses?
That’s what she’s saying.
No, she’s saying you have that option.
Want to understand these CNN fools? —
How to Look Behind the Narcissist’s Facade
By Dan Neuharth, PhD MFT
People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder tend to have distorted worldviews and dwell behind shiny but flimsy facades.
Believing others are their enemies, narcissists are suspicious and live endlessly on defense. To cope, they manipulate, test others, posture, preen and construct elaborate facades for self-protection and self-aggrandizement.
Needing to appear better than anyone else, narcissists seek praise and admiration from others. When it is not forthcoming, narcissists simply praise themselves.
Desperate to win, they view themselves as superior and hold others as less-than. At the same time, they hide, attack or distract from anything or anyone that would put them in a bad light.
As blogger Karla Grimes wrote, “A narcissist paints a picture of themselves as being the victim or innocent in all aspects. They will be offended by the truth. But what is done in the dark will come to light. Time has a way of showing people’s true colors.”
It can take some work, but to effectively cope with narcissists, it is important to see through their deceptions and pretenses.
Here is a table listing some of the key views narcissists hold of themselves versus others on several traits, followed by some truths about narcissists:
How narcissists view themselves
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/narcissism-decoded/2017/08/how-to-look-behind-the-narcissists-facade/
How narcissists view others
What is her education? What qualifies her to analyze this situation or to even know what questions to ask?
Brace yourselves.
According to Wikipedia, she has degree in Broadcast Journalism from American University. That’s it. No evidence she has studied economics, strategic studies…nothing.
What self-centred arrogance that she puts herself up on that pedestal.
Good grief.
I would recommend something with plausible deniability. For instance, if they’re Golf-2/Foxtrot SS-based SLBM launch platforms all of a sudden stopped returning to port how would they prove it was our nuke attack SSNs that were responsible?
It’s unfortunate that it needs to be said, but I’m merely applying the same logic. There are hundreds of thousands of American citizens on Guam. Not only American service members, but Guamanians. It is after all a US territory.
I would never advocate anyone shoot in the general vicinity of Camerota. I am no less prepared to excuse anyone shooting at Guam.
Too many men died, from all services, taking it back. Too many Americans died during the Japanese occupation.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/remembering-battle-guam-gallery-1.3400851?pmSlide=1.3400839
In the first picture the sign the Marines are holding up reads, “Marines salute Coast Guard for their big part in the invasion of Guam. They put us here and we intend to stay.”
If Alisyn Camerota doesn’t have the courage to report from Guam then CNN should hire me. I would like to stay.
By the same token, if I see her driving down the street and shoot out her car windows, as long as I don’t actually hit her she should just shut up and consider it innocent target practice.
My 9:46 p.m. comment should have come after my 8:48 p.m. comment. I screwed up the sequence and got it backward.