Governor John Kasich’s crazy solution to the North Korean crisis: ‘take out’ Kim Jong-un

It was bound to happen eventually given the extent to which fantasy fiction seems to have so much of the US political establishment in its grip, but Governor John Kasich of Ohio, a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2016 Presidential election, has just provided proof that despite everything which he has done and which has been said about him,nald Trump is still far from the worst conceivable choice for US President.

Kasich’s “solution” to the North Korean crisis is as simple as it is crazy: ‘take out’ Kim Jong-un and the rest of the North Korean leadership.

Here is how he explained it during a breakfast at the Christian Science Monitor

An ability to remove a number of the top people, and have a more benign leadership there that understands what’s at risk, I think is perhaps doable.I bet they (ie. the Trump administration – AM) are thinking about it.  If I were there, I’d be asking them about it. Are you staging raids? Do you know how to land? Do you know how to get there? Are your helicopters going to work?

Putting aside the fact that what Kasich is proposing is murder and arguably terrorism, it is to be sincerely hoped that no one inside the Trump administration is in fact considering this crazy idea.  Not only is it almost certainly impractical, but the idea of trying to send a hit-squad to ‘take out’ the leadership of a state which is also a nuclear power is just about the most reckless and irresponsible thing the US could do.

It is in fact difficult to know what would be more dangerous: the success of such an attempt, or its failure.

How would North Korea react to the murder of its ‘Great Leader’?  How would Kim Jong-un, with his hand possibly on the nuclear trigger, react to a failed attempt to assassinate him?  What would happen if the ‘hit-squad’ were captured and paraded by the North Korean military?  Would that result in another hostage crisis, like the one that eviscerated US politics following the 1979 storming of the US embassy in Tehran?

Needless to say if North Korea were to talk in this way about sending murder squads to ‘take out’ the leadership of the US it would be seen as proof of the crazy character of its leadership, and of North Korea’s dangerous willingness to embrace terrorism.

Strange that is never said of the US.