Fred Kaplan of Slate is my hero.

He writes so well about things I'm interested in that I can't get
enough of his work.

His latest piece pretty much sums up what I've been thinking on the
subject of the current DPRK crisis in this 'graph:

    In short, President Bush may well have blown it. If there is still
time to strike a deal, he has to strike one very soon and not just ask
the Chinese to persuade Kim to back down. As is, Bush has waited so
long to get serious that an accord-if one were reache--will cost us a
lot more than it would have a year or two ago. There are only three
alternatives to diplomacy, though, and they are grimmer still. One is
to launch a war that nobody in the region would tolerate and that we
lack the resources to wage. Another is to apply sanctions in order to
isolate North Korea, a country that is already, by its leader's choice,
the most isolated on earth. The third is to live with the fact that the
world's last totalitarian has joined the league of nuclear powers.

So, we're screwed because, as I can not stress enough, our attention
was so focused on Iraq for stupid reasons that we have gotten to the
point with North Korea that a horrific, horrible and avoidable war is
now a potential and valid option.

Do you have any idea how bad a resumption of the Korean War would be?

First, northern Seoul is kaput within the first few moments of war. A
few cities in Korean may be vaporized, not to mention one or two in
Japan and even, maybe, west coast of the U.S. There is a lot of debate
about who the North Koreans would target their nukes at because they
alledgely see the South as their "wayward brothers" dominated by the
fascist Yankee running dogs or some such. I still think, however, that
the city of Busan better watch its back. Incheon...I dunno...It's a
port city, but it's so close to the DMZ that the North would probably
take it in the first few days of the war.

I really feel like we're living in some weird alternative universe.

This is just some soju-induced false reality, right? RIGHT?