William Perry and Ashton Carter, who were, respectively, secretary and assistant secretary of Defense under President Clinton argue here that if North Korea persists in its missile launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.
Gabriel Schoenfeld argues here that “Perry and Carter are now recommending a preemptive U.S. strike while suggesting that a North Korean response will be relatively tame if it comes at all. But when they were in office, their calculations were reversed. They feared even tame U.S. actions would provoke a ferocious North Korean response. … the hawkish advice they today blithely proffer to the Bush administration suggests a measure of historical amnesia.”
But perhaps Perry and Carton have simly changed their minds. Perhaps they wish, in retrospect, that the Clinton administration had been more hawkish in response to such threats as that from North Korea (and from Iran, Iraq, the Taliban and al-Qaeda).
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