Even though a US military strike on North Korea would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale”… “Just because it’s tragic doesn’t mean he won’t do it.”
But even though a US military strike on North Korea would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale, ” according to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, that doesn’t mean it’s off the table.
At a National Committee on US-China Relations event in New York City, Samuel J. Locklear, the former head of the US military’s Pacific Command made it clear: “Just because it’s tragic doesn’t mean he won’t do it.”
“If the national interests are high enough, and I think this is the mistake that [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un needs really to think about, if you start pressing on an issue that has to do with the survival of the United States against a nuclear attack, the tragic becomes conceivable to stop it, ” said Locklear. “It could be tragic.”
Adm. Timothy J. Keating, another former commander of Pacific Command, echoed Locklear’s statement.
“There are a wide range of options” that are “readily available to the president and the secretary of defense resident in the planning warrens at Pacific command, ” Keating said at the event.
