Here We Go Again, More Pre-emptive Strike Nonsense

The media loves to manufacture scandals and here is the latest scandal courtesy of the Washington Post, that the US is planning pre-emptive war against North Korea:

In light of North Korea’s nuclear test, the United States and South Korea have agreed to develop a new contingency plan to take military action against North Korea in scenarios short of North Korea attack or in response to a catastrophic “collapse” in the North.

The new revised plan – CONPLAN 5029 -focuses on preemptive action to thwart North Korean moves involving potential export of weapons of mass destruction.

Pentagon sources confirm that the new plan will be the first joint U.S.-South Korean plan to take action against North Korea even if the North does not invade or attack the South first.

The article is implying that the US is planning some kind of pre-emptive war on North Korea. However, it is a CONPLAN not an OPLAN. A CONPLAN is a non-detailed plan for possible US military contingency missions. If the Pentagon wasn’t drafting a CONPLAN for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea they should be considered derelict of their duties. They probably have people drafting up CONPLANs to invade Iceland much less North Korea.

Now this latest pre-emptive strike “scandal” even caused USFK commander General B.B. Bell to have a press conference to put an end to the speculation that the US is planning to invade North Korea:

The general, who took command of the 29,500 USFK servicemembers in February, said the U.S. military here is under no orders to implement a specific nuclear strategy or pre-emptive strike plans in response to North Korea’s nuclear test last month, Bell said, disputing local news reports to the contrary.

Instead, both the U.S. and South Korean military continue to position weaponry and manpower as deterrents against any invasion and to prepare in case provoked by the North, Bell said.

“We’re in the business of deterring through strength, and should deterrence fail and North Korea attack, to quickly and decisively defeat the aggressor, which we will do and, trust me, we’re quite capable of doing,” Bell said.

This is what the Washington Post columnist had to say in response to General Bell’s press conference:

Groundless. No intention. Our business. Preemptive strike. Is Gen. Bell merely parsing words to calm the political water in Seoul? He may say that Combined Forces Command has neither plan nor intention and in this he is probably covered by fact. But the general ignores what he knows to be the web of preemptive plans and options developed not only in Pacific Command’s CONPLAN 5029, in unilateral U.S. plans (including parts of 5029) developed elsewhere, in other preemption possibilities falling under programs like the Proliferation Security Initiative and even in actual unilateral preemption plans of other commands, such as U.S. Strategic Command.

It is silliness like this from the media that is partly to blame in my opinion for the crappy post-war planning in Iraq. Here is what I think happened. Before the Iraq War the Pentagon couldn’t go into in-depth post-war planning because then it would have looked like that the administration had made up it’s mind to go to war. The media would have gotten wind of this because of all the Pentagon leaks. So post-war planning was put on the back burner because the US government was still trying to convince the international community that the US was exploring all options to avoid war and OPLANs for a post-war Iraq would have signaled that the US was fully committed to war.

So it is with a sense of irony that the same media that has been bashing the military over not doing enough prior planning before the Iraq are now criticizing the military over prior planning to deal with possible North Korean war scenarios. But really the media is just being the media by causing controversy and inflating threats to sell papers. The real problem here are the leakers in the Pentagon who gave the Washington Post the information that they were working on CONPLAN-5029 to begin with. No leakers would mean no controversy, which would mean Generals like B.B Bell would have less headaches dealing with this stupid stuff.

Yet with all the leakers in the Pentagon, who is the Pentagon going after and trying to shut up? Milbloggers. Go figure.