| 18 October 2006 Rockets and Dirt Poor Dear Leader! He has invested all this time and energy into becoming a nuclear power, and he is being dissed by those he sought to impress! The embargo could interrupt his supply of premium cognac. Thousands of bottles of Paradis are shipped to North Korea each year. The brand is produced by Hennessy, and goes for over $600 a bottle down the road in Seoul. The distiller has confirmed that the Dear Leader has maintained an annual tab near a million dollars since 1992. It is good stuff, like the Mercedes staff cars he uses for foreign guests. The German star has been removed from the hood, and replaced by the symbol of the DPRK on the small fleet. They are a great way to get around the broad and empty boulevards of Pyongyang. Secretary of State Rice has rushed to northeast Asia to reinforce the sanctity of the alliance with Japan and the Republic of Korea. She stressed this morning the willingness of the United States to use any method in her inventory to counter the world's newest nuclear power. That presumably means the arrows in their silos strung across the Great Plains, or the ones cradled in the belly of the dark missile submarines. I am not aware that the gray ships of the Navy have once more been equipped with nuclear weapons. That has always been a matter that the government would neither confirm nor deny. Kim, who reportedly spends hours per day on the Internet, is petulant. This is apparently not playing out the way he had intended. Another test may be in the works to show that he is really, really serious. I will credit him with that, if a second blast is akin to a very firm stomp of his platform shoe. I don't blame the other Koreans and the Japanese for having a case of the willies. I would be a little worked up myself if I was living within range of his rockets. I'm sure that day will come, if Kim lives that long. For now, though, the thought of civil defense must be on the minds of those within the arc of his missiles. This takes me back to the dawn of the atomic age. The first response to the threat of nuclear weapons was to start digging. There are still bomb shelters in the near-suburbs, and great public works remain in the older cities far below ground. I walked through one in Philadelphia this year. It serves now as a connecting walkway between subway stations, but it is vast, enough for most of the people in the soaring buildings above to seek shelter below. In time, the accuracy and power of the weapons grew to the point that that no shelter, regardless of how strong or deep, would be safe, and the works were abandoned to the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, which was much cheaper and required no digging. We are not in that situation at the moment, and that is what Dr. Rice was trying to get across to the petulant Kim. Even if the North can fit a nuclear device to the tip of one of their rockets, he is not completely sure where it will go. A general idea is the best he can do, and in such circumstances, a deep hole is a fine place to wait out his limited capabilities. It was like that here in Arlington, once and again, when the high ground was the last defense of the capital of the Union. I have crawled around what is left of the forts of Washington, when this was a city under siege. The District was completely ringed by forts and bastions and trenches. The works were constructed of dirt and timber, which were remarkably effective against the strategic weapons of the day. The dirt would absorb the energy of the cannonballs, and the timbers would hold it in steep angles. The best place to see it is Fort Ward, which is owned by the city of Alexandria. The works are 95% complete, at least so far as the dirt has settled. To give an idea of how formidable these low mounds of dirt had been, the Northwest Bastion was restored to illustrate the appearance of the entire fortification, circa 1864. The glacis is steep, and the gun-ports assertive, with cannons in place. The whole County was clear-cut in those days, and it is oddly soothing to see the great trees rising out of what had been the firing platform for a siege mortar. There have been many assaults on liberty here since, though none quite so public and personal. Up the road, Fort Marcy was protected by the construction of the Parkway along the Virginia side of the Potomac. That is where they say Presidential counsel Vince Foster ended his life with an heirloom pistol. The testimony about the incident is a matter of public record, though for some reason the Park Service moved the cannons that mark the old earthen works to confound those of us that follow scandals. That made me suspicious, at the time, but no matter. I'm sure it will come up again, just as Chappaquidick does, when it is convenient. The ramparts of Fort Richardson remain, in private hands, though now they shelter the ninth green at the Army-Navy Country Club. There are bits and pieces of the old fortifications all over, though you have to squint hard to imagine them. A friend who lives a mile or so from Big Pink has a portion of a rampart as the side of his yard, erupting from the side of his house, and terminating at his neighbors. Arlington County does not have much in the way of preserved fortifications. Alexandria and Fairfax were lucky to get examples that had quietly gone to seed when the soldiers went home. In the day, all they wanted to do was forget. I drove up Military Road the other day to look at what is left of Fort Ethan Allen, which anchored the turn of the defenses to the northeast. The local government has made preservation of what is left of it an issue. More about that tomorrow. I have to get moving to attend a meeting that will discuss rockets, and the effect of explosions on earth. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |