The New York Times this week dispatched a reporter to Hawaii to determine whether the fear merchants of North Korea and the American right had succeeded in scarifying the islanders.
Seems a Japanese newspaper, Yomiuri, reported on June 17 that, according to an "analysis" by the Japanese Defense Ministry, "it is believed" North Korea "might" fire a long-range ballistic missile "toward" Hawaii, "maybe" around July 4.
The shadowy, assumption-riddled Yomiuri piece seems primarily geared towards instilling fear in the Japanese people, spinning scenarios of the missile landing near the Japanese island of Okinawa, or dumping a first-stage booster over the Chugoku or Shikoku regions of Japan. But it was the Hawaiian speculation that was immediately latched onto by US-oriented fear limpets--despite the fact that the article explicitly states that any missile must land at least 500 kilometers short of the main Hawaiian islands.
And so, people prone to flogging and/or feeling fear having been in a flap for nearly a week now, the Times set out to discover if the Hawaiians themselves were wringing their hands and running for shelter.
No.
"What are you going to do?" [Gerald] Aikau, 34, a commercial painter, said as he proudly grilled his [octopus] catch at a beachfront park. "You are going to go sometime, whether it's on a wave, or a missile, or your buddy knocking you down and you hit your head."
Seventy-six-year-old Hawaiian State Representative Joseph M. Souki tried to sound the fear drum, but quickly gave it up.
“We are first strike from Asia,” [he] said. “It's not like we are in Iowa.”
Still, he said, "more than likely nothing is going to happen."
The Obama administration, under constant attack from the American right for perceived foreign-policy "weakness," has dutifully towed out to sea off Hawaii a giant radar tower known as "the golfball." This is part of the vaunted US missile-defense system, born of a misremembered movie viewed by Ronald Reagan, a fever dream that cannot, does not, and will not work.
The Obama administration knows this, which is why it has begun taking an ax to the budget of this apex of military Keynesianism. Chicken Littles screeching that this new North Korean "threat" "proves" the funds must be restored have been told to return to the coop.
Hawaiian artist Mark Brown provided the Times reporter with a geography lesson.
[W]ith a wry smile, he added that a neighboring island, far less populated but a bit closer to North Korea, would probably take the hit.
"It would hit Kauai," he said. "We are on Oahu."
Native Hawaiian Mele Connor, says the Times:
laughed off the threat.
"After North Korea, it will be somebody else," she said. "They know Obama is from here, so they want something. Everybody wants something from our pretty little islands."
What I want from those pretty little islands, right now anyway, is some music. Below is a sweet piece from the Hawaiian slack-key guitar artists Gabby Pahinui and Peter Moon. No fear there at all. Not a hint.