Rep. King Cheers Obama’s Hawkish Stance on North Korea

Any American president taking any foreign policy position short of all-out war can usually depend on a few Congressmen blasting them as soft. Rarely has that been so overtly the case as with Rep. Peter King (R – NY), the ultra-hawkish head of the Homeland Security Committee and member of the Intelligence Committee.

When tensions broke out on the Korean Peninsula, King was among the first to call for an immediate military attack on North Korea, insisting President Obama had a “moral obligation” to do so.

It is exceedingly ominous, then, that Rep. King is suddenly praising President Obama’s hawkish stance on North Korea, giving him “full credit” for his policy in the region and singling out his decision to deploy nuke-capable bombers overhead as particularly worthy of accolades.

President Obama has laid out a series of clearly risky positions in public, with officials hyping a plan of “counterprovocation” that seems a clear recipe for escalation in the region and pledging military involvement in even minor incidents, which normally wouldn’t have led to an all-out war under the previous ad hoc policies.

Which is bad enough, but when one considers Rep. King’s committee positions would give him access to behind-the-scenes policy decisions that could be dramatically more belligerent than what we are seeing publicly, and would explain his suddenly chipper attitude toward administration’s policy, at least in this one case.