On Headlines, and Ferocity…
By I suspect that the crew of the Cheonan might dispute this headline from Reuters:
North Korea shells South in fiercest attack in decades
I suppose we run into definitional issues, and it’s true that the latest shelling has killed civilians. However, torpedoing a patrol ship without warning (even if the warship was in a disputed area) is pretty darned fierce. I worry that the greater degree of plausible deniability provided by a submarine attack relative to an artillery barrage (we can’t be SURE SURE SURE that it was a North Korean torpedo) means that the destruction of Cheonan needs to be treated as an “on the one hand, on the other hand” kind of incident.
h/t topofmyvoice.