Trump's go-to general rattles the saber, pushes for "pre-emptive strike" on North Korea

Retired four-star general and regular Fox News guest Jack Keane, who was Donald Trump’s first choice to be secretary of Defense but turned down the job, is now pounding the table in favor of a military response to North Korea.

Keane told Fox News that the recent failed missile test from North Korea means America should consider a first-strike attack on that nation:

We’re rapidly and dangerously heading towards the reality that the military option is the only one left when it comes to getting North Korea to denuclearize and not weaponized [intercontinental ballistic missiles].

Keane also told the London Times, “A pre-emptive strike against launch facilities, underground nuclear sites, artillery and rocket response forces and regime leadership targets may be the only option left on the table. We are rapidly and dangerously moving towards a military solution.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly used aggressive rhetoric on the North Korean issue, criticizing the Obama administration for using diplomacy to handle the rogue nation’s attempts to go nuclear. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently released a bizarre statement in response to their missile test: “The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.”

A preemptive strike would be unlikely to destroy North Korea’s nukes, and its retaliation for such an attack could kill hundreds of thousands of people in Korea and Japan. Former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has said that a war on the Korean peninsula would dwarf the violence seen in the Korean War, where 2.5 million people died.

Trump is already overly reliant on military types to assemble his foreign policy — and is, of course, an avid watcher of Fox News — and hawkish figures like Keane publicly encouraging escalation could lead Trump and the country into bloody chaos.