US Politics

[johnzo]

17 minutes ago, The Unknown Poster said:

And if you decimate North Korea, what does China do?

 

Just now, Throw Long Bannatyne said:

The answer is "China"....and it wouldn't be any different this time around.

Yeah, making unrestrained war on the client state of a nuclear-armed frenemy is a surprisingly tricky thing!

[Fatty Liver]

7 minutes ago, johnzo said:

 

Yeah, making unrestrained war on the client state of a nuclear-armed frenemy is a surprisingly tricky thing!

The US has already backed down from their nuclear threat.  They're not that frickin stupid.

[Mark F]

1 hour ago, Atomic said:

Jumped the shark, YA I SAW IT!!!

could not find a direct link. 

[Mark F]

24 minutes ago, Throw Long Bannatyne said:

The US has already backed down from their nuclear threat.  They're not that frickin stupid.

Are you sure? They are pretty stupid. Abysmally stupid.

had a quick look at n korea weaponry. all kinds of evil crap chemical weapons, gas, biological, missiles, scuds.

Trump's found the keys to the gun cabinet. Somebody's going to get shot.

 

Edited April 26, 2017 by Mark F

[The Unknown Poster]

53 minutes ago, Throw Long Bannatyne said:

The US has already backed down from their nuclear threat.  They're not that frickin stupid.

has North Korea?

[Atomic]

31 minutes ago, Mark F said:

Are you sure? They are pretty stupid. Abysmally stupid.

had a quick look at n korea weaponry. all kinds of evil crap chemical weapons, gas, biological, missiles, scuds.

Trump's found the keys to the gun cabinet. Somebody's going to get shot.

 

So what do you suggest we do about North Korea and all their evil crap?  Nothing?

[Fatty Liver]

2 minutes ago, Atomic said:

So what do you suggest we do about North Korea and all their evil crap?  Nothing?

Leave them alone, back off and ignore their threats and everything will resume as it has for the past 50 years.  N. Korea is like a well entrenched pawn, difficult to remove and attempting to do so would cause a lot of damage to both sides.   A combination of Chinese belligerence and a disruption of the S. Korean economy could reak havoc on the US economy if things went sideways so hopefully common sense will prevail.

[The Unknown Poster]

 

[Mark F]

Unreal.

[Atomic]

54 minutes ago, Throw Long Bannatyne said:

Leave them alone, back off and ignore their threats and everything will resume as it has for the past 50 years.  N. Korea is like a well entrenched pawn, difficult to remove and attempting to do so would cause a lot of damage to both sides.   A combination of Chinese belligerence and a disruption of the S. Korean economy could reak havoc on the US economy if things went sideways so hopefully common sense will prevail.

Do nothing and hope for the best.  True leadership!

[johnzo]

2 hours ago, Atomic said:

They were on their way to victory until China intervened.  Of course no one wanted war with China.  Now, China is beginning to distance themselves from NK.  And would China ever actually go to war with the Americans on behalf of NK?  Maybe... but it seems a lot more unlikely now than it did in the 1950s.

There is substantial distance between "distancing themselves" and "consenting to a war with seven-figure casualties that will destabilize their backyard and create a refugee crisis."  You think China is real eager to have another Syria on their southern border?  How far do you think they'll go to prevent that from happening? 

Consider how the USA would respond if China bombed the **** out of Mexico and sent millions of refugees streaming into Arizona and Texas.

The stakes are way different today than in the 1950s. In 1953 an armistice was tolerable to all sides because it preserved every government involved in the fighting. In 2017 any Korean military adventure would have to commit itself to the wholesale annihilation of the Kim regime.  The outward nork stance of massive escalation means that tossing a few cruise missiles at a runway won't suffice. 

Have you looked at Korean geography?  Do you know how hard it is to dislodge an enemy dug into mountains, especially one that's been digging in for decades? The Japanese made Iwo Jima into a bloody fortress in less than a year. The Nazis held an improvised defensive line in Northern Italy for a year against an Allied army that outnumbered them 3:1 in manpower and 10:1 in airpower. And how much luck did NATO have rooting the Taliban out of the Pakistani border regions?  Even with their drones and B-52s and celebrated special forces, they could not manage it.

There would be no quick and "clean" Saddam-style decapitation in Korea. Any Second Korean War would be an incalculable tragedy, even if China consented to it, and even if it was wholely contained to Korea.

It's an easy thing to cheer for from the safety of Manitoba though.

Edited April 26, 2017 by johnzo

[Atomic]

1 minute ago, johnzo said:

It's an easy thing to agitate for from the safety of Manitoba though.

It's also easy to ignore all of NK's human rights violations from Manitoba too.

Even easier to shrug our shoulders and say "Well there was nothing that we could do" when North Korea attacks South Korea, Japan or North America.

Funny how the same people who are worried about Trump's unpredictability seem so damn sure they can predict what North Korea will do.

[johnzo]

12 minutes ago, Atomic said:

It's also easy to ignore all of NK's human rights violations from Manitoba too.

Should Canada accept refugees from North Korea?

I ask because it's strange that you are so anti-refugee and yet simultaneously so deeply concerned about human rights in North Korea. 

Let me know if I have this right: it's okay to spend billions bombing the people we're trying to save, but unthinkable to spend a few million housing them in the safety of North America?

Edited April 26, 2017 by johnzo

[johnzo]

Oh, and lest anyone think the issue of North Korean refugees in Canada is purely rhetorical:

https://news.vice.com/article/after-turning-hundreds-of-north-koreans-away-canada-now-vows-to-accept-its-refugees

Edited April 26, 2017 by johnzo

[Mark F]

Guess we might as well bomb south Korea while we're at it
 

Quote

 

BUSAN, South Korea (AP) — The 14-year-old boy in the black school jacket stared at his sneakers, his heart pounding, as the policeman accused him of stealing a piece of bread.

Even now, more than 30 years later, Choi Seung-woo weeps when he describes all that happened next. The policeman yanked down the boy's pants and sparked a cigarette lighter near Choi's genitals until he confessed to a crime he didn't commit. Then two men with clubs came and dragged Choi off to the Brothers Home, a mountainside institution where some of the worst human rights atrocities in modern South Korean history took place.

A guard in Choi's dormitory raped him that night in 1982 — and the next, and the next. So began five hellish years of slave labor and near-daily assaults, years in which Choi saw men and women beaten to death, their bodies carted away like garbage.

Choi was one of thousands — the homeless, the drunk, but mostly children and the disabled — rounded up off the streets ahead of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which the ruling dictators saw as international validation of South Korea's arrival as a modern country. An Associated Press investigation shows that the abuse of these so-called vagrants at Brothers, the largest of dozens of such facilities, was much more vicious and widespread than previously known, based on hundreds of exclusive documents and dozens of interviews with officials and former inmates.

Yet nobody has been held accountable to date for the rapes and killings at the Brothers compound because of a cover-up orchestrated at the highest levels of government, the AP found. Two early attempts to investigate were suppressed by senior officials who went on to thrive in high-profile jobs; one remains a senior adviser to the current ruling party. Products made using slave labor at Brothers were sent to Europe, Japan and possibly beyond, and the family that owned the institution continued to run welfare facilities and schools until just two years ago.

 

associated press.

South Korea was ruled by brutal dictators, including the father of the recent president. But they were our brutal dictators. Therefore the tortrure is ok.

[Atomic]

13 minutes ago, johnzo said:

Should Canada accept refugees from North Korea?

I ask because it's strange that you are so anti-refugee and yet simultaneously so deeply concerned about human rights in North Korea. 

Let me know if I have this right: it's okay to spend billions bombing the people we're trying to save, but unthinkable to spend a few million housing them in the safety of North America?

OK, you prefer to attack my position on another issue rather than address what I just said.  That's fine... par for the course really.  But I don't see how my lack of willingness to accept refugees explains your laissez-faire attitude towards human rights violations.

But we can set aside the human rights issues for now.  Honestly my primary concern is with our own safety.  I'm worried that some people seem content to wait for North Korea to attack.  We'll deal with it *after* they drop a bomb on Los Angeles or Seoul or Kyoto.  Until then... not a problem!

Most of the North Korean rhetoric is just ****-waving.  Until it's not.  Does Kim Jong-Un strike you as a rational, predictable, measured individual?

[The Unknown Poster]

1 hour ago, Atomic said:

Do nothing and hope for the best.  True leadership!

Im genuinely surprised to see an argument in favour of the US as the Policemen of the World in 2017.  Im not wholly against the idea but the politics of the world have changed.  We'd basically have to accept the US as morally justified friendly dictators spreading their band of democracy everywhere.  It doesnt work though.

North Korea should be China's problem and the world community should lean on China to deal with it.

Or, dont we have some black ops programs to deal with these things?  Assassinate the little weasel and be done with it.

[The Unknown Poster]

12 minutes ago, Atomic said:

OK, you prefer to attack my position on another issue rather than address what I just said.  That's fine... par for the course really.  But I don't see how my lack of willingness to accept refugees explains your laissez-faire attitude towards human rights violations.

But we can set aside the human rights issues for now.  Honestly my primary concern is with our own safety.  I'm worried that some people seem content to wait for North Korea to attack.  We'll deal with it *after* they drop a bomb on Los Angeles or Seoul or Kyoto.  Until then... not a problem!

Most of the North Korean rhetoric is just ****-waving.  Until it's not.  Does Kim Jong-Un strike you as a rational, predictable, measured individual?

If most of his rhetoric is ****-waving then why the need to start a war that will be so destructive?  Im a conservative.  I generally want to punish the evil.  But im not sure how decimating North Korea and thereby seeing South Korea decimated is a suitable response to lousy human rights issues in North K.

And Im not seeing any answers from you as to what to do.  You are advocating military action.  To what extent?  Because you have to wipe out the regime to create change.  You effectively have to make North Korea into South Korea.  You have to do with with China not getting pissed.  And you have to do it without North Korea, realizing the jig is up, launching everything they have at South Korea and/or Japan etc.

If the end result is a big hole where North Korea used to be, a decimated South, a de-stablized region, an angry China and millions of deaths and untold millions of refugees, what was accomplished?

Provide an answer please.

Im no expert so if I had to provide an answer, I'd say make it US policy that North Korea cannot have the Bomb.  Destroy their facilities from the air (if you can) and if that invites a response from them (ie. their threats to sink a US carrier) so be it...they reap what they sow and will not like the response.  But you have to have China at least indifferent to it and you have to have the support of other nations.  Personally, I'd prefer the US "support" another nation doing the dirty work.  Let Japan bomb North Korea.

[Atomic]

8 minutes ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Im genuinely surprised to see an argument in favour of the US as the Policemen of the World in 2017.  Im not wholly against the idea but the politics of the world have changed.  We'd basically have to accept the US as morally justified friendly dictators spreading their band of democracy everywhere.  It doesnt work though.

North Korea should be China's problem and the world community should lean on China to deal with it.

Or, dont we have some black ops programs to deal with these things?  Assassinate the little weasel and be done with it.

I used to think that the USA shouldn't be the policeman of the world.

The reality of the situation is that if the USA isn't the police, then who is?  Because someone will be.  That void will be filled.  And so the question becomes not "Should there be a world policeman?", it becomes "Who do you want to be the world policeman?  USA, China, or Russia?"  I choose USA.  Simple as that.

[johnzo]

My take on the Kims is that they are survivors who are good at playing a weak hand. 

A North Korean nuclear attack on any non North-Korean target would be an extinction event for the Kim regime. The USA would pave the country with B61s.  A conventional attack on Seoul and/or an invasion of South Korea would immediately result in hundreds or thousands of American casualties and simiilarly commit the USA to dismantling the Kim dynasty, though perhaps not as violently.

A nork surprise attack has zero good endgames for the Kims.  Exile in China would be the absolute best they could do.  So why would they do it?

Edited April 26, 2017 by johnzo

[Atomic]

2 minutes ago, The Unknown Poster said:

If the end result is a big hole where North Korea used to be, a decimated South, a de-stablized region, an angry China and millions of deaths and untold millions of refugees, what was accomplished?

Provide an answer please.

My answer is that I believe that will happen either way.  North Korea is going down a road that will lead to this conclusion.  The only question in my mind is whether we strike first and limit the casualties on our side, or allow North Korea to do as much damage as possible before we respond.

[Atomic]

3 minutes ago, johnzo said:

My take on the Kims is that they are survivors who are good at playing a weak hand. 

I almost just fell out of my chair.  I knew you were far-left but I didn't think you were North Korea sympathizer far-left.  Wow.

[johnzo]

You're hallucinating if you hear admiration in "the Kims are survivors who are good at playing a weak hand." It's a statement of fact.

North Korea has very little going for them -- their land is **** for agriculture and doesn't have much in the way of oil or heavy industry either. Yet the Kims have somehow perpetuated their regime through famines and the utter collapse of one of their patron states.  What of this is not true?

[Atomic]

5 minutes ago, johnzo said:

You're hallucinating if you hear admiration in "the Kims are survivors who are good at playing a weak hand." It's a statement of fact.

North Korea has very little going for them -- their land is **** for agriculture and doesn't have much in the way of oil or heavy industry either. Yet the Kims have somehow perpetuated their regime through famines and the utter collapse of one of their patron states.  What of this is not true?

How about the fact that you bury all their evil deeds in a "somehow"?

[johnzo]

Yeah, my failure to exhaustively restate the crimes of the Kim family in my two-line evaluation of their regime on a football message board betrays my deep sympathies for the Juche principal and my admiration of Kim Il-Sung's original, brilliant and revolutionary contribution to national and international thought.

You got me, champ.

Anyway, bombing people into freedom has a super shitty track record over the last fifty years.  Didn't work in Vietnam. Didn't work in Laos.  Didn't work in Cambodia. Didn't work in Guatemala or Nicaragua. Isn't working in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or especially Syria. 

What's that old saw about doing the same thing over and over and hoping it'll work out differently?

Edited April 27, 2017 by johnzo