redunderthebed wrote:Yes and invading countries and overthrowing governments really does help just ask the Iraqis...It would definitely gives us more traction in negotiations and stop us looking like fucking hypocrites as usual.
/rant over
I agree with the majority of what you said, and I should have taken several of your points into account. I will do so from here on out. Particularly, the point about invading a soverign country, and making another Iraq/Vietnam. War sucks and should only be considered in the extreme event that it's obviously the lesser of 2 evils.
But there are a few critical errors in your reasoning, or perhaps, gaps in your knowledge of the situation. The North doesn't want to just be left alone in their own country. They will never be satisfied until the whole peninsuala is united under their Stalinist flag, where fanatical hero-worship of the Dear Leader, gulags, work camps, cannibalism, forced abortions, starvation, public mass executions and torture are the norm. They proved that in 1950 and have been hammering that point home practically on a daily basis since. They don't even pretend to be otherwise. They broadcast it through huge speakers at the DMZ 24/7.
I arrived in country on 6June96. In September of that year, a North Korean submarine with 28 highly-trained commandos ran aground off the east coast.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/17/world ... hopes.html They were chased through the mountains for about 2 months, living off berries, roots and the like. Most of them knelt and accepted a bullet through the head from their CO, who subsequently put one through his own, rather than surrender. One was wounded and captured, and one was never found. I gotta admire their balls, committment and survival skills. Their motive? Not so much.
There was a similar submarine incident just a few years after:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-653624.html. There have been assassination attempts on the S. Korean president by N. Korean commandos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Chung ... n_attempts. They killed his wife instead.
There are naval incidents almost every year in which N. Korean ships cross over the Northern Limit Line and exchange fire with S. Korean patrol boats. N. Korean ships and subs are spotted in Japanese waters almost routinely, often drawing fire from the Japanese patrols.
I won't go into how the regime has let 3 million of its own people starve while the Dear Leader lounges around in his 18 bulletproof, fully computerized Mercedes', sipping on a bottle of $630/bottle Hennessey. "He is the largest customer over the last 10 years, averaging between $650,000 and $720,000 a year in purchases -- while the average [North] Korean earns only about $900 a year."
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/01/08/wbr.kim.jong.il/ Because those are internal matters, and you could easily say it's none of our business. Or is it, 'Fuck 'em, that their problem.'? But if you're curious about what defectors describe life in the Fatherland is like, see:
http://nkfreedom.org
But then there are kidnappings of Japanese and S. Korean citizens to train their spy network, or even more telling, this story of how a S. Korean director/actress couple were kidnapped and held for 8 years before they escaped:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2821221.stm. For what?
To make movies for the Dear Leader. Seems he fancied the actress and admired the director's work.
A benign, peaceful little country that just wants to be left alone? Hardly. An aggressive, murderous tyrant squeezing the life out of his own people and constantly seeking new ways to bully, threaten, weaken and eventually overthrow the South is more like it. A supplier of weapons and technology to terrorists around the world who has made no secret of the fact that it's busting its balls to develop the capacity to deliver a nuclear warhead to the White House.
Another Iraq? No. The case for war in Iraq was made on trumped-up, erroneous claims for political reasons. There were no WMDs. KJI is jumping up and down trying to get the US to acknowledge that they actually DO have WMDs and constantly, loudly, daily use them to threaten the South and the US. There are no similarities. The only reasons the US/UN hasn't already wiped out that regime is a) China, b) Russia and c) there ain't no oil there.
The question I'm pondering is when do we reach the tipping point at which military invasion becomes the lesser of two evils. Another 3, 4, 10 million starvations? Or wait until KJI actually does have ICBMs and just hope that he doesn't decide to launch them? Or cross our fingers and hope that Japan's, S. Korea's and the US missile defence systems are 100% effective?
OK, my rant's over.
"A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it." ~ H. L. Mencken
"We ain't a sharp species. We kill each other over arguments about what happens when you die, then fail to see the fucking irony in that."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion."
