Obama, the Sinking of the Cheonan, and the Failure of Nuclear Deterrence
On Thursday, Seoul accused North Korea of firing a torpedo into one of its frigates. Forty-six sailors died on March 26 when an explosion ripped their vessel, the Cheonan, in two.
When parts of the ship were raised, investigators immediately saw that metal was bent inward. Therefore, an external explosion destroyed the warship, eliminating the possibility of an accidental detonation of its magazine. Some then speculated that a mine, perhaps left floating after the Korean War, tore apart the Cheonan. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency then reported that divers had recovered torpedo fragments from the sea bed. So the sinking had to have been the result of a recent — and deliberate — act.
And who was responsible? One of the torpedo fragments bore North Korean markings. Moreover, the recovered parts were identical to those depicted in a blueprint of a torpedo in a North Korean marketing brochure. Investigators also found traces of a mix of explosives used by communist-bloc countries, including North Korea. Other evidence, analyzed by a group of specialists from six nations, pointed to the only plausible culprit: Pyongyang.
So what will the United States, required by treaty to defend South Korea, do about the sinking? Just hours after the incident, Washington leaned on President Lee Myung-bak to stay quiet and forego retaliation for the ghastly crime. The Obama administration has so far failed to label the torpedo attack an act of war. On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that North Korea had already been punished merely because it had further isolated itself from the international community by committing the horrific act.
China, for its part, is maintaining that South Korea’s evidence does not establish North Korea’s involvement in the sinking. Furthermore, Beijing has urged calm, in an apparent attempt to protect its only formal ally. Given great-power support for doing as little as possible about the sinking, it’s no wonder President Lee on Friday said his nation’s response will be “highly prudent.”
A “highly prudent” response, however, will only reinforce in Kim Jong Il’s mind the notion that he has gotten away with the murder of South Koreans, emboldening him to stage future attacks. The Obama administration, which gives the impression that it does not have a North Asia policy, does not seem to care. Yet its weak response — lots of stirring words and zero leadership — could have repercussions far beyond the troubled Korean peninsula. In fact, the sinking of the Cheonan raises a matter of global significance: the possible failure of deterrence in an age of nuclear terrorism.
During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union were able to prevent the other from launching nuclear-tipped missiles because each knew that retaliation would be, among other things, swift, certain, and devastating.
There’s Obama again, paying the Dane-geld.
The key to ciphering out North Korea’s and the mad mullahs’ reaction to South Korean / American passivity about the Cheonan sinking lies in the economics of deterrence.
North Korea’s masters are essentially economically oriented. They seek to discover how far they can push the South without eliciting a military response. That’s the key to geopolitical extortion, which is what North Korea is aiming for.
Islamic fanatics are not economically oriented. They believe themselves to be on a mission from God, which mission includes the annihilation of Israel, and the subjugation of dar al-Harb to “the black flag of Islam.” Inasmuch as Islamic fanatics rule Iran, and might soon come into sway over Pakistan, the probability of nuclear strikes against Israel and America has nothing to do with deterrence, because nothing we might offer them would alter that mission from God.
You can only deter someone if there’s a maximum price he’d be willing to pay to achieve his aims. If there isn’t, and you’re unwilling to annihilate him, you’d better stay on good terms with God — yours or his.
This reminds me way, way, too much of the lack of response on America’s part (more precisely, the Clinton Administration’s lack of response) to the killing of US soldiers in Somalia. We didn’t do much in terms of retaliation, except decide to leave Somalia. And guess who saw that and understood that lesson? A guy by the name of Osama bin Laden. Whether or not people wanted American troops in Somalia in the first place was not the issue. What WAS the issue was that American troops were attacked and killed and the American response was to withdraw from Somalia, making the Clinton Administration look weak and emboldening enemies of this nation, like bin Laden.
Nothing good will come of this if South Korea does NOT retaliate in some significant way, shape, or form. What’s next? What if a major bomb (non-nuclear) goes off in a South Korean city and a few hundred people are killed? What do we do then? What if North Korea suddenly decides that it wants more “financial assistance” from South Korea, or else it will approve of more bombings in South Korea. Seems that, as long as North Korea does NOT cross the nuclear threshold, they can get away with just about anything, and that’s a dangerous place for the world (and, especially, South Korea) to be in.
Perhaps South Korea can sink a North Korean patrol boat? How far is North Korea willing to go in threatening its neighbors? Would North Korea actually retaliate at the sinking of one of their warships? Maybe not, because some of their patrol boats have been sunk by South Korea in the past and nothing has happened. But we do know one thing. If we back down now, North Korea will go a lot, and I mean a lot, further in trying to intimidate South Korea, and the rest of the world.
“So what will the United States, required by treaty to defend South Korea, do about the sinking?”
Obama will make a trip to North Korea, bow to Kim Jong Il and apologize for the United States’ racist meddling with South Korea in the first place.
Then Obama will extend an invitation to Kim Jong Il for a Whitehouse Head of State dinner honoring him and all of North Korea’s contributions to the world.
The main dinner course will consist of a vole, otherwise known as a rat captured somewhere in between the Rose Garden and 8 weeks of smelly garbage bags piled behind the Whitehouse.
I’ve been expecting him to apologize for S. Korea being so aggressive in having it’s patrol ship deliberately ram that torpedo.
Forgot.
Obama will have the United States Treaty with South Korea declared Unconstitutional as part of the investigation that wipes out Arizona’s new illegal immigration law.
From there its just a hop, skip and jump to amending Obamacare so it includes all North Koreans.
North Korea should have had its last warning long ago, and an act like the sinking of the Cheonan should have meant “the end of North Korea as we know it”.
The dictator and his advisors are primitive and brutal, their minds distorted, but they are not stupid. Getting away with the sinking of the Cheonan will only make them bolder.
The real question is why is this America’s problem. If the South is unable to defend itself from it starving North, thr South is not worth defending.
Get US out of this now.
We don’t need to make decisions for South Korea and the US Government needs to STFU and let the South Koreans decide what or if any action is need and what response to make to North Korea. Then the US should aid an treaty partner.
Any fighting in Korea would be costly both in lives and property and South Korea knows better that most what the costs may be so let them decide on their own without our interference.
Paying the Dane-Geld
For the puzzled: Bribing the Vikings with gold,
to go away without doing their thing: Rape, Loot, and Burn;
The problem with this is that the Danes always come back for more gold,
only now, it is not gold, but weapons-grade fissionables.
Very good article about the situation in which the current administration’s policies has drawn us – as far as other consequences, I certain that we’ll look at some impressive bills to foot in the near future, all vengefully charged by Obama on the account USA -
A good, larger companion piece for Gordon Chang’s is Charlie Krauthammer’s/ Washington Post: “The Fruits Of Weakness” – link below -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052003885.html
The Norks having the bomb had nothing to do with this. The ROK always does nothing unless the Norks cross the border with more than a division. The Obama administration’s canned response is to call such provocations “unfortunate incidents”.
The only thing surprising is that the ROK actually did an investigation. That nothing followed it is per their SOP.
Just like the blowhard professor he is. He is going to punish North Korea with a memo to all faculty that hits hard with:
–> a) statements that “raise questions” and
–> b) “bigger” questions that must be addressed.
No tenure for that Kim Jong Il!
Meanwhile, the NKs build another bomb to lob into Tokyo. Good allies die but at least the faculty senate was sent a strong message.
The U.S. and South Korea starve North Korea and have placed ruinous sanction son them. How do you expect them to react? Maybe if Bush hadn’t placed them in the Axis of Evil, they would have been a full participating member of the world community now, instead of a pariah state that can’t get enough food to feed its people.
You’re an idiot, Vinny.
You obviously understand nothing of the utter lack of concern for the majority of the population under Crazy Kim’s rule.
A guy who dines on imported wines and food as he builds up his nuclear arsenal and military, while his people can eat clay, dirt & whatever they can find to attempt to survive.
They were placed in the Axis of Evil due to nuclear proliferation and a history of aggression. They have been given many chances to return to the world community, but that would certainly mean the end of the regime’s power, therefore it is not a top priority. There is a certain current within western society that seeks to blame all of the world’s ills on American involvement; some people are devout believers in this doctrine even if they have to read history backwards from a chronological point of view.
Check out one of the best documentaries on the subject called “Welcome to North Korea” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrAQ7MZVzIk&feature=related It is long, does not include events that have happened in the last few years, but is an excellent look at the mindset of perhaps the world’s greatest cult of personality.
Vinny, you can’t be serious.
Kim Jong Il starves North Korea because he has decided to use his nation’s resources to create weapons instead of food. By his every action, Kim has demonstrated that he doesn’t want to be a “full participating member of the world community”. The unprovoked sinking of the Cheonan and the murder of 46 sailors only confirms that. You can avoid the truth as long as you want, but it won’t change the fact that North Korea is ruled by a dangerous psychopath.
The NorKs have had 57 years to make peace with the RoKs.
Instead they prefer to keep the Korean war going.
What would you do with somebody who insists on killing you, your people and imposing a ruinous political system on your nation?
“Kissing a Tiger’s ass rarely leads to the victim and the Tiger singing Kumbaya.”
You’re not serious, are you? Bush didn’t “place” North Korea anywhere. They put themselves there, and he merely called it as he saw it. And if North Korea can’t get enough food to feed its people, how is it that North Korea can afford a nuclear program? Seems to me that’s a failure of priorities right there.
The problem, vinny, is not with Bush, though you might prefer to ‘Blame Bush’ as an emotional kick. The problem rests within N.Korea.
The reason the people are ‘starving’ is because of the regime’s own mismanagement and its insistence on allocating massive funds to military buildup rather than to economic infrastructures. This diversion of funds has meant that the industrial and agricultural infrastructure has decayed almost beyond repair. The collective socialism of its governance, with top-down authority, has meant that there is no middle class of local economic entrepreneurship.
It’s interesting, but, reality has a strange way of insisting that facts dominante fiction. The facts are that N. Korea is not a victim but an active agent in its own economic and societal morass.
So, to summarize your point, North Korea attacking a South Korean vessel is Bush’s fault?
Right. Does anyone take you guys seriously anymore?
You forgot the /sarc tag, Vinnie.
The Norks were playing their little games long before Bush came on the scene. They were especially successful with that Clinton fellow, who no doubt was preoccupied in the oral office will Al Gore was getting cozy with the ChiComs.
But dream on. All we have to do is lift sanctions and NK will become a haven of liberty, right, and their government will allow the people to become self-reliant and productive and so feed themselves?
You really should read your history before making such ignoramus statements. N. Korea has been the pet bully of China for 60+ years – using N. Korea (with their willing participation) to punish the S. Koreans and the USA for slights real or imagined. Every time an overture has been made to them by the West or S. Korea China yanks on their chain which usually elicits a nasty response like the torpedoing of that S. Korean vessel.
And where do I start as regards Obummer’s response to the sinking and taking of lives?
Obummer=Feckless? Yeah – that about sums it up.
Look for a similar response if the mullahs lob that first nuclear warhead into Tel Aviv on Obummer’s watch. One more feckless response in a long line of them. I doubt they will lob one into Jerusalem but with these blood thirsty idiots you just never know.
Come back when you get an education Vinny. I think I hear your mamma calling you for lunch.
If the mohos nuke Tel Aviv, it won’t matter what Obama says or does- the Israelis won’t wait for the American response before activating the Samson Option. From there, Israel nukes (among other targets) Moscow, triggering the Russian Dead Hand protocols. From there, everything is basically automatic. Russian nukes knock out our ICBMs and high command structure, while American SSBNs destroy Russian nuclear and Naval facilities. The surviving Russian forces join moho armies in an attempted ground invasion of Israel, which will lead to them getting their collective asses kicked.
If any brand of Islamic fanatic–or anybody else, for that matter–should ever launch a nuke at Tel Aviv, you can kiss Tehran, Damascus, and maybe even Mecca good-bye. There WILL NOT BE another holocaust passively endured. Count on it! And if that servile, Islam-bowing momzer who conned his way into the White House doesn’t like it, well that’s just too frickin’ bad. He will have become totally irrelevant by then.
One would hope the North Korean people would start killing their oppressors re; their government officials. NO ONE in the USA or Korea owes anyone in N Korea food, medicine or water if they want those things they need to roll over and cooperate. Other wise I don’t care what happens to them>
And how, pray tell, will they do that when they have no weapons nor means of acquiring any? When the government is brutal, merciless and unrestrained in the brutality it inflicts upon the people to maintain its grip on power?
The inclusion of North Korea in the three nations making up the “axis of evil” was actually quite logical. These were the three nations that we were currently at war with, North Korea and Iraq were under ignored ceasefire agreements and Iran had declared war on the US in 1978. the US just never acknowledged it and yep, we are still losing citizens to the Iranian aggresion.
Vinny, try reading some history that doesn’t come straight from party headquarters.
Since going communist the N. Koreans have never been able to feed themselves, some of the worst famines occurred back in the 60′s. There’s a reason why N. Koreans are on average a foot shorter than S. Koreans, and it didn’t happen recently.
N. Koreans have been causing trouble for their neighbors for decades. Back in the 60′s they would regurally kidnap Japanese and force them to train their operatives.
After witnessing Washington’s weak response to North Korea’s horrific act…
Weak ? whaddaya mean, weak ?
Mrs. Clinton’s over there in the region as we speak, running around proclaiming there will be “serious consequences”.
You think Crazy Kim (not long for this world) might be emboldened to try even riskier stuff when he hears, once again, predictable utterances, this time regarding his act of war against South Korea ?
Why, he starts quivering in his boots, his Guccis, whatever.
Mrs. Clinton is seriously interested in having Chinese agreement, since she knows the Chinese can derail the US state department’s equally meaningless sanctions against Iran. The Chinese, with its own interests and agenda vis â vis North Korea, can and will continue to play chess on this stuff, for years.
With this administration in Washington DC, it seems that just about any destructive tyrant anywhere on the planet is getting the idea that he has carte blanche vis â vis a Paper Tiger.
Don’t make fun of Chairman Kim Jong Il’s boots! He is a fashion icon according to NorK’s news agencies. You see, 6 inch heels and an unprecedented collection of western films banned to his citizens help somehow cover the stench of a bankrupt, starving nation. Not only does he want to extend his accomplishments to the South Koreans, he is this season’s hottest trend setter from Milan to Paris. http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2010/04/kim-jong-il-global-fashion-icon.html We are stuck with imperialist worker-hating slave threads while the Dear Leader sports the glorious drab two piece suit of the people. Hasta la victoria fashionista siempre!
Oh, and he invented the toaster oven. He even managed to do that in a country with no flour or tradition of making bread. He must be a busy, busy man.
Sure, Vinny. And if those nasty Jews hadn’t brought ruinous shame to Germany, the Nazis would have surely enriched the lives of all Europeans. Kim Jong Il is the victim, and he is no no way responsible for the state of the nation he supposedly governs. The only logical way forward for N. Korea is to kill the evil Americans and S. Koreans. It’s okay when they do it.
I envy your simple-mindedness. It must make life wonderfully uncomplicated.
For criminal regimes like North Korea political power is ultimately defined by the Free World’s reluctance to fight another all-out war in the face of a potential challenge or in the aftermath of a serious provocation. But all such thug regimes understand that they are part of the larger world’s ‘unfinished business’ and if war broke out it there would be few reasons to limit the ferocity of conflict. Because this is so obvious the behavior of regimes like North Korea seems all that much more irrational. Yet in the by now well understood language of North’s conflict resolution process a serious provocation is perpetrated and they sit back awaiting the always forthcoming concessions. If they are not forthcoming they will try again and the next incident could be very serious indeed. But North Korean has failed to or is now pretending not to understand that its version of a quid pro quo is no longer logical. South Korea should keep its military on permanent wartime alert and prepare for the worst, including the evacuation of Seoul.
China’s little NK dog proxy is biting the heals of the West. Brilliant play by China.
Send their NK hounds all over the world delivering weapons, nuclear material and tech, and God only knows what else to whoever else?
13. Vinny B.
Are you serious?!? We gave them food and oil for all their extortions!!!. The only thing I blame America for is producing liberal idiots that think the way you do, and yes, idiots do vote. So, Sherlock, Should we continue to pay them for their tantrums and with what?? Oil? Gold? Food? and if so, what changes? I have stood on the DMZ myself. The North is an economic and moral waste-land…. not because of Americas protection of the South, but only by the raping of their own people by the North.
#13 The Norks haven’t been able to feed themselves for 40 years. It’s called communism. Ask Barry O. about it’s wonders.
One more time: Mr. Obama was never a professor, only a lecturer — in other words, a glorified grad student.
Once again, Kevin, your keyboard has emitted a meaningless distinction concerning lecturer and professor. Faculty meetings are filled with both. Einstein was a lecturer at one point. Many fine Ph.D.’s smarter than you are currently have posts as lecturers, all over the world.
The figure of artless, ham-fisted imbecilic blowhard professor fits the president to the proverbial 20th letter. Most of us have observed faculty like that, no matter the job title.
Henry Kissinger once said (“they” say) that faculty politics is so vicious precisely because there is so little at stake. That is exactly the kind of genteel thuggishness that our pretty boy Ivy Leaguer shows in the Oval Office.
Two related points that will bear most closely on the effectiveness of deterence against either North Korea or any Islamic Terrorist [yeah, I said the forbidden words] nuclear strike.
1) Buraq Hussein Obama is the National Command Authority. So long as he holds that position, he has demonstrated that he will do literally anything to avoid having to take effective military action against any enemy of this country. There is nothing in his life story [those parts we are allowed to know about, at least] that would indicate any inclination to defend this country and its people. There is overwhelming empirical evidence in the last 17 months to the exact contrary.
2) The International Atomic Energy Agency, the home of “cutting-edge forensics,” can find a particle that is out of place and measure things that weigh no more than a femtogram, 0.000000000000001 of a gram. Its technicians can look at the smallest speck of uranium and find out how it was formed.
But the IAEA’s near-magical work takes time, just as it took time to establish responsibility for the Cheonan’s sinking.
Similarly, we have over a decade of empirical evidence that the International Atomic Energy Agency is NOT an “honest broker”. Repeatedly they have been caught ignoring evidence, and altering formal conclusions, with the apparent goal of enabling and encouraging the enemies of the United States to acquire nuclear weapons, especially Islamic enemies [ more crimespeak]. They have been abetted in this by European powers, Russia, and China; who also look forward to nuclear strikes on American interests. Russia and China can claim the benefits of true deterrence, because there is no doubt in the world that a nuclear strike by terrorists would be answered with a high gamma ray emitting equivalent of salting the ground on the site of Carthage. They are safe from rogue terrorists attacking them, beyond the first strike. Europe reposes its confidence in the protective power of wishful thinking and submission, believing that only the US and/or Israel would be struck by terrorists; which act would be cause for their rejoicing. I suspect that their confidence is misplaced, but it is events that will provide the lesson, as history began for them in 1945.
So, let us assume that one or more of the following locations has a nuclear event, be it a dirty bomb or achieving fission:
Seoul, Tokyo, Guam, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Boston, New York City, Washington DC, Miami, New Orleans, or Houston.
Samples are taken. They are forwarded to the IAEA.
What level of confidence can one have that the IAEA would not deliberately and falsely issue conclusions that either they could not determine the origin, or that it came from part of the old Soviet nuclear stockpile that “went missing” decades ago, and no specific perpetrator can be named? What confidence can you have that the perpetrators would not have already made contact with the IAEA, and successfully requested just that result, if the IAEA had not come up with the idea themselves? What confidence can you have that the European powers, Russia, or China would not successfully pressure the IAEA via back channels to reach that kind of conclusion “in the name of world peace”? Finally, what confidence can we have that our own National Command Authority would not privately make the very same request?
Deterence consists of the sure and certain ability to retaliate beyond the tolerance of a potential attacker, and the sure and certain political will to do so. If either is lacking, there is no deterence. History is littered with the bones of civilizations who have failed to match will and ability.
There is no American deterence against attack by North Korea or from any Muslim entity, and we are merely awaiting the first of multiple proofs.
Subotai Bahadur
Meanwhile, China has a score to settle with Taiwan. What lesson do you think they’ll take from Obama’s response to this? For that matter, if China were to threaten war over Taiwan, what do YOU think Obama’s reaction would be? We may learn the answer all too soon.
China no doubt took a giant step forward with their plans on Taiwan. Look for something that gives them cover to make their move. Probably not something initiated by the N. Koreans as that is just too close to their objective. Something will happen some where in the world that will make a move on Taiwan seem small in comparison.
The world’s peace (I use that term loosely) hangs by a thread. With the world’s economy circling the drain what better way to bolster sagging economies than to have a war? And no better time to do it than with a feckless POTUS – one who will be leaving office (willingly or not) in 2012. Look for provocative events to increase in the coming couple of years.
The main difference between 1939 and now is the nations that may well square off and do battle. Tensions and economic reality are very similar.
The difficulty lies in no response. That raises the question of what next?
The US should do nothing and I’ll tell you why.
First, South Korea (soko) has ill-used the freedom we won for them decades ago. They have not stayed tough as Israel has, but elected a government that thought the best way to proceed was to suck up to the North and diss the US. They have not built up competent defense forces that can defend aaginst the Noko’s and why not? They have more money, supposedly smarter better educated people and why then can they not handle this themselves?
Second, I have about had it bleeding he US dry to defend far off places (yes, yes, I know neville said the same thing about Czekolovokia but allow me to explain) that won’t or cannot defend themselves. Another war in SoKo means the US pouring more money into some god forsaken place that has used the last 40 years to penetrate one US market after the other. And which within the last 10 years, saw fit to elect a government that thought sucking up to NoKo was the best thing to do. There were demonstrations at the US embassy, complaints about the US troops they now want to be there for them…. I don’t see the benefit of hanging on to a smallpiece of land so close to China anyway. Its not like its Japan or Australia or someplace we care about that much: and its not really defennsible: are we going to risk a carrier there and dare NoKo to sink it? We are in two unprofitable wars now: two are enough. At least iraq gave us some control over oil if not direct control. SoKo offers nothing but a way to piss of the Chinese, lose more men, spend more money all to defend SoKo businesses that take US jobs. I’d rather spend the money defending Japan. tired of wasting more money because some people think its our obligation to spend ourselves dry defending every piece of land: its not what we did for the first 150 ears you know.
Third, What did Soko do for us when we needed help? Hmmm. Soko sent about 3500 troops to Iraq –3500, not 35,000–and pulled them out due to public opposition in soko: the troops did mostly construction work. Thanks a lot guys.
Now you wonder what the US will do? How about we send 3500 troops to build some day care centers? Sine we have troops there already, you won’t mind if we don’t send any more.
Enough dragging the US into senseless conflcits like this. Its not the UK, canada, Germany, Australia, Poland (which does fight for itself)…
Seriously, before you all get hyped up on defending a piece of land that has no real value for us, which will barely defend itself, which sucks up to NoKo every chance it gets, and where we are regarded with some serious hostility, (and which helps us when we need it with construction brigades), think again. Yes Obama is weak: but his place isn’t worth it. Save the money to defend the places that are.
Praise be! Senator Taft lives!
Praise be . . . Senator Taft lives!
Gee! About as helpful as “Bush lied people died.” Are you a parrot? See any difference between fighting to aid the brits versus the Soko’s? Whic sent 40,000 troops to Iraq versus 3500? Which troops were limited to MP and construction duty? Which one will fight to defend themselves? In which one can a US business actually commence? Which has combat troops in Afghanistan? Do you think it makes sense to borrow money fromt he Chinese to insert ourselevs in a spat between SoKo and NoKo over a friggin boat? Why can’t the SoKo’s handle it? Hello? Anyone home? Anything but slogans?
How can you possibly care about Kim when you want to be an American Kim. Reaction? I’m surprised O didn’t didn’t castigate So Korea for having it’s vessels ion the water.
Bubblefoot, #24, I think I’ve got it. No Korea kills 46 people and it’s So. Korea we have to criticize. You do realize your line goes back to China in the early and post war 40′s, that nasty authoritarian Chiang. It took until after the slaughter and mass torture of the 60′s & 70′s for a few to reconsider.
But then there was the Soviet Union in the 20′s & 30′s and the fabled Walter Duranty {NY Times, where else?]. We then waltz through the Sandinistas, Castro, and now Chavez, with a reminder of Iran, and the line remains the same, over decades.
You must be an intellectual.
I’ll be back tomorrow, be here.
The Obama response to this unprovoked act of war on our ally shows that being a US Ally is effectively worthless as long as a coward sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…
I’m willing for the President to make me eat those words by standing up for our allies instead of offering mealy-mouthed platitudes over the broken bodies of nearly four dozen dead South Koreans…
This shouldn’t remind people of Somalia, but of the Gulf of Tonkin and the Gleiwitz incident. The ROK are following the LBJ-Hitler playbook: manufacture an incident to provide a war in which the big Capitalists will profit! Why should be believe anything ROK officials announce, anymore than we would believe Carter, Bush, or Obama! The NY Times is already seeking to suborn ROK officials, so they can print the truth: the Daehanminguk Gukgun papers! Communists are never at fault. It is not possible for a Communist to be provocative!
Well, I would like to take issue with one contention made in this article: “Furthermore, Beijing has urged calm, in an apparent attempt to protect its only formal ally.”
As a country we need to further investigate and understand the relationship between China and N Korea. It’s my contention that of all countries in the world, China probably hates them the most. N Korea is a throwback to a different time, a different world and China has moved on.
South Korea and China are large scale trading partners, N Korea is a country that China has to give aid to.
The government in China view N Korea as a retarded stepbrother that they are duty bound to keep out of trouble. I’m fairly certain that if N Korea were not located on China’s border they would have cut them loose a long time ago.
It’s the proximity to China that keeps the Chinese propping them up. If N Korea would collapse then China would be flooded with starving refugees.
If there is ever a war with N Korea–thats a war directly on their border and they can’t have that any more than we would be OK with a was on ours.
We need to get the Chinese motivated to get in on this game in a real way. I’m not claiming I know how to do that, but the Chinese have been avoiding this one for a long time, they need to help.
johnt:
set aside your wrath my friend, take a deep breath, stop using labels (what should I call you if I’m an intellectual? An excitable unwitting easily duped fellow who let’s his commendable loyalty to the US be transferred onto a pice of real estate where the people don’t like us, won’t help us, won’t defend themselves and is of no real use to us? The good, diligent horse in Animal Farm that redoubled his efforts for the bad animals?).
Hear me out here, while I put on my spectacles, put down my “Complete Works of Adlai Stevenson,” my “War Is Bad for People And other living things,” pamphlet, my book “The compleat Intellectual’s Guide to utopia: or, if We Only Become Like The French, and let professors run the world,” and explain:
First, “my line” is an early American view that we ought to have an interest in a war before we pour money and lives into it; and that interest had better be tangible before we over extend ourselves on behalf of people who won’t fight for themselves.
Our money and patience are not infinite: people acting as if they are do not understand money, credit, the right of US taxpayers to live their own lives, and the enormous strain wars take on any country.
You know this.
If we’re going to blow billions on a foreign war, or bluster ourselves inot a tense situation with China in their nexk of the woods, some one ought to be able to come up with a good reason why.
We didn’t become wealthy fighting wars: we did it by selling stuff to everybody else and not becoming involved in ruinous wars like europe did with monotonous and bankrupting regularity. Want to see a country that fought all over the world and tired itself out? Britain.
Second, please tell me what our interest in in SoKo where they don’t like us and want us to do their fighting? To have a base to spy on China? Guess what? We can do that from anywhere else. Right now SoKo is an impediment to dealing with NoKo; every time we want to take Dear Leader’s glasses and smash them, we have to worry about the SoKo’s, a NoKo invasion, and a chinese reaction, and SoKo’s militantly anti-US population. We’d be better off without their deadwright to support.
Please don’t tell me “SoKo a a free country and we therefore owe them money we are going to borrow from China to defend people who won’t defend themselves or help us.” Are you serious? France is free too, and I am not lifting a finger for them.
Why does a mom in Iowa owe her son and a tax payment to the SoKo’s who won’t do squat for us? Or for themslevs?
Third, Chiang is -pardon the expression- a red herring. He was corrupt, incompetent, lazy and screwed up his army so badly and his people that he was hosed out of there by his own people: your suggestion that the US could have altered the result is a bit misguided: not unless we poured more money and troops into china and did it all for them. Much as I would have liked for Mao to lose, Chaiang was no George Washington and he took advantage if US aid to enrich himself and his friends: (ask any old wealthy family in Taiwan where they got their money. Hint: not from working long hours and building up a business).
My interest in in what is good for the US and those allies that will stand up for themselves. I would agree that we ought to spend whatever it takes for the Brits, germans, Poles, Japan and some others: but SoKo?
Its time to realize that with China up, we don’t have the sway in the area we sued to ahve and I am not going to risk endless money and lives for Soko. We’re trying to be buds with China and SoKo is ahrdly worht gumming that up. Again, they aren’t the brits (for whom I would gum it up).
My friend, I believe you are being sucked into assuming–owning–a crisis that the SoKo’s want someone else to fight for them. Less than 5 years ago they elected a govt that sent food to NoKo; all was going to be peace and buying the world a coke between them; they wanted the US to butt out too. We were mean; they were enlightened; we were old; they were new. Till now.
Now, with a boat sunk, they want US to do somehting about it?” Why don’t they?
As soon as we put ourselves at risk there, we’ll be stuck; we won’t be able to back out because we’ll have put ourselves into a spat and our credibility will be at stake in a big way. The Soko’s? They’ll go back to their efforts to raid our markets and won’t send a single combat soldier anywhere to help us. They’ll flee to the rear of the fight in their own country. Just like Vietnam.
A strike on NoKo to take out his nukes? I’m all for it. But blustering in to the area to do SoKo’s job? Forget it.
I’ll be looking for your answer. Got to run to the faculty lounge.
and while you are in the faculty lounge and there’s a great big boom don’t forget to jump under your chair and put your head between your legs and
I’m still waiting for the REASON we should borrow money from China, and US lives from moms and dads in 50 states to resolve a spat spat over a sunken boat that the SoKo’s can’t or won’t handle by themselves.
I know they are busy penetrating US markets and refusing to let us to do business there; I know they don’t like us much and elected a government that told us to butt out and that they were going to make nice with the NoKo’s. I know the Chinese can sweep SoKo off the map any time they want and we are enaged in 2 wars as it is.
Now: please read my comment–or have it read to you–and tell me why the US has to get involved in this? Hurry up-the faculty lounge closes at 8 but the bartender leaves at 7.
I’m rather sympathetic to your argument. So let’s play this out some.
I think it is far more likely that the U.S. is preventing the ROK military from ‘doing something about it’. If you think the Koreans are some pansy-ass Frenchies wanting to exercise soft power, you don’t know much about the Korean people. I’d be willing to wager that the ROK military has plans drawn up that they’re itching to put into effect right this minute.
Of course, there’d be thousands, possibly millions of dead civilians… but I’m sure the ROK feels that it can beat NoKo’s military in a matter of days.
So suppose we do as you say. It’s none of our business, so hey, SoKo — go take care of your own business. And they do.
ROK with its advanced weaponry (much of it American), highly disciplined military, and a population that isn’t starving to death, proceeds to wipe the floor with the DPRK military, even enduring artillery strikes on Seoul and whatnot. In 72-hours, Pyongyang is a bombed out shell, the command-and-control structure in NoKo is devastated, and Kim and his generals are either dead or in hiding.
Let’s say in the best-case scenario, NoKo doesn’t actually have a working nuke, so Seoul and Tokyo are not nuked. Yay! And ROK is just rolling up the peninsula laying waste to the DPRK forces.
It so happens that China is a formal ally of the DPRK. Do you expect them to just sit on the sidelines? They didn’t back in the first Korean War. Why do you think they would do so now?
If you were China, would you sit on the sidelines? When all signs point to the West having lost its nerve, why would you sit on the sidelines? This would be the perfect opportunity to go militaristic “reluctantly” in defense of its ally, DPRK, and while they’re at it, go take out Taiwan.
So the PLA crosses the border, tells the South Koreans to withdraw to beyond the 38th or else.
You’re Obama, C-in-C of the mightiest military force the world has ever known. And it so happens that although you don’t like it (as is evident in your posts), your country has a treaty alliance with the ROK. So you need to make a decision:
A) Tell the South Koreans to do as China says and withdraw, that the U.S. will not sacrifice a single Iowa farmboy to honor its treaty responsibilities; or
B) Tell the South Koreans that you will honor your treaty agreements with them as their military ally in case China dares to attack South Korean forces.
If you choose “A” as your posts suggest you would, then you have essentially surrendered South Korea into China’s orbit and sphere of influence. No South Korean after such a baldfaced refusal to live up to a treaty alliance would want to have anything to do with the U.S. The President of ROK would likely make a phone call that very minute to Beijing offering up its loyalty if China would just allow the ROK to finish the job on Kim’s regime. China, now much more capitalistic and having gotten used to absorbing formerly capitalist societies like Hong Kong, would gladly accept.
If you think that Japan and Australia would stay within the American sphere of influence after the U.S. abandons its treaty obligations to South Korea, you’re dreaming. What’s more, now that the U.S. has made its isolationism plain, and made it perfectly clear that it is unwilling to be anyone’s ally when push comes to shove, the world will reconfigure in a heartbeat.
Why would India choose to ally herself with such an unreliable ally? Brazil, ostensibly our strongest ally in South America, has recently defied us openly in embracing Iran — which hates us.
Now, that might be fine and dandy with you, since you just want to go back to the old days of isolationism, homegrown industry, and so on… but you might find a world dominated by China, Russia, and Iran to be ah… inimical to trading much with dem Americans. And American economy and industry might look a wee bit different without inexpensive DRAM chips from Taiwan and South Korea. Again, those who decry the loss of “American jobs” to overseas might find that to be a feature, not a bug, of such a foreign policy — but let’s at least know what we’re signing up for.
-TS
Nicely done. Really well done. I think SoKo lacks the nerve for the action you suggested, –they want us to do it–but all the more reason for them to take some localized action like sinking a Noko boat or two without fanfare and be done with it.
Bubble, I think the answer to your argument is that is left unchecked, the Norks will threaten not only SoKo, but Japan, whose safety is not a trivial matter for us. They will become even more emboldened to continue their not so covert arming of Iran and Syria and thus to pose even a greater threat to Israel, again not a matter of indifference to U.S. security. Perhaps SoKo should, as you seem to suggest, take a stronger, more self-sustaining posture with regard to its security and should rely less on the U.S. But the U.S. has made commitments, and absent a formal negotiation to terminate them, they should be honored.
There is indeed a link between the Norks and the jihadis and trouble-makers like Chavez in Venezuela who is setting up a stage for the expansion of Russian influence in the Western Hemisphere. Whether it might comprise an axis of evil I’ll leave to your discretion, but dangers accrue, and our own nation cannot remain secure by ignoring them. Yes, there is a limit to how much we can possibly do to respond, but leaving SoKo to twist in the wind is not, under the present circumstances, an honorable or even prudent course of action.
With a stronger president, a different relationship with SoKo might be worth pursuing, but weakness now only confirms in the minds of our enemies the habits of weakness displayed by the current occupant of the White House.
Bubblefoot, it’s a funny thing about labels, they identify things, and people as well. Perhaps not in the faculty lounge, but there some couldn’t tell the difference between the custard pie and a hamburger.
Animal Farm, you mean the pigs by bad animals I assume, memory fail you on the way to the faculty lounge, confused between ladies room and mens’ room?
1st para, Britain was a colonial power, less it’s colonies and her ability to drain wealth from them, { draining wealth from colonies is different from trade, even the porter in the faculty lounge knows this, ask him], plus the cost of two world wars, WWl in particular is what weakened Britain. Plus if you look at a map you will, or ought to, notice a difference of magnitude between the USA and Britain. This will, or may, cause you to surmise that there are differences in resources as well. Therefore comparisons may be, well, useless.
Bubblefoot, tomorrow.
The best parallels we have is history. I think that Japan started to invade China in 1933 and nothing was done by the world to stop them. This was followed by Italy invading Ethiopia, again the world did nothing. By the time Hitler entered the game, he was well tutored as what to do. First there was the take over of the Rohr valley from France. Then there was the Anschluss where Austria and Germany united as one country. Then there was the Danzig incident where Danzig, a port in Poland, was handed over to Germany. This was followed by the Sudentenland where Germany first took western Czechoslovakia (thank you Chamberlain). Again this was followed by the entire take over of Czechoslovakia, a free democratic country, by Germany. Throughout all this not one shot was fired to defend against what was going on.
Our parallel, is the attack on the Cole, the attacks against our African Embassies. It took 9/11 to finally wake us up. North Korea has been pushing us on an ever increasing level. This is witnessed by the recent ship sinking and earlier by: their nuclear program, missile tests, and sales of weapons to our enemies in total defiance of world opinion.
Watch Obama do nothing.
North Korea, as someone suggested above, is just the diseased talon of the Red Empire in Beijing, itself simply the Eastern jurisdiction of the Moscow-Beijing axis known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It is a Potemkin nation, and exists precisely to be “problematic.” Pakistan and Iran somehow have long range missiles? Well, must be “North Korea’s” fault. Billions in high quality US counterfeit currency floating around? Those damn North Koreans! Heroin flooding into Asia? Nuclear installation in Syria, of all places? North Korea!!! (“Stella!!!”)
Guys. This is all bullsh_t.
The source of this operation was not Kim Jong Il, it was the Sino-Soviet Eastern strategy to destabilize the East Pacific Rim as it has destabilized the Middle East and Europe. The calculation must be that, with the West demoralized and The Resume in charge of the USA – whose purpose, perhaps, was as much to place a Soviet-sympathizer at the head of the armed forces as to confirm the demoralization of the USA – any crisis will be resolved to the advantage of the Sino-Soviet strategists. Perhaps the Axis calculates that it is ready to sacrifice North Korea because great damage will be inflicted, and self-inflicted, on the West in its attempt to respond as a rational nation or alliance would. That is the basic tactic, the same as terrorism: strike in such a way that it is not possible not to respond, and respond in a way that demands the commitment – and exposure – of substantial resources. Then it harass us and get all the useful idiots excited; we will be beseiged. Or there will be a different but cognate tactic tried. Unless, of course, the calculation is that the “correlation of forces” has swung so far, momentumwise, to the advantage of the Sino-Soviet axis that hot war has begun. Consider, for example, events in the Levant.
In any case, we do have to respond. This is a provocation. If we do not respond, there will be another, or multiple attacks. If we do or do not respond, the point is immaterial, because either one will contribute to political destabilization within the West. If Obama is disgraced, so much the better; the Right will be elected and be provoked into attack, handing the useful idiots a big target. Probably some idiot like Ron Paul, or Mitt Romney, will become the nominee. These are not martial men and they do not understand strategy.
The provocation would backfire and the whole strategy be nullified if the West could use it as an occasion to harden itself, allow disciplined men to command the public imagination, and rouse it to reinforce the global defensive posture this very same Axis forced us to adopt in the first place. But unfortunately too many are too subverted for that. It all begins with demoralization. Once that sets in, man, you believe anything.
If national security is the main question, the nominee will be either General Petreus or Governor Huckabee. Others are also qualified, but none are as well known and seasoned as these two men. Gen. Petreus needs no introduction; his service record speaks for itself. Gov. Huckabee has the moral integrity, courage and strategic skill to confront our enemies, as well. He knows how to make do with little in the way of resources, both his personal budget and his political war chest. He has shown the good judgment to be able to confront people who are making bad decisions, make good decisions himself, and stick by those decisions, all the while being willing to offend people as needed, but no more than needed. As a demonstration, he has defeated the Clinton political machine not less than three times, and he has not lost to them. The fact that the Clintons and their associates are ruthless, even to the point of arranging murders, is well known. What does it take to confront them on their home turf and win?
I don’t know how anyone could reasonably expect nuclear deterrence to succeed, even with constant preemptive warfare. Surely you realize that it is just a matter of time. Nuclear deterrence is fantasy. It has never been even close to reality on planet earth.
The idea of nuclear deterrence was created to prevent public panic, not nuclear war. The genie will not go back in the lamp.
I think that keeping heads out of the sand would be far better public policy.
What does that even mean?
I think we should treat North Korea like Private Pyle in “Full Metal Jacket.” And China is the other marine recruits in his company. “I have tried to help Private Pyle, but I have failed. So when Private Pyle(North Korea) screws up I will not punish him.I will punish you(China). And the way I see it you owe us for one sunk ship and 46 lives.Now get on your faces and stop exporting to the U.S. for 6 months.”
The US is deathly afraid of China, I’m afraid. Terrified of its military power, lacking the will to confront its maneuvers or the ability or strategic thought to foil its moves, and devoted to the idea of China-as-Friend because of perceived economic self-interest. I am far from any sort of Asia expert but this is what it seems. I think this extends will beyond Obama, affects both parties, and cuts right to the corporate socialists’ one-worldism.
Beyond this, I also agree with earlier posters who say that the ROK has little will of its own, and constantly signals submission to the north. It seems that the South Koreans have accepted that the tradeoff for capitalism and materialism is defacto submission to Pyongyang wrapped in the romanticism of ‘one Korea.’
Then again, maybe the best Koreans emigrated already.
I see that someone has already blamed Bush for this. I am going to take it a few steps back. Yep, I’m gonna blame Truman. If he had left MacArthur alone, things would have shaped differently. Then I blame LBJ. He gave no response to the boarding and taking of the USS Pueblo on the high seas and left Commander Bucher and his crew being tortured in POW camps. Then Clinton sent Carter over to arrange for a Nobel Peace Prize. While Carter was on his tour, He took a side tour of the Pueblo to congratulate Kim on his nice propaganda prize. assign blame where it fits best.
Did the U.S. respond to the ruthless Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty? Yes – by threatening the survivors into silence. Read Machiavelli if you cannot comprehend geopolitics. This is only a peripheral theater for the U.S., with the main thrust of the forces of empire still being the Middle East. The only way we could stop a North Korean assault on the South would be to use nuclear weapons. North Korea is not Iraq, and is nuclear armed. They are trained in Soviet era tactics of fighting on the nuclear battlefield. We don’t need to have critical industries in the South destroyed. Republican administrations have outsourced much U.S. heavy industry to South Korea, such as shipbuilding. Many of the world’s computer memory chips are manufactured there. The bankster/globalists who run the show are smart enough to understand this. The Middle East is center stage, and will remain that way. The North Koreans understand this, which is why they attacked one ship in contested waters, after a prior South Korean provocation. If necessary, a few hundred million will be transferred to Swiss and Israeli bank accounts, and the two Koreas will continue glaring across the DMZ. Wake up folks. The world is more complex than this author acknowledges. We did nothing after the ax-murders at Panmunjom in 1976 (Gerald Ford’s watch). We should do nothing over this minor incident.
One of the true signs of the political anti-Semite is that any crisis, event or disaster immediately ‘points’ to some supposed action of Jewish perfidy against the (self-described) victim. The way in which the endless Liberty-floggers bring up this incident time and time again, strip it of all available facts, ignore the context of the Six-Day War (which had begun), and the actual reporting about the evident, is simply amazing. A ‘liberty’ ship (an intelligence ship, one of many called ‘Liberty’), that had been ordered out of Israeli and Egyptian territorial waters but remained in them (because, according to some American sources, it failed to receive the message telling it to leave due to a mixup), then steams north towards Israel while battle is raging literally a few miles away on the sands to the east, and is seen/suspected as an Egyptian ship and attacked, again, in the context of an Israeli military leadership anticipating a cataclysmic battle for the survival of the state, based most realistically on the massing of mobilized Arab forces preparing to overrun the state and promising to annihilate its inhabitants.
None of the ‘anti-Semites’ (Jew-haters) ever ask what the US would do, if threatened existentially by both its land neighbors and then also by, say, Cuba and Venezuela, faced a similar situation with an intelligence ship from, say, Israel, a nation six thousand miles away from its borders, that failed to removes itself from the combat area before the American battle for survival began.
The US Naval communications officers who failed to get the message to that ship are the only ones responsible for the deaths of those men; they and perhaps their commanders and by extension LBJ and his Administration for not somehow anticipating their error before it was made, if that is possible. But of course you would not ever consider that, or then damn all Texans for time and time to come because….you don’t hate them.
You hate us, Jews.
The Liberty survivors were silenced to protect Israel. You need to educate yourself on the facts. The Egyptian ship you mentioned was a small coastal freighter (a horse scow). The much larger Liberty was bristling with antenna. Israeli pilots train in the U.S., and use the same ship-recognition tools as our pilots. Read a few of the books written by the survivors. My loyalty is to America, and I believe what the Liberty survivors have to say. To say that Israel commits crimes is not to hate Jews. This is the Zionist excuse used to justify those crimes. My Comment was not about Israel, but rather geopolitics, with the Liberty incident an example. I made no judgment on how it was handled, but now I will. If I were Johnston, I would have allowed the U.S. Navy jets scrambled to rescue the Liberty by sinking the Israeli PT boats. Than I would have muzzled everyone until hostilities were over, at which point I would have demanded full reparations from Israel for all the victims. That would have been the Machiavellian, but pro-American solution.
It is inexcusable for a ship to be 100 miles off course. If the Navy is reporting that the ship was 100 miles away from where the Israelis were getting visual identification of the Liberty, then the logical conclusion is that the ship they see is not the Liberty, but instead an enemy ship masquerading as the Liberty.
Precisely how do you know that the Liberty survivors were threatened into silence?
Well, he also knows the Israeli pilots train in the US so they must have known it was a US ship. Except there were no Israeli pilots trained in the US before the 67 war. Israel was allied with France before 67 and the jets and training were French, not American. Nevermind there really was an Egyptian ship shelling the Israelis at the same time around the same place. Nevermind the Israelis called up the US Navy and asked where its ships were so they didn’t bomb any by accident. Can’t have facts get in the way of cherished diatribes!
Anyway, South Korea ought to go looking for Kim’s submarines and sink them. If they complain throw their excuses back at them – your sub must have blown itself up or hit an old mine, so sorry!
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kn.html
“slightly smaller than Mississippi.” “dependens on China.” starving. but “nuclear power?” bullsh_t. backdoor of communist subversion plans, protected because it holds Soeul hostage. that’s it. how does north korea even have an economy? it is a front.
off topic: richard clarke, who i’m watching right now on C-Span, is an idiot. no wonder al-qeada was allowed to grow. this person was DCI for years? he sounds like the branch manager of a DMV office.
Clown Obama could get us all killed.
From the former East Paterson, New Jersey, to the present West, L.A. From the far reaches of New Zealand to Greg Norman’s Australia, and to all points of the compass North, East, South and West, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen of all ages, the ringmaster of the circus known as the Obama Administration is, from Rachel’s point of view, undeniably, certifiably lethal. The guy’s capable of anything. To me, it’s like he’s driving a loaded-with-people car down a road that leads to the edge of a cliff. We’re screaming, “slow down, Barack, slow down”, but that just seems to provoke him to drive faster and faster. Charles Bronson made a career out of this theme. Can you say, “Death Wish?”
But stop mixing metaphors, Rachel. Back to the circus.
From my vantage point in the Big Top, President Obama’s mental home is a clock tower named after Saul Alinsky. Like a sniper, he’s picking off every aspect of America that matters. He’s killing free enterprise. Expanding government till it’s too fat to move or get anything done. He slipped a thousand and one time bombs in ObamaCare that’ll end us costing us trillions. Basically, he’s setting his sights on destroying America. And an America that can’t save itself can’t save anybody else.
Some recent history.
For almost a year and a half, Obama’s been shouting into every high-tech megaphone he can get his mitts on, telling the world how he’s out to fundamentally transform America; from a nation that can be counted on to keep the world free and safe from those who’d enslave it, to a nation that has lost everything from its nerve and muscle to its power and will to fight. Not just financially, but in every other way you can think of Obama has put the United States on the road to ruin. One of his most insidious decisions was to give up on missile defense. When the nations that want to destroy us develop missile defense systems of their own that undoubtedly have been partly created through stolen U.S. state secrets, the rubber will meet the road. That’s when the free world can experience a kind of universal cold sweat. It’s the point in time where we can all bend down, try to look between our legs and wave our futures goodbye. Of course, in the meantime, I’m not discounting radical Islamics savages setting off their dirty bombs. What really makes me see red is that instead of spending money on lawyers to defend them, we should be developing new ways to destroy them.
There’s also a sideshow that I’m sure is going on, especially in Russia, that disrupts my sleep. One that I get the feeling everybody wants to ignore. One that’s a real nightmare. Here’s where things get really uncomfortable.
Don’t you ever wonder what the Russian Generals think of Obama?
From Ike to Kennedy, from Reagan to Clinton, don’t you get the feeling, the Russians and the Chinese always thought that a nuclear attack on Taiwan or Israel or the United States would be met with a full retaliatory response? I surely do. But, you know what? I think if somebody decided to blow Israel off the map tomorrow that Obama would punt. Freeze with fear. Try to worm his way out of a nuclear response. This is precisely what I think the Russians, and the rest of our enemies think. Do Barack and his boys have any idea how dangerous this is? Now Rachel’s done with the circus metaphor.
I believe our old and new enemies believe that they have a window of opportunity to attack the United States which closes the moment Obama is voted out of office. This means many of us will be holding our breath for the next two and a half years. It doesn’t mean we’ll be attacked. It doesn’t mean we won’t. The reason an attack might not happen is so ironic. Our enemy’s might not risk a military attack for the simple reason that Obama’s doing such a good job of destroying this nation from within.
Folks, if we survive the Obama administration, America can survive anything.’
Rachel: Do you still buy gas and race to red lights? Do you drive slow and easy or 75!
It is oil that is financing this war. Got that Prius, do you write letters and demand we follow Brazil to ethanol energy independence? Could you explain cellulose ethanol yesterday, can your elected representative?
How about those new made in America battery factories that we are not building; are you complaining to congress?
Can you figure out the relationship between oil and these phony wars which are only a weapons deal?
Osama BL, is a religious fanatic right? So what English definition of religious includes flying planes into buildings? None!
Me? I’d just accidentally slip a few missles into Krazy Kim’s nearest Naval base until it looked like a junkyard.
Then, if Kim doesn’t stop yapping, just tell him “any military response will be dealt with via atomic weapons immediately.” And then do it if necessary.
Obama? He couldn’t whip my dead gread granny. O will just stick his arrogant, snotty & snooty little head in the sand as usual & probably give some wordy boring lecture to earthworms.
Bubblefoot, where you be? I’ll just have to start without you. To keep it short & instructive I’ll focus on your comments about Chiang,an ancient tale but always reliable as an indicator of just how sick liberalism is. You sniff that he was corrupt & unworthy of us. So tell me about Mao? Seventy million dead, does that smack of a kind of corruption, how does he not figure in your faculty deliberations, and please be careful in your 2nd thoughts, CYA comments.
Chiang was the only force fighting the Japanese, the USA force on the ground was tiny. Mao was already in the mountains and commencing to kill his own people. Corrupt, well I guess we can compare the 60 year history of Taiwan to that of China for an answer.
Obama, who I’m guessing you have a sweet spot for, seems to share a similarity with the old Mao as Agrarian Reformer crowd. Though Iran is busy killing Americans on two fronts The O is a forgiving, no preconditions kind of guy.
The strain, the type, crosses generations.
P S You assume the only answer to No Ko is all out war, you might need a new crystal ball.
Lots more if necessary.
Why shouldn’t North Korea attack us with nuclear weapons? According to the Obama administration, their punishment will be having attacked us with nuclear weapons.
Murdering US allies is its own punishment, dontcha know.
Okay, now more foreign policy! Kumbayah, my Lord, Kumbayah. Louder everybody. LOUDER!
Johnt:
I’m here in the faculty lounge reading “The Fighting Professor, in Korea” which has a great cover with a professor wearing belts of ammo, holding a weapon in one hand and a beautiful woman (in near totally torn clothing) in the other. Then I’ll read, “The Pajamas Media Barbarians,” which says that most people posting on this site are cultural barbarians who ought to consent to the revocation of the Constitution and agree to be governed by a Joint Faculty Task Force from the best universities.
I swear: You keep wandering away from the issue (kind of like an old geezer on a duckboard sidewalk–I ask how to get to the freeway, you want to talk about the days back in “”06″) or like some socialist at a GM meeting about the cost of labor (who refuses to see its bankrupting the co and we’ll lose all the jobs to SoKo if we don’t cut the featherbedding), or maybe like chuck pelto.
You keep wandering into side issues to try and help you decide the issue without thinking: here’s you: “hmmm. rather than argue on the merits, I’ll suggest he voted for Obama, raise a false issue about Chiang and Mao, and toally avoid the issue of whether the US ought to defend SoKo).
OK: Your irrelevant issue No. 1: I voted for McCain, (but he was a terrible choice: I would have rather voted for someone youonger, smarter, tougher and more principled) (like Rumsfeld); McCain was incoherent, undistinguished for most of his senate career, and while he had been an honorable military man, I thought he was about as mediocre as you can get as a presidential candidate.
Youor irrelevant issue No. 2: Chaing’s fighting history (deplorable-he didn’t do squat to oppose the Japanese–he spent most of his time trying to exterminate Mao and vice versa); if we had decided to prop up the MAtionalist Chinese, we should have ousted Chaing and put in some one who was not corrupt and incompetent–in other words, if we’re going to treat it like its ours, do it all the way).
Now: back to the issue: here is the issue: whether the US ought to (a) intervene in the current “he stole my pig” dispute (OK its “he sunk my ship”) between NoKo and SoKo or (b), let the SoKo people respond to a simple boat sinking–a simple boat sinking for god’s sake–(with some of the money they get from the US market by undercutting our workers).
I gave you a boatload of reasons why we should not, although if I were pres., I’d probably have a Sea Wolf sink 2 NoKo boats and not say anythign about it–I’d just do it and the lesson would be clear.
But there is no reason we ought to do that: go back and read what I said and respond to it if you can.
You seem like a patriotic and loyal American: so tell me this: why are we obligated to borrow money from the Chinese, increase our deficit, and use US bodies, to defend people who won’t defend themselves, spend their time taking our jobs and our money with low cost labor and unfair trade practices (you try to get a US business started in SokKo), and who very recently told us that we ought to shut up and leave relations with NoKo to them? Why?
Now just answer the bloody questions.
I’m waiting for the book “Why The US Owes The rest of The Lazy World Non-reciprocal Access to our Markets and a Defense they won’t Pay For.” By Author “Johnt.”
First, a bit of history. On June 25, 1950 North Korea invaded the south. Although the United States had an intelligence operation in Japan and a far smaller intelligence – and miniscule military – presence in South Korea, we were completely surprised. We had deliberately not provided modern armaments to the South Korean military due to concerns that they might attack the north. Even if we had had ample warning, the attack could not likely have been repulsed quickly. President Truman’s Secretary of Defense, Louis A. Johnson, bragged that he had cut military spending to the bone and then through the bone; even with the military buildup following the invasion, the North Koreans were able to drive the few and not very well augmented US troops to the Pusan perimeter, way to the south. Seoul is well to the north, not far from the DMZ.
General MacArthur, truly a military genius, was able to mount the Inchon invasion and that was at least briefly a turning point. His plan was risky and was resisted by most of the chairborne brigade in Washington. About the best he could hope for was not to be given a direct order not to invade Inchon, and he was never given such an order. The invasion involved transiting the Flying Fish Channel. Due to extreme (and difficult to predict with accuracy) tides (more than thirty feet high and several feet low daily) and vast mudflats there was only a very brief time frame of one or at most two days per month when naval ships could transit it. It was accomplished on September 15; it could not have been done sooner and a month later might well have been too late. With Inchon captured, we took back Seoul and the rest of the country. Although the North Koreans had been amply assisted by the Chinese and Russians, the latter did not enter the conflict in force until MacArthur crossed the DMZ and concerned the Chinese about its own border. Then, they entered in force and the retreat from the Yalu in mid winter (Korea is known as the Frozen Chosin) over extremely difficult mountains was horrible. Lots of good soldiers and marines were lost and we eventually managed to sort of restore the status quo ante.
President Truman was a fighter and an honest man; despite his flaws, he was in my view one of the very best ever to serve as President of the United States. He also had military experience as an artillery battery commander during WWI and rose to the rank of colonel in the reserves. He was dissuaded from assuming a command during WWII because it was argued that he could do more good in the Congress.
When I was in the Army as a chairborne captain in the JAG Corp for a couple of years in the late 1960s, there were about fifty thousand US military personnel stationed there. There are now about twenty-eight thousand, of whom at least thirty percent are probably support personnel – clerks, administrators, cooks, etc. There is a division presumably of peacetime strength in the northern part of the country, also with lots of support personnel. I doubt that aside from that solitary division, there are significant numbers of combat ready troops there.
With our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, we would be in a Hell of a mess were the North Koreans to come across the DMZ in force. The relatively few combat ready troops we have there would almost certainly be decimated. That would be likely even if we had a president like Truman; we don’t. We have a community organizer who has never served a day in the military, does not think highly of military power, and who relies on his perception of his own uncanny ability to convince our enemies that we are their friends and, apparently, to convince our friends that we don’t much care for them.
I liked Korea and many of the Koreans whom I met. It is a beautiful, modern, affluent and more or less democratic country. Nevertheless, I don’t think South Korea is worth saving for its own sake. It is, however, worth saving if we can do so, and at the loss of the lives of many wearing the US uniform, for one very good reason: if we don’t, the United States will be irretrievably known as a country easily bullied and unwilling to raise a finger in the defense of her allies. That perception is already common and, unfortunately, accurate.
One of the Japanese admirals who led the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor commented at the time that Japan had awakened a sleeping giant. Unless we want to convince our enemies that we might only be awakened by a direct attack on US soil, and probably not even then, we have to do something and the only “something” I can think of is the use of substantial and deadly force. Giving North Korea and her allies laughing fits is not a viable response.
Sounds like Dan Miller decided to join the army! hooray, hooray for private Dan!
Nope. I spent four years in the Army decades ago; even had I been on active duty since then, I’d now be several years into my fifth decade in uniform. I’ll be sixty-nine next month and don’t think I would be of much use.
BS. Appropriate.
Dan: if we have to do anything, why not sink a couple of NoKo boats and leave it at that? But why can’t the SoKo’s–always ready to dismiss us as crude cold warriors–do it themselves? I thought they were so advanced etc. Why put us billions in the hole and at rsk with the Chinese over a …boat the Soko’s won’t defend?
Dan, I am sorry for my earlier comment, I only saw your last line and did not realize…
I think China is putting N Korea up to this, like Iran puts up Hizbully, and I think China sees an easy pick…
Thanks for your informed post, and please accept my apologies…
Thanks, Bruce.
North Korea makes the term “basket case” seem euphemistic. Even with “rational action” defined as including that based on flawed perceptions and malign goals, the concept probably has little to do with North Korea’s recent provocations or indeed with much of anything it has done for many years. I don’t know what China is doing but she seems to behave rationally considering her perceptions and goals, and we probably have better insights into those than into North Korea’s.
It’s a mess no matter how one views it, and I don’t think the mess can be ameliorated by sweet gestures toward the Great Leader. The Obama administration currently seems to be avoiding sweet words, and we will have to wait and see what happens if sweet gestures are avoided as well.
This was a simple test of Obama’s fortitude – he has failed miserably
There are, no doubt, some enduring lessons to be learned from history, including the general concepts that a nation must protect its vital interests in order to survive and that appeasement is rarely, if ever, effective in dealing with an out-and-out aggressor. It’s increasing difficult to apply those lessons, however. In order to protect vital interests, a nation must know and agree internally on what it’s vital interests are. In order to avoid appeasing an aggressor, a nation must know what an apparently aggressive state intends to do. In the modern era, both of those difficulties are more complex and harder to resolve than ever before.
Is the survival of allies like South Korea and Israel a vital U.S. national interest? I would answer, unequivocally, yes. Is North Korea an out-and-out aggressor that will attempt to invade and conquer South Korea if given half a chance? I think probably not, given that they know China will not support them in doing it and that South Korea, with U.S. support, would defeat them.
All things considered, in this and other instances of North Korean provocation I think the best U.S. policy is to state our disapproval and reaffirm our support for our ally. We shouldn’t be leaning on South Korea not to respond at all, but to keep their response within reasonable limits. We may in fact be doing that privately.
In terms of nuclear deterrence, I’m not sure this situation is very instructive, except as an example of the reality we’ve been trying to deal with since the end of the Cold War. One commenter said that nuclear deterrence was always a fantasy. That’s incorrect. It did, in fact, contain Soviet power during the Cold War, both as an unthinkable response to an equally unthinkable act of aggression and as a source of countervailing power that couldn’t be ignored by the Soviet bloc. In today’s world, however, nuclear power is not a credible deterrent against terrorism, since it’s clear that we won’t use it against states and innocent people who didn’t directly commit the act. If some state fired a nuclear missile, we would know it immediately and, given the right circumstances, would respond in kind. But if a small nuke in a shipping container is detonated in New York City, who would we retaliate against? By the time we figured out who was to blame, it would be too late for a nuclear response (except as an act of mindless vengeance), and other, more proportionate responses would be available.
So, nuclear deterrence, as we thought of it during the Cold War, is pretty much an anachronism. We have to have nuclear weapons, of course, because other states have them and it should be (and is) clear that we can and will respond to a direct nuclear attack on our own soil or against our allies. Beyond that, we need to get a lot better at attacking threats like terrorists quickly, forcefully, and precisely. That does not mean, by the way, that we should be fighting a largely pointless war in Afghanistan. We shouldn’t.
Maybe we’ll get lucky (and others unlucky) and North Korea’s regime really will collapse.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64M2B820100523
If the NK regime actually does collapse, there will be a big mess. China does not want a massive influx of North Koreans and seems likely to do her best to prevent it. Despite family and cultural ties I doubt that SK really wants them either. Keep in mind the economic difficulties West Germany had for several years when The Wall came down. The NK people have been repressed and indoctrinated grossly for six decades and the problems in SK would be far greater than in Germany.
North Korea does have substantial mineral resources which South Korea lacks, and that’s about it.
Hopefully by implosion, instead of explosion.
This semi- almost maybe agreement over retention of the marine air base in Okinawa probably has something to do with the situation in Korea.
Now, it’s pretty much up to China, North Korea and, of course, Japan.
bubblefoot, I suggested you get a new crystal ball, your powers of prediction are I’m sure connected to an exaggerated self image, coupled with contempt for all the wrong people, leading you to the kind of excesses found in faculty lounges and rest homes.
Put plainly, you don’t know, a] that there will be a war, despite what your glands tell you. b] that So Ko will not fight under any circumstances, your implication and outlandish to boot, c] that a limited response,like the one you suggested and backed away from, would not be sufficient.
As your colleagues in the lounge will confirm, it is more provocative to do nothing. Put down your dog eared copy of “Why Academics Should Rule the World”, it will rot what’s left of your brain.
As to why we should? Should what? Not knowing exactly what will happen, what kind of limited response could or will work, not having placed any late night calls The Supreme Leader, what sense does your supposed stopper of a tough question hold? But I will grant your fantasies the honor of an answer, undeserved but one hypothetical stretch won’t kill me.
We should because a North Korea holding the entire Korean Peninsula and having already fired rockets over Japan would be just that more dangerous and ambitious then now, an even bigger problem then today & more expansive. This would pose a minor problem for you. As acts of aggression are committed by this new Korea you would feel personally responsible for starting a “what is Japan good for” campaign, let them defend themselves, etc. Put down that WW II copy of Fortress America”, it’s had it’s day.
The questions of debt has meaning only in the context of full war, I have commented on that, and in any case would China continue to buy U S notes while engaged indirectly or otherwise in a conflict. You cannot in any case even make an estimate of an amount of debt because your crystal ball won’t tell you what kind or extent it will, or may, be.
You had your ass handed to you on the Chiang thing after initially jumping in on it, irrelevant or uncomfortable? Read ” How To Be An Academic and an Adult At The Same Time”.
Please don’t go stupid on me.
sorry johnt.
i thought you might be able to paste a couple of thoughts together but all you”ve been able to push out is a sluice way of clumsy insults larded with near incomprehensible statements.
You still don’t understand the “Chiang thing” and you seem focused on committing the US to the defense of anywhere and everywhere, no matter what the cost, and no matter how those people snicker at you for doing what they should be doing. No matter that the US is going broke defending everyone and everywhere.
Your thinking has already undermined the willingness of europe to defend itself, tempted it into unsustainable welfare statism (since the US is always there to bail them out) and you are doing the same thing in Asia.
Your conclusion that NoKo would be more dangerous in control of the entire peninsula is a conclusion, not a fact and ignores that its already dangerous and heading to nuclear weapons, and how much easier it would be to deal with them if we didn’t have soko to worry about. Make sure we don’t put you in charge of planning out there.
And what on earth does debt “meaning in the ocntext of a full war” mean? Are you old enough to remember that the UK went broke fighting WWII and would have folded but for lend-lease? Do you even read? So you want to alienate the biggest purchaser of US treasury debt for….South Korea? A place that does squat for us?
You still haven’t explained why SoKo cannot deal with NoKo and I reluctantly conclude you just don’t have the brain wattage to handle the issues.
I will find someone else who is hopefully a bit smarter. Bye.
Back now to my next “The fighting Professor.”
Reuters is now saying it’s a type of torpedo made in Germany. I am not a naval engineer, but I think the torpedo and fire control systems are an integral part of a sub. I think switching torpedoes is equivalent to rechambering a rifle – not trivial. North Korea operates obsolete Soviet submarines, which probably means a major refit to carry a German torpedo.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6460FC20100507
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/ship.htm
Asia Times had an article pointing out that the U.S. and South Korea were on joint maneuvers at the time of the sinking. They thought it was friendly fire.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LE05Dg01.html
South Korea operates a home-built version of a German submarine design, with a German fire control system. This might explain a German torpedo with Korean markings. Friendly fire may be the answer. It would be interesting to hear if any South Korean sub commander has been recently cashiered.
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/dolphin/
I have been reading through this rather long list of comments,not really sure of what to think,and came across BUBBLEFOOT,and I have to say he makes an awfully strong argument,in my opinion at least,for just sitting this one out.The United States fought the good fight in Korea,and in my opinion we should be proud of what we did in that country.Now it is over half a century later,AND WE ARE STILL THERE.That is,I am sure,as much because of U.S. strategic interests as the fact that S.K. enjoys being mothered.But enough is enough.S.K. is a wealthy and prosperous country now,with more than enough of everything it would take to protect themselves if the need arises,and it’s time to cut the apron strings,now.
I believe our president is totally lacking in what it takes to deal with countries like N.K.,but maybe in this case,and perhaps in some other places in this world,doing nothing,which is what the POTUS will surely do,may be the correct choice. T.
Mostly excellent comments that collectively cover the issues, including the issues perceived by those with a mental disorder!
I fully expect N. Korea to roll over S. Korea just like Iraq did Kuwait! And we will do nothing. I am not sure whether N Korea will notify the USA in advance to get its troops out, but even if they do I am sure that Obama and his cabinet of “delusional liberals with mental disorders” will not understand the communiqué…
The question is about plausible rationale of the agression. Whom it can serve in a reasonably practical way that make it worth the risk? It is hard to think that it can really serve N. Korea, given the risk. Who would be interested in war between US and N. Korea at this point? There is only one player: Iran. Can it be that Iranians got one N. Korean torpedo to sink the S. Korean ship?
If the ROK soldiers can’t handle this then no one can. If SoKo had any brains they would sink the entire NoKo navy in retaliation, then cross their arms and wait for a response. Weakness in the face of murder invites more of the same.
Bubblefoot, cowardly cop out? After 57 years of maintaining U S troops on the DMZ you ask why, bad timing. Your 4th para, “your conclusion”, it is a conclusion based on your hypothetical premise, but to highlight your stupidity, if NO Ko is dangerous now, and you say it is. how much more so if in control of the entire peninsula, and you ignore it missile threat over Japan’s territory. The stupidity of stating a hypothetical is not a fact bespeaks of a dumbness that should urge humility. You asked why we would want to counter No Ko, I give you a reason and I get your usual incoherence. You wanted a reason, you have it, like it or not. Your mindlessly mentioning they are already a nuclear threat only emphasizes why we have a joint stake in this. “the Chiang thing”, I thought that was irrelevant, remember? Yes, I don’t understand the difference between Taiwan and China, Chiang & Mao,70 million dead & who was corrupt, right.
The UK going broke, I went over this in elaborate detail you dope, do you even remember?
BTW, there is, as they call it, breaking news, It would appear that So Ko won’t be kissing NoKo’s backside right away
Bubblehead, apart from a girlish propensity to catiness there’s nothing to you, you ignore what you don’t like or twist it. Now back to your reading of “The Nutty Professor”. Trash !
johnt: thank you for favoring us with another post. Kindly re-read the last three lines of my last post to you above. If necessary, read them several times, out loud if need be. Let them marinate and I am sure that sooner or later, the meaning will be clear. And as a favor, allow me to clarify some other things that are doubtless still not clear to you: in the movie the “Titanic”? The boat sank. The answer to “Who is buried in Napoleon’s tomb,?” is Napoleon. And the “H” on some faucets? it stands for “hot.”
If you want to see what a reasoned argument looks like, try to read at least a few lines of the post by TheSophist above. It makes many good points,and evidences the existence of high intelligence, lack of arrogance and an ability to put several sentences together in a coherent framework characteristic of people existing in time after “The Later Cave Men.”