The Ghost of Donald Rumsfeld
After the September 11 attacks, the Department of Defense realized that it had no contingency plan for invading Afghanistan because no such eventuality had been conceived. In order to provide a rapid response to attacks from unforeseen quarters, Donald Rumsfeld commissioned a study to create a “to whoever it may concern” contingency, so the US would never be without a comeback again. The lead service, to nobody’s surprise, was the Air Force, probably with some help from the Navy. Rumsfeld’s requirement created a “no boots on the ground” attack concept called CONPLAN 8022.
One of the theaters in which CONPLAN 8022 might have to be carried out was the Korean peninsula, given the fact that US troop commitments in the War on Terror might preclude a more conventional response. This post revisits the CONPLAN 8022 concept and examines how it might apply in 2010. The Washington Post laid out the basic elements of the plan. The idea was to paralyze North Korea rather than invade it.
CONPLAN 8022 anticipates two different scenarios. The first is a response to a specific and imminent nuclear threat, say in North Korea. A quick-reaction, highly choreographed strike would combine pinpoint bombing with electronic warfare and cyberattacks to disable a North Korean response, with commandos operating deep in enemy territory, perhaps even to take possession of the nuclear device.
The second scenario involves a more generic attack on an adversary’s WMD infrastructure. Assume, for argument’s sake, that Iran announces it is mounting a crash program to build a nuclear weapon. A multidimensional bombing (kinetic) and cyberwarfare (non-kinetic) attack might seek to destroy Iran’s program, and special forces would be deployed to disable or isolate underground facilities.
By employing all of the tricks in the U.S. arsenal to immobilize an enemy country — turning off the electricity, jamming and spoofing radars and communications, penetrating computer networks and garbling electronic commands — global strike magnifies the impact of bombing by eliminating the need to physically destroy targets that have been disabled by other means.
One of the most interesting aspects of this plan is what it does not do. For example, it does not specifically address the problem of reducing North Korean fortifications, much of which are underground or heavily fortified. Military Photos has an interesting page showing Google Earth images of artillery positions, underground airbases, air defenses and the like. North Korea has apparently decided to turn its country into a vast Iwo-Jima or Okinawa-like fortress. Although immobile and primitively armed, these positions would take a tremendous amount of bombardment to reduce, if that is even possible.
But that is not what CONPLAN 8022 aims to achieve. Its goal is to decapitate the North Korean infrastructure and reduce the vascular system of this giant anthill to thrombosis. If successful, such an attack would at the very least make any offensive action by North Korea into the South impossible while making an advance into North Korea, probably by the South Korean Army, feasible at some point. While sixty years have changed much since 1950, geography is not one of them. This map of Korean War operations shows the main avenues of advance going both ways. They are likely to be the same even today.
Eventually a highway into the North will swing open for the South, assuming it wants to go there. In the meantime, two infrastructure targets stand out the most. The first is the electric grid. North Korea’s power grid is ramshackle and threadbare. In 2005 there were even proposals for the South to supply it with juice. Engineers who examined it shuddered with horror. “Technicians from KEPCO … said any such moves will require wholesale upgrading of the North’s power grid, which has fallen into disrepair since the early 1990s. They gave no details on how dilapidated the power system is in the North.”
North Korea has 2 war aims:
1. invade S Korea and get rich
2. Lose the war and reunify under East German conditions
Special Forces and surgical air-strikes can do many wonderful things but there is one role that they fail in, deterrence. If you really believe that war is essentially a kinetic phase of a political and psychological encounter, Napoleon’s three parts moral, then the measure of a successful plan is whether it prevents the enemy from making you execute the plan. The secret of the Britain’s Royal Navy when they ruled the waves was that everyone agreed that it would be impossible to challenge them so no one even tried for almost a hundred years. That allowed the British to keep their fleet largely in port and let politicians wonder about the pointless expenditure.
Rumsfeld crafted and managed systems and plans that could rip through the legacy Stalinist forces of Iraq in 2003 or the tribal formations of the Taliban in 2001. They could and still probably can win any engagement against a potential aggressor. What they cannot do is convince the other party not to challenge us in the first place. It takes two to tango and unfortunately to many players out there look at old newsreels from WW-II and expect to see thousands of tanks and hundreds of artillery tubes lined up side by side with a sky filled with planes overhead and so many ships in the sea that the army could walk across. They are like the drunk in the small town bar who simply will not back down when the female LEO walks in. Yes she is well trained and yes she knows how to use her weapon and yes she can if need be kill him but for reasons that have nothing to do with fairness the drunk will be more likely to sit down and shut up when a 6″ 4″ 240 lb man in uniform walks in than when a 5′ 4″ 124 lb female in uniform walks in. If your purpose is to prevent violence then life is not fair and you will on the margin get better results with the big guy.
If the United States had 6 or 700 ships in the Navy, with 15 CVBGs and 9 ARGs, and 15 full strength Army divisions, equipped with artillery they are unafraid to name Crusader, 20,000 nuclear warheads deployed both tactically and in a full strategic triad and at least 500 long range heavy bombers supported by 200 F-22s and 2500 F-35s, then Lil Kim would still be busy trying to kidnap Japanese film starlets, the Chinese would be offering to deliver Soros and Strong in a package with fraternal proof of securities fraud, and the Iranians would be busy exhorting special subsidies for the pistachio market.
Are all those systems expensive? Yes they are and we should only buy 5% more than is necessary to get the bar-room bully to stay in his chair. War is more expensive than peace.
Extreme bellicosity is typical of collapsing powers.
Both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were shrieking at the end. On paper the IJN had sunk the USN twice over — on newspaper, that is.
It is extremely unlikely that Nork has bunkered its food.
So it would be extremely wise to target such facilities — particularly the ones serving Pyongyang. Armies march on their bellies: the Japanese at Iwo Jima and Okinawa were crippled by starvation.
Likewise Kim is in a tight box on motor fuels. Such POL would be a super priority in my eyes. Once lit it destroys itself. Few other assets have that property, such strike leverage.
I’d also precision attack Pyongyang’s water system. I’d have Kim’s Crew busy with the essentials of survival straight off.
Of course, all of Kim’s estates would be destroyed by MOAB’s as fast as possible. I’d make him the prime hermit in the thiefdom.
Only a prompt atomic response is capable of frustrating Kim’s rampage upon Seoul. I my opinion his artillery must be suppressed PRONTO. Trading away Seoul for the moral high ground is no bargin.
Perhaps China will invade from the north for humanitarian reasons, then cede the mess to the south for administrative and unification purposes.
The dynamics in Korea are difficult because there are (I gather, no firsthand knowledge) both old and new links between the populations.
Otherwise, I’d be here asking why not just pound them to dust.
Also, any commandos going in to grab the nukes better have skill and nerves and luck, otherwise I can easily see the norks blowing it up in place to take out the invaders.
The really worrisome thing about President Obama is that he hasn’t seemed — at least till now — to be a competent executive. Politics aside his style seems ineffective and slow. Even with a supermajority it took him a long and messy campaign to eke out his “health care reform”. The Chicago Olympic catastrophe, the Climate Change summit disaster, the nuclear weapons summit sterile lovefest, the five months it took him to meet McChrystal, the excruciating “engagement” with Iran, the disorganized response to the underwear bomber, the jerky response to the BP oil spill — these have its roots in his poor selection of executives and the Byzantine lines of command. A national security duo of Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder is going to drag down the remaining competents. And of course there’s Hillary, who has not exactly shown herself to really be the smartest woman in the world. Even in politics, his strong suite, recent electoral events show that he can play a leaden hand.
Even if one were willing to grant the President the benefit of strategic wisdom and good intentions, his poor execution means that things can spin out of control. There’s no reason to think he can’t be slightly behind the curve in Korea and if things ratchet up then who knows where it goes? He may not be a good crisis manager. At a recent lunch with Republican senators, the President was described as ‘testy’ and ‘thin skinned’. The other problem is that the President can sometimes, if the senators are to be believed, use equivocal statements. In other words, he can say one thing for convenience and go back on it. This may be a good skill to have in Chicago; and even a tolerable skill to have in Washington. But it may be a liability for a Commander in Chief sending clear messages to a foreign leader like Kim Jong Il, who is not exactly very clear himself.
The potential for misunderstanding in a transaction between President Obama and Kim is manifestly there. And clarity is important in these matters. During the Cuban Missile Crisis the resolution depended a lot on clear and consistent signalling. And now, whatever befall, the buck stops with President Obama and that old saw of his, “let me be perfectly clear.”
Step One: Sink the Pueblo. It is their symbol of invulnerability. Sink it and they will start making
mistakes that we can exploit.
For a precedent; See Doolittle, James, Raid, Tokyo.
Politics aside his style seems ineffective and slow.
Obama is great at campaigning. Actually governing? Not so much.
He’s testy and thin-skinned with the opposition because he never had to deal with such creatures back in Chicago. Conservatives were thin on the ground at Harvard and Columbia too, not to mention Hawaii. How does a man who has been told his entire life that he’s brilliant and the greatest thing since sliced bread react when confronted with people who are unawed by him and actually dare to disagree? He gets testy and thin-skinned. And contemptuous, because if you disagree with him, it must be because you’re either an uneducated racist hick or one of those “greedy” Republican monsters the saints in Cook County deplore so heartily.
Special forces are sitting ducks without constant, over-target air support. Drop Special Forces in, without convenient and close by air support, resupply, and ground forces nearby, and they will be wiped out to the last man.
Dieppe?
Special forces have their place. They are not a substitute for conventional ground forces. My guess is that we will see an ineffective, wiped out to the last man Spec Ops disaster like Desert One in Iran, more screw ups with Obama.
As for Obama himself, he is typical of Black leaders benefiting from Affirmative Action. Call him the Affirmative Action President. Because Obama is capable of speaking in complete sentences, can use correct grammar, and does not talk or act like say, Bobby Rush, Maxine Waters, Kwame Fitzpatrick (the disgraced, convicted, “Hip Hop Mayor” of Detroit), or William Cold Cash Jefferson, people think he’s more intelligent than he is.
A certain kind of SWPL pencils in god-like intellect and ability in Black men and women who are merely not complete idiots. This is one reason I wish sincerely I were Black. It would make everyone think I was a super-genius, merely for being able to tie my shoelaces.
Obama is not that far removed from Louis Farrakhan, or Jessie Jackson, or Rev. Wright, his mentor and substitute Father. He shares their values, intellect, ability, and experiences. If you wanted to know what Rev. Wright would look like as President, or perhaps Louis Farrakhan, look at Obama.
Not the least of which is Obama’s baked-in hatred of White people. It’s not an isolated one, its rumored that Tyra Banks hates the White contestants on her reality show and will not speak to them. Most Whites are clueless as to the innate and deep seated racial hatred most Blacks, Hispanics, and non-Whites in general bear them.
Obama, as President of a 100% Black Nation, would move heaven and earth to protect it, given his abilities. As President of a Nation that is 66% White, he HATES AMERICA. He’d be happy if it was a nuked ruin. Even if, Black people suffered too. At least White America would be destroyed. Generally speaking, this is an attitude deeply and widely shared, particularly among more recently Wealthy Blacks, such as Pro Athletes.
If you wonder why the Clown Crew is in charge, look at Obama. It reflects his basic incompetence at anything other than playing “Magic Negro” (apologies to Black LAT writer David Ehrenstein who coined the phrase wrt Obama) to play on SWPL fantasies (see, Sandra Bullock, Blind Side, Black baby, adoption of) and his innate hatred of Whites.
That toxic combination, utter Fitzpatrick level stupidity (with a gloss of Magical Negro) and innate hatred of Whites will lead to utter disaster for America. But hey, at least we elected a Black guy to cleanse America of racism, and usher in rainbows and unicorns! Hooray!
Even if one were willing to grant the President the benefit of strategic wisdom and good intentions, his poor execution means that things can spin out of control.
Real life is usually about stupid little things that go wrong, not grandiose strategy.
I am somehow reminded of Spinal Tap. Barack Obama may not have had any “Stonehenge Moment” yet, but he may in the future.
I am also reminded of the Savannah cheating move in roulette created by Richard Marcus. According to “Breaking Vegas”, the casino security men were looking for the big moves and the winning moves, but the Savannah only happened on the losing moves where the cheater was cutting his losses.
And that’s how it is. The best presidents don’t try to be great; they try to be good enough. Sadly, a fixation on grand strategy can leave one blind and hence vulnerable to the stupid little things that go wrong in life.
Remember, even Tea Party candidates can be prone to “Stonehenge Moments” sometimes…
Imagine how the North Korean government is reading the situation in Washington.
The President is inexperienced and is not showing much of a learning curve. United States forces are heavily engaged in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He treats allies with disrespect and adversaries with differential respect. His power, as measured by his public support, is waning (since the North Koreans view less than 100 per cent public support as a sign of the decadent west). He is heavily engaged in dealing with domestic crises that have so taxed his patience that he is showing signs of extreme stress. Several members of his armed forces have challenged his power by refusing to follow orders which a communist would interpret to means that his army is on the edge of open revolt. His domestic enemies are openly challenging him.
Further, the Mexican Head of State criticized the United States for allowing one of its political subdivisions for passing a law to help enforce a federal law that is not being well enforced – a failing of the United States Head of Government. In effect, the President of the United States agreed with the President of Mexico that the President of the United States cannot protect his own borders.
I can see where the North Koreans may decide that the United States has neutralized itself as a military force in Asia – and attack the South just like their grandfathers did 60 years ago.
A big part of planning is anticipating what other players may do, and making sure that your side is ready to react accordingly. It is very important to reduce uncertainty.
Now, look at the world through Chinese eyes. The most logical explanation for the sinking of the South Korean warship — in terms of both motivation & capability — is that it was engineered by the Chinese. When a real world Act of War is committed, just what will the US under Obama do? (Because if the US does not act, no-one else will).
The Chinese have their answer. There will be inconclusive meetings at the UN, and trial balloons in the New York Times about whether the US really is bound by treaty to treat an attack on South Korea as an attack on the US. The Obama family will have a pleasant vacation in Chicago. And Democrats will attack the real enemy — BP.
The Chinese planners now have confirmed that an Act of War will generate no effective response from the Obama Administration. And Chinese planning for other actions can proceed accordingly, with significantly reduced uncertainty.
That toxic combination, utter Fitzpatrick level stupidity (with a gloss of Magical Negro) and innate hatred of Whites will lead to utter disaster for America. But hey, at least we elected a Black guy to cleanse America of racism, and usher in rainbows and unicorns! Hooray!
I think this analysis wrong — not offensive — because offensiveness is irrelevant to the validity of an argument, but wrong as in incorrect. The differences in human intellect with respect to race are probably minor. The really important variable is culture. When the culture collapses as it has in parts of lower-class Britain then you have the chav, mindlessly shuffling along with his bling, cheap shoes and loser attitude. You can stop being Chinese anytime you like. For example, in Southeast Asia there’s a great deal of emphasis among Chinese families on keeping their culture intact, because once they go bhumi then they become bhumi.
Culture includes technique. Technique informs management style. A White House organized along the lines of Teapot Dome, with political hacks waiting in nearby cubicles filing their nails while waiting for the Boss to address them is never going to cope with the complexities of an international crisis or a domestic economic challenge. But the problem is one of management science, not ethnic background. Large systems can’t be fixed by saying “put a white man in charge”. That’s actually tribal, magical thinking, which solves nothing. It only provides the appearance of solving something. To really fix things you have to say “put white man methods in charge” in the sense that they are scientific and objective. The difference between these two ideas is fundamental. The first lays stress on personal attributes, the second lays emphasis on values, methods, technique, rigor and discipline. Put it another way: white man is as white man does. That’s what being a white man is. It is not some condition of melanin. By that definition, the chavs have somehow derecinated themselves while all these aspirational Indians and Chinese, Japanese and Koreans have symmetrically transformed themselves into what we formerly knew as the White Man.
How have we confused the two? The problem is that the love affair with the magical goes way beyond Obama. It is reflected, albeit diffusely, in celebrity culture and credentialism. When Ivy League degrees became a credential — the thing in itself — rather than a reflection of attendance at a place where excellence was taught something really bad had happened. We could no longer see things for ourselves. We needed the magic, the threads, the getup to distinguish the bishop from the knight and the knave. The symptoms of emptiness within culture is the over-reliance on appearance and status. ‘Speaking in complete sentences’ takes the place of ‘talking sense’. We rely on the former because we can no longer recognize the latter. This is common in the Third World; that it should be increasingly common in America is something to worry about.
In some Third World countries, the ability to speak relatively unaccented English and the possession of Western manners is automatically taken to be a sign of competence, when in fact that is non-sequitur. It usually works because nobody can understand the plummy or Valley Girl accents anyway and simply accept it as a proxy for whatever it is we assume it represents. Going the other way visiting Western academics use appearances too. They take it as an article of faith that if the ‘indigene’ sounds American he must be inauthentic, or alternatively that he ‘Westernized’ or ‘liberal’. Wrong again. There are any number of Islamists who would cut your throat while they carried on a conversation in the Queen’s English. The two ain’t got nothing to do with each other. Competence is competence. But that’s what happens when credentialism and appearances become a substitute for real competition.
Why is nearly everyone on the Supreme Court from Harvard or Yale? Is it because there are no intelligent people from anywhere else? Now there are a great many intelligent people from Harvard or Yale, but the cachet is being abused as a proxy for competence maybe because we can no longer measure it directly according to the yardstick of common sense. Having lost the ability to judge anything for ourselves, we answer the question: ‘is he/she qualified’ with ‘is he/she from Harvard of Yale’. It’s the dunce’s answer to the dunce’s question.
In truth politically correct culture doesn’t want to know anything about Obama. Who he actually is; what he actually thinks; what skills he actually has. None of that means squat, because he actually more useful to them as a parody. The political operators are variously seeking the One or the Magic Negro, depending on their preferences, but none of them want to meet Barack Hussein Obama. I think President Obama would have made a great journalist. He probably would have excelled as a talk show host, or perhaps in academia. Those are not inconsiderable skills; and that is not an inconsequential ambition. But he had the misfortune to be Black — not really Black mind you — he’s got more Caucasian blood in him than any old honorary White asian, but he learned early on the advantages to being a cigar store Indian, to being a symbol, rather than a man. So Barry became Barack.
The really terrible thing about political correctness is that it has created the very parody that you simultaneously hate and long to become. “This is one reason I wish sincerely I were Black,” you write, “It would make everyone think I was a super-genius, merely for being able to tie my shoelaces.” But that’s black in the sense that Chinese food is egg foo-yung and General Tso’s Chicken. It’s tastes good according to its fashion, but it was wholly invented locally. I think you’re just fine, Whiskey, as you are. In fact, most people are better off exactly as they are, without the damned hyphenated qualifiers they tack on to our names which don’t mean diddly anyhoo. It would be a real pity if you became one of these parodies of a black person the liberals have invented out of whole cloth. Be the man who is, rather than the man who never was. PC politics for minorities is a latter day minstrel show, the kind of cruelty which authors in the 1950s once had the sensitivity to portray, though the irony is probably lost on the politically correct. But I forgot: they think in proxy terms and so judgment is corrupted at the root.
…I wish sincerely I were Black.
I think this is the big difference between you and most people on the Belmont Club. I don’t wish I were black. And one big reason for that is because if I were black, I would be under intense pressure to “act black”, even when that means going against my own conscience.
The sad thing about modern America is that social, cultural, and political liberty is in short supply in “the black community”. In my experience, pressures for black conformity vastly exceed pressures for white conformity for the simple reason that most black people still fear the epithet “Uncle Tom”. I think the principal reason why white society is stronger than black society in modern America is because white people have greater de facto freedom to express their ideas while black people are still held back by the racist idea that they must prove how black they are.
One real fear I have is how totalitarian conformism in the name of “the black community” has moved over into several white enclaves in the name of “political correctness”. Opposition to Jim Crow among black people may have been seen as a community effort, but opposition to Jim Crow among white people took real courage – a kind of personal courage rarely found among black people with rare exceptions such as Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas.
When “the black community” stops worrying over what it is to be black, that will be good. White people who show their desire to be black empower the most strident racists and thugs among black people. It’s bad when black people compete against one another to show how black they are, but the whole cycle gets worse when white people compete against one another to show how black they are. We don’t need more Eminems.
Whiskey, holding back is bad for you. Let it all out.
Meanwhile, I didn’t get past the point in the Washington Compost article where they confused Kinetic strikes with nuclear. There IS a difference, even if the Compost isn’t aware of it.
And as I have been saying for years on the subject of bunkers and underground whatevers, Block the access tunnel and that bunker or underground factory becomes an expensive hole in the ground and a grave for the people inside it.
With radar satts, the entrances are easy to find. A JADM on the door and nothing goes in or out. Simple.
The Burning down Seoul thingie is pure BS. I was last in Seoul in the mid 80′s. It is a real city, one of the biggest and most modern in the world. The Norks don’t have enough explosives to actually harm it. Blow a few balconies off and matbe flatten a parking garage, with a lot of luck, but that is about it.
Ever seen an aerial picture of Berlin in ’45? That took thousand of tons of High Explosives. S. Koreans are to smart to sit and wait for an artillery shell to hit them. They will get in their car and go south for the weekend.
Wretcherd, I assume that 100,000 dead number is from famine? Not sure a war would last that long. Once the Generals are dead, the troops will surrender. The US Air Farce has experience at dropping food. Remember when they kept the ‘gani’s eating the winter of ’01-’02? I personally think the North would eat better off air dropped MRE’s. Save money too. On e-bay a single MRE gets about 2$. Cases for less. The UN wanted 200 million to feed the North Korean army. Some of that would have gotten down to the normal people, but not a lot. So we are looking at feeding 4 to 6 million people for a few weeks. I know the population is higher then that but we wouldn’t have to feed all of them, just enough so the normal supply wouldn’t be stretched so thin. So that is about 10 million per day for the food, which would be less then the cost of the fuel to fly over and drop it. IMHO, total killed for removing Kim and his buds would be under 10,000. 9,000 + of them Norks. That would be a saving of at least half a million lives that will be lost this year if the regime stays in power.
There are things we know we know
And there are things we know we don’t know
But there are also things we don’t know we don’t know
What we do know is Kim is nuts
He loves his whiskey and his sluts
He hungers for to kick our butts
And one day he will try
The thing we know that we don’t know
About the North Korean show
Is can their nukes make something glow
Or are they being sly
What we don’t know right now is that
If Kim does move will tit for tat
Start fires into which the fat
Will quickly start to fry
Wretchard:
To me it seems North Koreas weaknesses are actually strengths. The weak power grid means North Korean forces are probably used to operating without it. South Korean forces may not be, US forces definitely are not. A nuke used as an EMP weapon might be very useful for the North.
As for the fragile food system, well, North Korea no doubt has plenty of food for the army. They have been skimming the top off food shipments most likely for decades. A flood of starving refugees would mean little to China (I would not doubt the Chinese army would mine the border and shoot to kill if they had to), but those same refugees sent South might be very useful in keeping South Korea and the US busy indeed.
As for Rumsfields plan, it sounds like the US is once again expecting too much from Airpower. As long as North Koreas artillery is intact they can bombard Seoul with poison gas, and I think the South would lose its will to fight and ask for a cease fire long before the North. The US had total air superiority in the last Korean War and still came within an inch of total defeat during the initial Korean invasion and again when China interfered.
The NorKs have one ICBM launch site. Their missiles require long pre-flight and fueling periods, all under observation of one kind or another. I don’t think we need fear a nuclear detonation in Tokyo or Guam, or Honolulu from a NorK missile unless our military is ordered to act moronically stupid and ignores convincing warning signs.
We should be concerned about a nuke in a container aboard a ship courtesy of Kimmy in Pusan, or Yokohama bay, etc.
Unless most NorK artillery battery commanders along the border simultaneously surrender or defect, Seoul is toast. The heavy artillery is equipped with high explosive, sub-munition, and chemical weapon projectiles. We’ll be incredibly lucky if only 100,000 die in the shelling of Seoul in the first few hours.
Kimmy has a whole passel of short and medium range ballistic missiles ala the SCUD of Desert Storm fame. Many are likely to be equipped with persistent chemical weapons and will probably be targeted against Osan Air Base (F-15s & F-16s, and U-2), Kunsan Air Base (F-16s and more F-16s), and the Port of Pusan, assuming it isn’t a radioactive crater, in order to hinder U.S. operations and movement of forces and equipment into the country. That will seriously complicate lots of things.
The NorKs don’t have the supplies to sustain any lengthy offensive. Their strategy must be predicated on a very rapid (read armored) overwhelming strike Southward that will decide the entire shooting match in short order.
If we can block the main North-South avenues usable by armor, Kimmy’s offensive is done. We have an awful lot of mines stored in the R.O.K. waiting for just such a rainy day. Tank treads and truck wheels just don’t get along with anti-vehicular mines! In addition, just the U.S. and R.O.K. tactical aircraft already in the theater should be able to shut down those routes for days or weeks.
Many believe the NorKs won’t make the same mistake twice and leave the excellent port of Pusan available to us this time to evacuate from and then later to re-enforce through this time. That’s why there’s considerable concern regarding a nuke in Pusan.
The R.O.K. (South Korea) are terribly unprepared, civil defense wise, for likely biological and definite chemical warfare on the part of the NorKs if it comes to blows. In any serious confrontation that doesn’t quickly resolve with some NorK general taking control and suing for peace, I think we may be lucky to get away with fewer than 1 million dead in Seoul and elsewhere in the first week following commencement of hostilities.
Wretchard — Who is talking about racial superiority or intelligence? But would you deny that nearly all, Black politicians exhibit absolute stupidity in their political moves?
I cannot name but two non-incompetent Black Mayors, Governors, Presidents, or Congressmen/Senators: Tom Bradley, and Wellington Webb. Who weren’t my cup of tea but could tie their shoelaces.
“The differences in human intellect with respect to race are probably minor.” Untrue if the data in IQ and the Wealth of Nations are correct. There have been any number of longitudinal studies on IQ, the average IQ of West Africans in these studies are 75, among their descendants in America, 85 (known as the Flynn Effect, better nutrition raising IQ), among Ashkenazi Jews and NE Asians, 105, among Northern Europeans 99-100 (Europeans are not, on average, as smart as NE Asians or Ashkenazi Jews). Everyone knows that no non-West African descent man has been in the FINALS of the 100 Meter Dash in the Olympics since the mid 1960′s. That’s not “racism” but rather deep genetic differences. There are no White Corners or Safeties in the NFL, and only two White WRs, in a nation 66% White, where most HS football players are White? That’s not racism — that’s deep genetic differences making a deep difference at the extreme tail of ultra-performance. That doesn’t mean you won’t get a Yao Ming. It does mean the NBA is not stocked full of Chinese players, despite there being about 1 billion Chinese.
But that’s not my point. Black voters NEVER demand even basic competence in their officials. Chris Dodd, Charles Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, are arguably corrupt, wrong-headed, fairly stupid, but have a baseline of competence in speaking standard English. Bobby Rush, the only man to have defeated Obama in an election, sounds like a punch-drunk boxer. He’s done approximately nothing, other than wave the bloody shirt. Obama came right out of that, he’s Fitzpatrick with a better diction. That’s all. He’s skated through all his life by Affirmative Action and “genius” labels because he’s Black and can talk with standard vocabulary and grammar.
Yes, you would get marginally better results with Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden or even Hillary running things. For two reasons.
One, they’d be marginally more competent because even Pelosi’s voters have demanded minimal political competence. That makes a difference. They’d still be a clown show. But with an elemental understanding of America, they would make less bad decisions. Even corrupt and spineless Clinton could make a few half-way good calls now and then. Meanwhile Obama has never been tested, and he is of the class that has never been asked to even demonstrate basic political competence (such as passing a bipartisan bill). Basic competence for a crook is when to know to move onto the next scam. Obama does not even have that.
Two, and this is critical. THEY WOULD NOT HATE WHITE AMERICA. As Obama does. Obama has said, over and over again, and demonstrated, over and over again, he HATES WHITE PEOPLE. Most non-Whites do. I know, Wretchard, you do not and do not very probably know any who do. But in the “Multicultural world of America,” let me assure you that is the case (as is the racial hatred across other boundaries). Ron Gochez is no outlier, believe me. He fairly represents the attitude of most of Barrio Southern California.
You can’t expect a Chief Executive who hates the majority of the country to defend it. Its just not possible. Obama has made it clear, he views himself as an avenging angel sent by God to punish wicked White people for racism. And Segregation. And Slavery. There is a scene in his book: Dreams from My Father: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE (Obama is obsessed with RACE at every turn, he’s told you so himself) where he and his half-sister bemoan the fact that they are the only Blacks in a Nairobi restaurant, and that the restaurant itself is run by Indians. Obama goes on to mention his father’s failure to get all local businesses run by non-Black Africans seized and turned over to Black Africans as his major failure in making life better for Africans. Add that to “White cop acted stupidly” and dropping the Black Panthers case and the reaction to Arizona’s law and applauding Calderone’s talking down America … you get the picture. [Obama, as a Black Nationalist, clearly has other folks besides Whites on his mind. But Whitey is his main enemy -- you don't spend 20 years at Wrights place otherwise, much less name your second book after a sermon of Wrights. "White Man's Greed creates a World in Need!"]
Joe Biden does not hate White people. Nancy Pelosi does not hate White people. Hillary Clinton does not hate White people. They would be significant improvements over Obama just for that. Not hating Whites.
The worst thing in the world is an incompetent crook too dumb to realize his own self interest who hates you for your skin color.
That is the sort of thing results in the full “Reginald Denny Treatment.” Damien “Football” Williams was both stupid (the TV crews were filming him right there from the helicopters, live) and blind to his self-interest. Stores were there for the looting, and he spent his time beating in the head of a White truck driver, when he could have been raiding the cash registers and easily fenced stuff (him being a full-time, professional crook and all).
Obama is Williams, and America is Reginald Denny.
———
If I was Black, I would be rolling in money. I don’t care if I’m authentically “Black” like say, “Precious” or a faux Southern Black preacher like Rev. Wright (who rails against Whitey on Sunday morning, but enjoys the company of White women on Saturday Night, according to lawsuits). The opportunity for a social conservative Black person is of course, obvious, and merely being able to write coherent sentences I could make a nice gig out of the whole thing, being hailed as a “genius.” It would certainly help my business. I can’t list all the opportunities that a Straight White guy is excluded from simply for his misfortune for being born what he is.
I am not fine like I am. My destiny is quite clear, and I see it very well. To grow old, in a nation where I am sudden minority, and despised one without any rights. I will concede that to be an ordinary man in the Congo or Manila is far worse. But I am not a citizen of either — instead I am a sudden third class non-person in my own country.
I did not sign up for being “Epic Bearded Guy” on a bus trip through Oakland that never ends. Which is exactly my future in the real Colors of Benneton.
———
Alexis — Black culture, and Black grievance, and Black identity, has not changed since 1965 or so. So its not on the cusp of any change now. Nor have Black test scores, achievement, and so on changed despite more than forty years of money and effort thrown at them.
Yonhap reports that 4 North Korean subs, each 300 tons in size have sortied.
Those would probably be the Sang-o class boats, with a speed of about 7 knots surfaced about the same submerged. It has 1,500 mile range and is equipped with 2 Russian designed 53-65 torpedoes, described as good for attacking surface ships. They can also lay mines. That makes them capable of attacking any coastal target on the Korean coast as well as the western coast of Japan. If they are on a suicide mission, they may even be bound for the great ports of eastern Japan.
The fact that the South Koreans announced these boats have put to sea suggests that they are not the targets of retaliation otherwise attention would not be called to them. The probability is that Kim is either bluffing or has sent them out to mine-lay or hit a target. Japan alone has dozens of small ports that are well within range.
As for South Korea, Pusan is its second biggest port and is on the East.
These Sang-os have limited endurance and since they sortied together, they’ll begin their mischief soon or head back to port.
North Korea cutting all ties with South Korea
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-koreas-20100526,0,3311496,print.story
How can we get obumbler to resign?
The North Korean diesel electrics have a number of weaknesses. First, they must recharge on diesel power at which time their noise and surface signature will increase. Second, they must transit to and from their ports. But they have advantages too. They can be thought of as slowly moving minefields with the ability to fire a torpedo. They can bottom out, that is, lie on the sea floor radiating the minimum amount of noise listening for a target.
The diesel electric sub is a deadly adversary, as the Cheonan discovered. And the USN has been scrambling to solve the problem, not without finding obstacles in its path. It was only recently that the Supreme Court allowed the Navy to exercise with sonar in the right frequencies to hunt the diesel electrics by a 5:4 vote. That vote shows how narrow is the political support for ASW is over Green issues. Low and mid-frequency sonar, which may be among the most useful in finding diesel electrics, have been the subject of environmental injunctions. Certain types of signal processing are said to be useful in finding these types of boats. Unfortunately they may need signals which are also said to be harmful to marine mammals.
In the world of perfect safety and unlimited design margins, the ‘ecowarriors’ could always take the moral high ground. And if it results in ships being sunk and sailors drowning, well it will always be Seoul’s of America’s fault after all.
But their are other approaches. The ASW mission package for the Littoral Combat Ship class is built around something called the ADS. The package was since cancelled, but the concept revolved around wiring the sea bottom with a sensor net of a new optical type to suck up data.
Very little has since been revealed in the open press. But unless the concepts have radically changed, finding the diesel electrics will require a fusion of sensor inputs from a variety of sources and the Navy is unlikely to describe exactly how they are going to do it. If the Sang-os are on a minelaying mission then an excruciating decision is likely to devolve on commanders. Do they watch the ships go in and out and try to find the mine, if mine there was? Or do they somehow prosecute the ships and force them to surface or otherwise drive them back to port, revealing their capabilities in the process. And just what constitutes a shooting offense in this case?
Kim Jong Il has very cleverly positioned his crude force to take maximum advantage of the known rules of engagement of the West. He knows almost exactly what he can get away with.
Attempts by the administration to handle the situation with diplomacy may have inadvertently resulted in its escalation. Imagine yourself as an NBA forward. While driving in somebody gives you an elbow in the ribs. What you do is wait until the opposite team comes back up court and then, when the referee isn’t looking, you give the offender a shot in his own ribcage. And so it goes.
But Team Obama played it differently. He’s like a player who’s responded to an elbow in the ribs by standing in center court and yelling out at the bleachers, ‘he shall be punished for elbowing me!’ And then he might take the matter up with the NBA commissioners. Obama took it to the security council and made a big speech. Now it is a Big Deal. If Team Obama ever gives Kim Jong Il the elbow it will be a much more politically freighted response than a deniable retaliation. That makes it harder to retaliate. In fact, the best thing that could diplomatically happen now is that Obama doesn’t give Kim a shot in the ribs, because that would be an open slap in the North Korean’s face.
By raising the issue so high, it becomes a Drama Queen play.
From above:
And now Yonhap reports that North Korea is cutting off the hotline and refusing to communicate with the South for the remainder of the President Lee Myung-bak’s term.
The State Department finds the North Korean reaction “odd”.
That, and China hasn’t been behaving as predicted. The LA Times quotes a Washington think-tank analyst as saying China is behaving in a disgusting way.
This is the classic mirror imaging mistake: “the assumption that the people being studied think like the analysts themselves”. Just because State thinks this way they assume Kim also must. But the idea that Kim Jong Il must think about the “children” or that China cares about cocktail invitations for its diplomats the way Washington does doesn’t necessarily hold. In fact, Kim may care more about his pug-ugly face than about all the lives of the soldiers and sailors under his command. And by ramping up the diplomatic campaign the Administration has made it a matter of shame for Kim to back down. So he’s climbing up the pole, sending out his subs, cutting the hot line. Closing off the industrial zone. He’s doubling down. And the State Department talks about “odd”.
The Obama administration may have framed the problem within their terms of reference and forgotten to see it from the Dear Leader’s point of view. And therein lies the danger. They are weighing things with different scales.
Kim knows that South Korea and Washington want to avoid war at nearly any cost. Therefore he will take it into that territory firm in the conviction that Obama will blink. He has sized up his man. But has he really taken the measure of Obama? The recent meeting between Obama and the Republican Senators reveals a President with a huge ego, who is “testy” and “needs a valium”. Therefore the President may do something out of pique, say some tone-deaf thing, little thinking how it will come across in Pyongyang. I don’t think that Obama will deliberately provoke Kim, but he may accidentally tip the North Korean Commander in Creep over the edge.
“South Korea is one of the most dynamic economies in the world… North Korea is unable to care for its citizens. It’s unable to feed its people.”
“I can’t imagine a step that is less in the long-term interest of the North Korean people than cutting off further ties with South Korea,” Crowley said.”
I did a mental eye-roll and forehead slap when reading this, but also had a shudder. Is the State Department having us on, or are they speaking diplo, or are they REALLY that clueless about the nature of the North Korean regime?
You mention mirror imaging. I get that it has been the folly of many a nation and commander, thinking the enemy will react just like you would. I however cannot FATHOM how an entire Department employing supposedly the brightest people versed in international relations does not understand the Kim Jong Il only has regard for himself, and all others be damned.
I remember reading that the IJN, before Pearl Harbor, would war-game scenarios against the US, and that these sessions helped convince them they could win against America. However, the referee of such games would make nonsensical rulings like a sunk Japanese battleship would somehow be raised to fight again, and so on, which made victory possible.
I hard trouble believing it was true until I read later some of the magical thinking the entire Japanese military engaged in various phases of the war. It was stunning to read some of the blinkered thinking that co-existed with some of the brilliance shown by various commanders. But, one could say, “That was Imperial Japanese fanaticism. Nutty.”
Now, however, I look at some of the obtuse decisions and analysis made by this administration, and ask myself are we that much different?
Strange times…
Maybe Kim is not acting alone, maybe he is working in concert with Iran to draw fire and create a perfect storm to spread already thin US air capability thinner. The question is: When does Hugo get in on the action?
Well, it’s getting interesting.
As to Obambus, I suppose he’s totally lost on this. Nobody white on either side, nobody british, nobody muslim, nobody black. Does he pity the poor, suffering norks? I doubt it. The one good thing is I presume his first instincts will continue to be to defer to Bob Gates on matters military, my fear is that he might defer to Hillary on matters diplomatic. In fact, I wonder if this isn’t a good time for Hillary to have a small but temporary disabling illness, on her own initiative.
Unless, as someone here speculated, this was actually a Chinese-sponsored aggression – an excellent speculation but one I hope is false – then after a suitable period of Mandarin indifference, they may bestir themselves and act in some way to resolve things, much as our simpering state department officials seem to expect.
It occurs to me the “proper” response here, would seem to be to convene the UN and have a big powwow. Obambus knows only how to mau-mau an issue, and there’s his platform, and a stage for Hillary to trot her pantsuit on, too. Or, hey, where’s Bubba, isn’t he good friends with the norks?
It seems that the Big Zero has been successfully in CONPLAN’ing the USA into the dirt. Between hobbling the US economy and strangulating the US Military he has pretty much “reduce the vascular system” of this great country “to thrombosis.”
The quicker the Big Zero is legally kick out of Office the quicker America’s vascular system will heal.
“By raising the issue so high, it becomes a Drama Queen play.
Everything Obama does is a Drama Queen play.
Whiskey,
You say “There are no White Corners or Safeties in the NFL”. Just as a point of information – there are indeed White Safeties in the NFL.
Exhibit A:
http://www.jaguars.com/team/player.aspx?id=2858
In the next year or two there will be some more (barring injury) as there are a few VERY GOOD White Safeties currently in the college ranks.
Anyway, you seem to be missing the point (intentionally?) that Wretchard is making here (and with which I agree) and that is that it’s not color of skin that matters, but culture. Maybe you are using “white” and “black” as shorthand for the predominant underlying cultures in the US of those groups of people, but it doesn’t seem that way from your posts.
GyLar @ 24: “Maybe Kim is not acting alone …”
Exactly! I have previously speculated that maybe Kim did not act (initially) at all. But even if he were the prime mover, the smoke of this burning rises high in the air and is seen by many watchful eyes (to misquote Tolkein).
Be careful about focusing on Korea alone. There are many other players in the world, with many different objectives. Actions in different parts of the world don’t even have to be coordinated between the actors. They simply have to be ready to take advantage of a distraction, and use it to advance their own agenda.
The “international community” has already missed the chance to send all of those watchers a clear message that they should exercise caution. Worse, Obama has sent them all an unmistakable message — one which will have big ramifications down the road, regardless of how the current Korean situation ends.
Wretchard,
Your comment “‘Speaking in complete sentences’ takes the place of ‘talking sense’. We rely on the former because we can no longer recognize the latter.” gets right to the heart of our PC world.
“Unless most NorK artillery battery commanders along the border simultaneously surrender or defect, Seoul is toast. The heavy artillery is equipped with high explosive, sub-munition, and chemical weapon projectiles. We’ll be incredibly lucky if only 100,000 die in the shelling of Seoul in the first few hours.”
Nonsense! Most of the arty is 122 D30 tubes. The HE shell has about 7 pounds of explosives;
http://www.iramig.ir/Default.aspx?PageID=52&RelatedID=IwemIwbl
So you need about 300 of them to equal 1 B-17. So we are talking tens of millions of shells.
ROF is about 4. IIRC, there are about 800 tubes dug in bunkers that can fire on Seoul. So we are talking 3 to 4 thousand shells per minute for the first few minutes. that is 20 to 30 thousand pounds of explosives. Or 12 to 15 B-17′s. Remember it took thousands of B-17′s making dozens of trips to rubble Berlin.
ROF drops off after the first few minutes. The tubes heat up, the breech gets so hot there is the danger of pre-detonation. So the Nork arty would need days to weeks of uninterrupted fire to rubble Seoul.
Skipping aside the habit of police states to keep the ammo under lock and key so it doesn’t get used against dear leader, you still are faced with the problem of where to put several million pounds of shells. They will need their own bunker, one with a door or most likely tunnels. Close that door or collapse those tunnels and the shells don’t go anywhere.
No, to paraphrase someone famous, ‘You have nothing to fear except fear itself.’
I wonder if you are employed by Nork intelligence to keep this silly propaganda alive. the ROK’s have a top 5 military, one of the best in the world. Better on a pound per pound basis then the Chinese or any other Asian nation.
China could swamp them with numbers, but they won’t since they need their troops to keep their population under control. Police states have that problem.
Has anyone else noticed the outrageous claims from the various spy groups and their liberal shills? Before Desert Storm it was 20,000 dead Americans, IIRC. The actual number was a little less then 200. Before Afghanistan it was 10,000 or so, The number there was in single digits (7? 8?).
Then there was Iraq. Remember Iraq? Thousands dead and half a million refugees? I think the final numbers were about 400 dead and zero refugees.
So when will the 4th world figure out that warfighting has changed over the last couple of decades? You don’t destroy an army by fighting it, you destroy an army by killing the Generals. With no command and control, the conscripts don’t fight, they go home.
Who wants to die defending the Dear Leader’s whiskey supply?
My guess is that North Korean security, after rigorous review, has come to the conclusion that the regime is near collapse and has brief the “Dear Leader” about its findings. (I would not want to be the official giving that brief!)
In desperation, the regime is manufacturing this crisis in an attempt for survival with China’s approval. Just how close the Norks go to the brink will indicate just how dire their internal situation is. The Norks will settle, perhaps after killing a few more people, for all of their oil needs paid for by America; for all of their food needs paid for by America; an infusion of billions in cash for ancillary needs paid for by America. In other words, FREE oil, FREE food and a BAILOUT all paid for by the American taxpayer. The Left will argue that this is worth it as it will prevent war. (And, after all, we gave hundreds of billions to greedy bankers, etc, etc.)
In return, the Norks will give us a lowering of the rhetoric … until next time.
The democrats will congratulate themselves on another foreign policy victory.
Regarding Whiskey’s views:
sometimes I can see where you are coming from. California is typical of the anti white sentiment you talk about. But other places, like my time in the USN tell me something different. I had a good friend who was black. When we first met, he displayed the typical attitude of hating me cuz I was white. I stood my ground on many issues and never deferred to his color. I wasn’t raised like that. I was raised to judge character and skill along with common courtesy of an individual. After awhile we became good friends. He even tried to get me to stop drinking so much. He was a good sailor and I would trust him with my life. Also, others I wouldve trusted with my life included a Vietnamese descendant, a Puerto Rican, and some other white people. You must remember there are MTV people and normal Americans. The two are very different.
There is one thing that many dictators have in common and that is the ability to “read” people (this is a particularly important skill if you intend on being boss for any length of time). Kim, despite being a hateful little nutbag, has that ability. He has successfully gamed the US and the rest of the world for decades now. Look at the pattern of his behavior, every misdeed ends up with him getting more of what HE wants (damn the poor wretches that live under him). He doesn’t have to worry about election cycles, or UN approval, he thinks long-term and does what he thinks best.
He appears to have taken the measure of Obama and found him wanting. In fact, if you look at the last 18 months or so you can see a pattern of provocations from the “Axis of Evil” (with Syria standing in for the now defunct Saddam). Like a skilled tennis player making his opponent run ever faster back and forth across the court chasing the ball they have yanked Obama’s unskilled and ideologically blinkered Foreign Policy Team back and forth, preventing them from focusing on a problem long enough to understand it (much less arrive at a solution for it).
I am certain that the Chinese have watched with amusement at the floundering of the denizens of Foggy Bottom. I am also certain that the Chinese have some level of involvement with the current situation in the Koreas. They hold Kim’s leash, nothing big will happen without at least tacit approval from them (unless Kim goes completely bonkers, which is a real possibility). Their place on the Security Council and as the seat of regional talks regarding the Norks give them a controlling position regarding any “international” response to Kim’s provocations. Being the Nork’s largest trade partner and breadbasket give them significant leverage with Kim (who has probably been made keenly aware of the relative strengths of the Nork vs Chinese militaries). From a Chinese point of veiw what could be better than to humble the one superpower, and your main world-wide competitor, by using an entirely expendable proxy while maintaining nearly complete deniability?
The Chinese have significant ties with Iran and growing ties to Chavez; is there a pattern there or are they just chasing resources/profits?
Come on! As “threadbare” as the Norks are, there cannot possibly be too many places in this commie hell-hole from which to launch a nuclear tipped missile south, or onto a US target. Take the damn launch site/s out with a single blow.
We sit around and bite our fingernails wondering when they will strike. We try to imagine all contingencies from our arm-chairs, wasting time, and then when it happens we wonder what we could have done to prevent it?
Goooood Grieeeeef! The navel gazing is astounding!
The mirror image problem is severe on both sides, neither Kim nor Obama understand each other, despite both being narcissists. It is entirely too possible that they will start the next hot stage of the Korean War via blunders based on misunderstanding.
Thinking outside the box, what would be the consequences of a massive food drop, say, about four miles down the road from the NoK artillery forts?
#11 and 29 Kinuachdrach
I suspect that the Chinese were indeed behind the attack. North Korea is a useful proxy for them and to them the apparent craziness of the regime is a feature not a bug. The purpose? To test the response of the Obama. This was the initial probe.
Step two will be to sink a US warship. If nothing is done then the Chinese will have good reason to think they will be unopposed when they go for the real prize, which is Taiwan. Except as a proxy North Korea is worthless to the Chinese, but Taiwan is very rich and there is a lot of high tech industry there.
That is my speculation on the matter for what little it is worth.
Blackness. Nobody questioned Rice’s or Powell’s intelligence or competence. Liberals did call them oreos.
In a totalitarian state, the best and the brightest find careers in the military, the police, or the secret police because people in these positions live longer, eat better and are less likely to be tortured. Once the police, secret police and military leadership are filled with geniuses office politics becomes brilliantly treacherous and people yearn for simpler times.
I suspect that the leaders of North Korea are certain that socialism cannot feed all the people, nor can it provide all the people with housing or medical care. I suspect they are too paranoid to even discuss this heresy with each other. I suspect they have memorized CONPLAN 8022. Therefore only war can bring a better future to North Korea. Only war can end the anxieties that plague the leaders of a Socialist state. The leaders are willing to lose if they can be sure the state dies and their families survive unharmed.
If the US attacks and destroys North Korea’s nuclear weapons and destroys North Korean communications, then I suspect that each local commander will make a deal that protects his own family, his subordinates and their families.
The US is famous for rebuilding its enemies. The East German settlement means no one will be held accountable for actions supporting Socialism and Totalitarian government.
Maybe we are looking at this all wrong.
Lil Kim loves Western movies. Reports are that he watches them endlessly.
Mayhap that he is trying the Duchy of Grand Fenwick ploy. Declare war on the US and lose and get good old Unca’ Sugar to build everything new and better. Poor fool. He keeps trying to provoke a war but we won’t play.
Just a thought.
We have the manpower, with the skills, and the equipment to do something like this.
But we will paralyze our own forces, making them go through a four hour process to approve an airstrike even though the window of opportunity might be ten minutes; we will have to make sure there are no north Korean civilians endangered, and it’s a densely populated nation.
We will fail that way, so why even bother?
Naturally the enemy will operate under no such restrictions.
Yes, it wouldn’t make sense for NK to sink a ship to get food and oil when all they would need to do to get that would be to agree to make the Obama team look good by sitting down with them and acting like pals. The Chinese angle makes more sense.
As for the IQ discussion, Whiskey’s right, not that Wretchard isn’t as well. I don’t think Whiskey’s original thesis said nature over nurture, anyway, but it is the case that a MEAN IQ deficit of about one standard deviation for blacks has been stubbornly and consistently present since Jenkins first got pilloried for demonstrating it in the 1960s. No amount of enrichment programming, removing supposed cultural biases, or legitimate reshuffling of the data seems to make that difference go away.
But willingness to come to grips with this apparent fact is rare. So instead we spend billions, I would guess, trying to address the “problems” in school systems that keep producing a standard deviation lag in achievement levels of inner city populations, even though those achievement levels are obviously correlated with IQ, as is highest grade achieved.
wretchard wrote: “PC politics for minorities is a latter day minstrel show.”
That’s a good one, and profound. If you leave out “politics” it’s also explanatory, and perhaps even more so.
China is acting according to its self-interest, but no superpower has a single interest. China’s self-interest is financial well-being, yes. But an even greater self-interest is regional dominance as the basis of future prosperity. China is creating a sphere of influence, a new zone of co-prosperity.
Intentionally or willy-nilly, China finds itself holding a U.S. treasuries financial destruction device, neutralizing the U.S. (Although Obama seems willing to roll over and bare his throat even without a growl from China, just to prove what a good internationalist he is or, following Whiskey’s line of thinking, because Obama wants to harm U.S. interests.)
China’s self-interest might also be served via an East Asia chaos-destruction event, which would result from N. Korea exploding an atomic device. Regional prevailing winds blow west to east, from China to southeast Russia and to Japan, and the winds are full of seasonal dust. If N. Korea explodes a bomb in a way that maximizes radioactive output into the atmosphere, the fallout effects will likely be felt in Japan and eventually in the U.S. China would appear to have nothing to do with the event. Obama would retreat, seeing military action as being impotent in the aftermath of an atomic event, leaving S. Korea, Japan and Taiwan in China’s orbit.
via Wiki:
“‘Asian Dust’ (also yellow dust, yellow sand, yellow wind or China dust storms) is a seasonal meteorological phenomenon which affects much of East Asia sporadically during the springtime months. The dust originates in the deserts of Mongolia, northern China and Kazakhstan where high-speed surface winds and intense dust storms kick up dense clouds of fine, dry soil particles. These clouds are then carried eastward by prevailing winds and pass over China, North and South Korea, and Japan, as well as parts of the Russian Far East. Sometimes, the airborne particulates are carried much further, in significant concentrations which affect air quality as far east as the United States.”
You all are sure a North Korean sub sunk the South Korean boat. How do you know for sure?
sol, you beat me to it (and said it better as well).
Whiskey, I think you are mistaking culture for color, the problem that many blacks in America have is that they subscribe to the Urban Ghetto Culture (typified by the likes of Al Sharpton and Rev Wright). Living right next to Detroit I see this all of the time. (BTW the former mayor’s last name is Kilpatrick).
Our local school system allowed the disaster of “open enrollment” for a short period of time. The black students that transferred into our district from Detroit were constantly involved in fights. They were picking on the local BLACK students for acting “too white” and doing reprehensible things like getting good grades and participating in school functions.
The culture of the ghetto (thanks Great Society!) enforces it’s own rules. Similar behaviors can be found in the “trailer-park trash” white society that devalues education, morals and responsibility; with very similar results for that demographic.
#43 – programmer
You all are sure a North Korean sub sunk the South Korean boat. How do you know for sure?
Yeah, I’ve been thinking this since the incident. Whatcha’ bet it was one of those Iranian (Russian) underwater missiles that moves at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour, UNDERWATER!
My guess is it was a test for a future attack on an US carrier with a missile/torpedo we have no defense against. The Korean conflict provides a convenient decoy for Iran to exploit, given the Norks nicey-nicey relationship with Syria and Iran.
I think China is a lot more motivated to intervene against North Korea than you think. It’s a whole lot easier to walk across the Chinese border than trying to navigate through the world’s most concentrated patch of mine field known as the DMZ. China will do ANYTHING in its power to prevent mass refugee from poring into its border, and that will probably include military occupation of the North.
I recall listening to the #2 guy from the US Embassy in Khartoum talk about the recently-resumed civil war in that country. (We were at a July 4 gathering at the USAID compound in Juba, in 1984–i.e. about 9 months into Civil War II.)
I came away thinking either (a) the guy–and by extension our entire diplomatic staff in Sudan–was totally clueless, or else (b) he was a great actor (and somebody had decided it served our interests to appear clueless.) Never did figure out which was the case.
P/43–the south had obtained an intact NK torpedo earlier and the recovered parts provided a high match. These were mainly parts at the rear, eg the two counter-rotating props, motor. The explosive residue also matched, as did other random fragments. There was also Korean writing on various pieces.
It was an ordinary one, not the Russian Skval rocket torpedo.
“but it is the case that a MEAN IQ deficit of about one standard deviation for blacks has been stubbornly and consistently present since Jenkins first got pilloried for demonstrating it in the 1960s.”
An undeniable fact, but I disagree with the theory of what caused it. It is environmental, NOT genetic.
Whites came about because some protohumans followed the glacier north as they melted. Glacier melt provided abundant vegetation and a profusion of game animals. There was one wee problem. The grains that grew in the northern climes was hard to digest by those adapted to southern grains. Since at this time, humans were still adapting to their environment instead of adapting their environment to them, White (pink. low melanin) skin allowed the formation of the vitamins needed to digest nothern grains.
{snipped from Wikipedia}
“Tracking back the statistical patterns in variations in DNA among all known people sampled who are alive on the Earth today, it appears that
1. From ~1.2 million years ago for at least ~1.35 million years, the ancestors of all people alive were as dark as today’s Africans.
2. The descendants of any prehistoric people who migrated North from the equator mutated to become light over time because the evolutionary constraint keeping Africans’ skin dark decreased generally the further North a people migrated.[8][25] This also occurs as a result of selection for light skin due to the need to produce vitamin D by way of the penetration of sunlight into the skin (the exception being if dietary sources of vitamin D are available, as is the case among the Inuit).
3. The genetic mutations leading to light skin among East Asians are different from those of Europeans, suggesting that, following the migration out of Africa, the two groups became distinct populations that experienced a similar selective pressure due to settlement in northern latitudes”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color#Genetics_of_skin_color_variation
My theory is it isn’t the skin color, but the eye color.
Light eyes ( blue, green) have less melanin. That is why they are not brown. That allows just a bit more UV into the eye. Now it is accepted as a fact that the human eye doesn’t react to UV, that the wavelengths are nowhere close.
I cannot argue with that, but I can argue their definition. In nature there are no distinct Electromagnetic frequencies. It take an sapient source to produce EM radiation that starts and stops at a precise point and/or strength on the wave. Natural radiation starts slow and trails off. It doesn’t put on the breaks or hit the gas.
Military tests have shown that light eyes see better in low light conditions then dark eyes. So as humans moved north, behind the glaciers, they had a survival need for better low light vision. This is important because the basis of cognition ( intelligence, smartness if that’s a real word) is pattern recognition. Low light creats a greater need for patteren recognition. This means the environment would have selected for humans with light eyes because they were better at spotting that wolf pack at dusk, or that aurochs heading down to the water hole at dawn.
I developed this theory to explain why light eyes, which make up about <10% of the population account for over 50% of man kinds scientific advances.
The long and the ahort of it is that if you took 1,000 humans from the Congo and traded them on 1.000 Swedes, after 10,000 years of natural selection, the Swedes offspring would be black, the ones from the Congo white.
With the advent of human technology (mostly white produced) it wouldn't happen because there would be no environmental pressure.
Intermarriage wouldn't change that, since both groups have the genetic capability to be either black OR white.
Anybody here read Proud Legions? I had an intense conversation in the range tower at Rodriguez in 1983 with the author. He was an Iron Brigade staff weinie back then.
I encourage BC’ers with Korean service to prepare to contribute when the war starts. The Belmont Club was a nonnegligible player in Russo-Georgian War Information Operations and will likely be getting a lot of attention from the Red Chinese Cyber Militia in a week or so, more or less.
Time to get out from in front of the fan.
As President of a Nation that is 66% White
70% is closer to the reality. One of the myths among whites feeling besieged is the same one propounded by minorities trying to pump up their numbers for effect and leverage. That 4% difference between reality and perception is important, and not a quibble. The real number helps to dramatize the fact of minorities — or more precisely, the self-appointed “leaders” and activists of these communities — exerting enormous leverage in our society and political system.
The other canard is that whites will be a “minority” (50% or less) of the U.S. population by 2050 or some such date. These are crude, linear projections from the Census Bureau that ignore the reality of dramatically declining birth rates among minorities both in the U.S, and even the countries of origin of recent immigrants, illegal or otherwise.
“I encourage BC’ers with Korean service to prepare to contribute when the war starts. The Belmont Club was a nonnegligible player in Russo-Georgian War Information Operations and will likely be getting a lot of attention from the Red Chinese Cyber Militia in a week or so, more or less.” Cannoneer, you mean back when yourself and many other BCers were A-positive that the Russkies were going to take Tblisi and maybe roll into Warsaw and Talinn for good measure? Most of you still haven’t admitted that Misha the Tie Eater started that stupid war and the Russians finished it. There are still too many old fart Cold Warriors here for whom Russia will always be the Evil Empire and has no legitimate interests or people to defend in its Near Abroad, anymore than the U.S. has a history of intervening in Cuba, Nicaragua, and more recently, Panama.
Also on the quality of military analysis here: some of it is very good from veterans who know their stuff. And a lot of it is armchair garbage. The Russian Army sent its crack formation to defend South Ossetia from Misha the Tie Eater’s attackers, probably with war warning leaks from his horrified entourage, but the Russki Air Force still suffered unacceptable losses on recon. Bottom line – the Russian Army can kick the crap out of any of the former CIS countries militaries, but that is about all.
I have serious doubts after the Norks try to level Seoul with their artillery that their tanks would get very far at all. Sure the South Koreans needed the land, but they also built mid and high rises up to very close to the DMZ in the 70s and 80s for a reason. Every one of those Seoul suburbs could become a mini-Stalingrad if the SKs were determined to resist. Every road into Seoul is easily mined and would only stay clear if Nork sappers were all over those roads like white on rice, and thus easy targets for snipers.
So basically Wretchard wrote it right: the Norks can only threaten, try to destroy the U.S.-SK alliance, and/or beg for Chinese support. Without massive Chinese intervention they again would be toast and they know it, though their nuclear deterrent might prevent an SK land invasion until the warheads are in Chinese safe keeping (which would mean that Beijing and Seoul had already cut a deal).
Their military (and I’m convinced, what’s left of it) is only good for two things: blackmailing concessions to keep the regime alive for a few more years until the Chinese decide to bump off the Kim dynasty, or for a quick attack that would inflict serious casualties but might risk the whole regime. Either way, I don’t see Nork tanks rolling South. But then again, things look very different from Pyongyang and not all decisions are made rationally – see Hitler’s decision to invade the USSR or the Japanese decision to strike Pearl Harbor.
“The leaders are willing to lose if they can be sure the state dies and their families survive unharmed.” What I hope and pray we are doing is offering the top brass and their families asylum in China or South Korea, no questions asked, to end this without war and send Kim the Third packing.
Whites came about because some protohumans followed the glacier north as they melted. Glacier melt provided abundant vegetation and a profusion of game animals. There was one wee problem. The grains that grew in the northern climes was hard to digest by those adapted to southern grains. Since at this time, humans were still adapting to their environment instead of adapting their environment to them, White (pink. low melanin) skin allowed the formation of the vitamins needed to digest nothern grains.
Grains? Are we talking Paleolithic or neolithic peoples? Grains didn’t become a staple of human diets until the neolithic, and then only among those who took up farming in a serious way. Humans dealt with the digestibility and assimilation of grains through processing. “Food processing” began before the dawn of civilization, and neolithic farmers became even more adept at processing grains than modern humans. Genuine sourdough is the only ancient baking process left over from our neolithic past, for instance.
Interesting news; Yahoo News says that the SoS has stated that the Chinese are now expected to move away from a neutral position on the Norks and back the South after a meeting in Seoul later this week. Don’t know if this is an attepmt to pressure the Chinese by the SoS(it would be foolish if it is) or a real indicator that the Chinese have decided to pull Kim’s leash.
Ah, Mr. X of the Russian Cyber Militia commences his psychological preparation of the battle space.
Ridicule and denigrate, Mr. X. Kill the messenger. Musn’t let any BC’ers be taken seriously.
All for the greater glory of Родина, of course.
I have no recollection of predicting the fall of Tbilisi, tова́рищ, but I’m sure if I did you can google up an example or two with which to refresh my memory. Posting links to other people’s predictions doesn’t count.
It looks a lot more straightforward than you seem to be making it, Ros.
How about if the smarter, more adventurous people took off and the more simple-minded ones stayed home where stuff to eat fell into your hand from trees all year ’round? Then the lack of sun beating down when you got farther north would reduce “tanning”, and that would get passed on epigenetically through simple Mendelian mechanisms. No?
The original IQ tests were developed by Binet to select which French kids should go to school and which should stay and work in the fields. That means they focused heavily on higher order reasoning abilities, many of which we now call “executive functions”, the processes that help us decide what behaviors are most appropriate (to execute) based on given circumstances. One way to describe executive functions is to summarize them as having largely to do with organization, planning, attention, adaptive reasoning, and impulse control.
It seems to me that those are exactly the abilities that would make you better equipped to negotiate new terrain and climates and to fashion the complex plans and tools needed for less hospitable environs. Meanwhile, back in the jungle, processing speed and reactivity probably are major pluses, and cogitation and planning may not be such a big deal.
So that’s why there is no dunking subtest on the IQ tests and why, I would guess, people with darker skin are not quite as good, in the aggregate, at interpreting proverbs.
My guess is that the Nork submarines have headed for a port in China or Russia to get them out of harms way until this thing blows over.
Whiskey–I don’t think its a good idea to be black in southern california. There’s a certain portion of the Mexican population there that thinks its their duty to kill blacks.
Could someone please tell me what difference it makes if Wretchard or Whiskey is right in either of their analyses?
They come from difference reference points, to be sure, but what difference does it make if one or the other is right?
I offer this question with reference to the Korea situation AND with the possibility that it just might – just might – signal a potential coordinated action between China, Iran, and North Korea?
I certainly hope it won’t upset the President’s “vacation” plans for the Memorial holiday…
I may be wrong, but I offer this possible scenario partially as a result of the contention of “navel-gazing.”
If we have people sitting around the WH, filing their nails and waiting for someone to ask them to do something (like developing “what-if” scenarios), we are screwed – at least initially.
China benefits from the torpedo, but not a furthering of the crisis. The torpedo 1) tests the Obama administration’s reaction to a warlike crisis and 2) creates potential stress on the South Korean/United States relationship. China knows we are reluctant to take quiet retaliation, and that we will bluster vocally. It is not in China’s interest to further provoke a potential war unless now is when they have decided to try and take Taiwan. China’s leaders strike me as too patient, and too cautious to risk that now. Taiwan is falling into their orbit anyway, and if they guess wrong about the outcome, they are out of power. They could be successful in taking Taiwan, but if a ruined economy is the result, then they still lose. Obama’s inexperience could be a plus. Under the right stress, something that seems to him to attack his ego, he will over-react.
While I do not doubt that we now have contingency plans ranging from making the newly submarine bedrock of North Korea into the night light of the North West Pacific, illuminating the Island Republic of Korea, to infesting the Nork Politburo with mutant, zombie Pthirus pubis; contingency plans are only useful in reference to both the ability to carry them out and the will to do so.
#11 Kinuachdrach has it right. Our adversaries have taken our measure. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. I don’t know about the Medes, but I am pretty sure that the Persians, the Arabs, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Norks all intend to be part of the action. This ain’t gonna be pretty.
I cannot concieve of anything in the background, actions, or associations of Buraq Hussein Obama that would give any indication that any attack by North Korea short of a nuclear strike on homeland US territory would lead to any retaliatory response by the United States or support for any injured allies. It is not an unreasonable conclusion to judge that our adversaries have come to the same opinion.
While South Korean politicians are at best a shaky lot [albeit frequently firmer than American politicians]; their military is seriously hard-core. Assuming that the politicians do not attempt an un-natural act on the main ingredient of poshintang; I think that the ROKS could successfully defend against a non-nuclear Nork attack. But victory would come at a high cost in civilian lives. Assuming that each artillery piece gets off a dozen rounds before being taken out, Seoul is going to hurt; if not by high explosive detonations, then by possible persistant chemical agents and most assuredly by panic.
ROK civilians are in peacetime mode. They are not thinking seriously about war, nor have they internalized a wartime reality. They are closer to France in May of 1940, where the panic of civilians severely degraded the operations of the allies, than they are to the citizens of London during the Battle of Britain in August 1940. While part of that may or may not be a reflection of the differing national national characters, much of it was a psychological “girding of loins”. The Brits had time to prepare themselves. The French were taken by surprise at all levels and never really had time to recover. If the situation could have stabilized itself through some sort of miracle, then you might have seen a rebirth of the stubborness of the Marne.
When Seoul is hit, irrespective of the initial damage, it is going to be a cluster of the first magnitude. Combine that with the concurrent military mobilization going the other way, and there are going to be a whole lot of dead civilians as things snowball.
Add to that, city services are going to be going Tango Uniform right smartly due to a mix of damage, confusion, and being overwhelmed [picture one or more major urban fires in the midst of this]; and you will see the kind of destruction that we will see if something major happens say on our West Coast. Imagine, what would happen in California if either a terrorist nuke went off, or if the Big One hit with a magnitude of say 7.5 somewhere on the coast, or if word of a tsunami like Indonesia was on the way. Coastal cities, limited access routes out, drivers who are in the best of times not reality based.
Then there is the possibility of penetration of Seoul by Nork Special Operations teams intending to cause what hate and discontent that they can. This will add to the casualties, because one of the best levers they have is the panic and confusion of the civilian population.
That is how Seoul is being held hostage.
If this is orchestrated by China, alone or in combination with others of those who have not yet succumbed to the overwhelming might and charm of the Obama Grovel™, if there are nuclear strikes I would expect them to be delivered by non-conventional means. That is, unless the Nork strategic arsenal has been augmented by some of those “others”, giving them more rounds to fire. Then Pusan, etc. would be possible targets of Nork missiles.
I do not expect to see nuclear strikes on the American mainland, on Japan, or Taiwan. Any one of those would stand a very good chance of causing an uprising in this country by whatever means that would install a patriot government that would be in a mood to fight back. And in the case of Japan and Taiwan, they know who holds KJI’s leash, and they would nuke up right smartly.
The one other target that I am almost certain will be hit, if China is sponsoring the current festivities, will be Guam; notationally by the Norks. I will leave it to the Gentle Readers to ponder what the loss of Guam, the units based there, and the support facilities there would do to our capabilities in Asia. Look at the history of deployments to Guam in the last couple of decades, and look at the history of Pearl Harbor in the aftermath of the 1940 Naval Exercises and the February 1941 decision to permanently forward deploy the Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Pearl. Just as Pearl became a primary strategic target, so has Guam.
If Guam was nuked supposedly by North Korea, it being an overseas largely military territory, both the administration and the media could and would try to make the case that retaliation would endanger the Homeland. So perhaps we won’t. But we will be no longer a threat to any aggressor in Asia.
Mention was made of the fate of the Nork population in the event of war breaking out, either due to American counter action destroying the infrastructure, or the strains of war. There are going to be a lot [millions] of dead Nork civilians either way. KJI and the Juche philosophy have destroyed the North Korean “design margin” we have discussed in concept for here to a degree that Buraq Hussein Obama and the Democrats can only lust after.
For literal generations, the mass of the North Korean population has been living a couple of hundred calories a week from actual starvation and death. Malnutrition has been so endemic for so long that there is a visible physical difference between North and South Koreans. While most non-diabetic Americans [and South Koreans] could stand to miss more than a few meals [myself definitely included] and end up improving their health; missing a couple of the minimally nutritious meals available now in North Korea will start to kill people. Even their military has had to curtail training in some cases because troops were too weak.
Running full bore, the Nork rationing system barely avoids irreversible mass famine, and that only by means of what was a semi-tolerated underground economy. They have just dealt that a body blow with a currency exchange program that wiped out all the financial benefits that accrued. What food is still being grown outside the state system is probably being hoarded or traded by barter. And there is just not that much of it.
If the kimchee hits the fan, you can be pretty sure that a) civilian rations will be cut [probably below survival level] to support the military, and b) there will be mass sweeps to seize any hoarded food. In fact I would guess that those would be some pretty good strategic threat warning indicators.
There are roughly 20,000,000 people in North Korea. Between ration cuts, food confiscations, and the inevitable dislocations of transportation attendent to their going to war; a lot of people are going to die. This is before any US or ROK counter attacks that damage their infrastructure. Food is a political weapon and perk of power in North Korea. Its distribution is centrally controlled and planned. Everything, from the warehouses, the trucks to deliver, the fuel for the trucks, and the schedules are products of central planning. Any dislocations will have immediately fatal cascade effects.
In the event that the ROKs repel a Nork attack; that does not mean that they will sweep north and occupy North Korea. Aside from the geo-political risks of a conflict with China, as we have noted moving north exposes the ROKs to the most effective Nork threat, having to occupy North Korea.
And short of occupying the area to ensure the logistics of distribution, millions will die.
If I was a South Korean General Staff officer, I would recommend that IF the ROK army was to go north, that they have a stop line just far enough North to place Seoul out of range of artillery and create a defensible and highly defended frontier at that point, the war still being in progress. If I was a PLA staff officer whose assignment was limited to what to do about North Korean refugees, I would recommend a move south just far enough to take the rivers, hydro-electric plants [vital to the Nork nuclear program] and nuclear facilities near the border; using the rivers as part of a similar defensible and defended frontier to keep North Koreans out of China at all costs. There may be Special Operations missions from a number of national and non-national entities to secure/destroy the Nork’s nuclear program whereever found. Which could lead to some interesting encounters.
Anyone in the middle would be subject to constant interdiction of any military assets …. and any civilians would be well and truly scrod.
Millions of North Korean civilians are doomed, one way or another. Their deaths are not our fault, nor is the task of ameliorating the death rate our responsibility or within our power. Our dance card will be full.
As far as the Sang-O mini-subs; this is quite possibly a planned escalation. Wretchard, as far as the decision:
If the Sang-os are on a minelaying mission then an excruciating decision is likely to devolve on commanders. Do they watch the ships go in and out and try to find the mine, if mine there was? Or do they somehow prosecute the ships and force them to surface or otherwise drive them back to port, revealing their capabilities in the process. And just what constitutes a shooting offense in this case?
Actually, if they are detected the decision is easy. It is the detection that is the problem, the waters in the western Pacific littorial being shallow, noisy, full of thermoclines, and different densities of water due to river flow into the ocean. These are the areas where diesel-electrics are at their best. Obviously, I cannot speak for how they would go about trying to detect them, but I have a few ideas. Once they are detected, if they are in South Korean waters ……
An unidentified foreign submarine operating in national waters has always been fair game for instant attack. At the very best, a detected submarine can hope that the intent is to force them to the surface. However, in national waters, and especially in defense zones, the practice of shooting to kill is not unheard of. I note that we sank a Japanese submarine in our waters outside the mouth of Pearl Harbor at 0630 hours before the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. The captain of the destroyer WARD did not have to even think about it. An unknown submarine trying to enter the harbor was a target.
During the Cold War, both our subs and Ivan’s were at times caught in each others’ waters “not counting whales for Greenpeace”. We forced some of theirs to the surface, and then let them go. If they had responded to detection in a manner that indicated hostile intent [our hearing "transients" for instance], they would not have been allowed to surface. We have not been forced to the surface, but we have been detected in places we were not supposed to be. And we got away every time as far as I know.
In the post Cold War era, we still do these things, as do our adversaries. I myself have grave doubts about our 688 class fast attack boat SAN FRANCISCO [SSN-711] hitting an “uncharted underwater mountain” at depth at 25 knots in 2005. I, and an acquaintance who is a subject matter expert on the operation of fast attack boats, reviewed the pictures of the damage. We both are of the opinion that if the 711 hit a mountain, she came at it from underneath. And that while the steel used in our SSN’s is real good, mountains are not known to have a lot of “give”, especially at 25 kts.
Pure conjecture on my part, but a presumed Chinese nuclear attack boat was operating in Japanese waters not long before that time causing a diplomatic protest, and there were reports that the same “unknown” submarine was off of Guam some time afterwards. Those are US territorial waters, surrounding our major military/naval/air base the Western Pacific. I have referred elsewhere to that “unknown” submariner as “Sheng the Submariner”. I suspect that in the close-in maneuvering and tracking attendant to dealing with an “unknown” submarine, there was a collision and “Sheng” did not make it home. It is a miracle of seamanship and construction that SAN FRANCISCO did. No proof, but conjecture.
There is experience with North Korean submarine incursions into South Korean waters. Norks are not known to surrender easily. Unless the politicians are willing to risk another CHEONAN, I think the bias is going to be to drop a bunch of Mk. 46′s and pick up the pieces afterwards if they are found in South Korean waters. If they are found in international waters, they will be tracked to a fair thee well, and if they evince any hostile intent …. any unknown submarine attacking you is fair game on the high seas.
#45 Mick
I do not totally discount the possibility of it being a VA-111 Shkval, especially the export model; but there are problems with that conjecture. They are fast, but they are bloody loud and distinctive. CHEONAN was not operating alone and her partner vessel would have heard it, possibly even through the hull if the sonar shack was shut down [not likely]. Also, they are … touchy … to handle aboard ship and require special equipment [q.v. KURSK]. A Sang-O does not, I think, have the room for its required equipment. The old Nork ROMEOs are not stealthy enough, nor maintained well enough, to get out there, launch, and get back reliably. Now if Ivan did it on behalf of the Norks; there is a whole ‘nother kettle of vipers involved.
#22 wretchard, #23 Weary G, & #47 Kirk Parker
Even in the best of times, with a political leadership that is under the impression that it would be a good thing if “we win, they lose”; the United States Department of State is the world’s most blatant extent example of Stockholm Syndrome. Remember, they were advocating for the Soviets during the fall of the Soviet Union. Now, with the current regime in power giving what passes for guidance; how would they act differently if their paychecks came from Moscow, Peking, Teheran, Pyongyang, or Riyadh? Indeed, in this world, there is a non-trivial possibility that in some cases one or more of the above paymasters may be true. In any case, the State Department is either staffed by analysts and operators who are at best candidates for institutionalization for crippling developmental disabilities; or their motivations are not our motivations.
Subotai Bahadur
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2008/08/10/whos-winning-georgia-part-2/
The anti-Russian hysteria and false predictions came perhaps not from Cannoneer specifically, but ‘fred’, buddy larsen, subotai…all the usual suspects who see the Evil Russian Bear behind every curtain. And of course, are completely ignorant of the physical, much less economic, realities of post-Soviet CIS countries…i.e. that if they wanted the Georgians to fight Russia to the last man, even well stocked with Javelins and Stingers like in Max Boot’s war porn fantasy, they’d have to drag half the Georgian male population that is working abroad (a good chunk of it running restaurants, bars, salons in Moscow, or New York) and force them to wear a uniform to save Saako’s hide. No thanks.
As for the Russia-Georgia info war, who could forget Fox News’ Shephard Smith famously shushing that South Ossetian grandmother in LA who found out her daughter had survived the shelling of Tshkinval? Who was speaking in his ear and his producer’s ear when that happened, The White House? Why did most Western media (save for maybe French and German) cover for Saako for so many weeks, until the truth was painfully obvious and too difficult to hide? Now the AP puts Saako’s warnings about the Russian ‘empire’ in scare quotes. No one takes the guy seriously outside of a few BCers, Michael Totten, the AEI, and all the D.C. think tankers who used to get fully paid junkets to Tblisi. And how a poor country like Georgia could afford such a military-PR complex to begin with is a question ya’ll would rather not ask, but it might have a teensy bit to do with Saako’s sugar daddy Uncle George Soros, and all his empire building, asset looting and government cutout behavior in the Eastern Bloc over the last 25 years or so.
OT
I blogged on today’s Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll numbers. This is a very serious and dangerous convergence of events and we all need to soberly consider how to get the country through the next two years.
http://bit.ly/dqFGZh
Subotai Bahadur,
Nice post. Do you concur that the RoKs should have have begun dispersal and evacuation drills two days ago?
We should announce how much food we have in inventory as surplus if needed, but need to remember that the NorKs can’t digest mountains of Wisconsin dairy.
From Twitter,
May be routine, or not.
LOTM:
Did Berger’s pants look any different when he left the WH than they did as he entered?
Don Rodrigo ,
Great, I let slip once that I used to work for TSA, years of therapy loom over the memories, and I am labeled for life as the “Go To Guy” for loony pants inspections. Where’s a lawyer when you need one?
#62 Lifeofthemind
I agree absolutely on the dispersal drills. I do not know if they even have such a concept there. One problem with a pre-existing plan, of course, is that the aforementioned Nork SpecOps types would find out the plan and would try to interfere. An acceptable problem, but needs to be noted.
No later than the revelation that the Norks had played Clinton for a fool and continued their nuke program, there should have been a massive, nationwide two-pronged program for dispersal. A series of Cheney-escue “secure locations” scattered around the country for government dispersal should have been prepared. Secondly, a dispersal plan for the Seoul population should have been worked out, including a phased evacuation plan that would allow the orderly movement of such businesses as can be made portable.
That is what should have happened. And I know that ROK politics would not have allowed such. *sigh*
Subotai Bahadur
LOTM-
Your observations/suggestions make sense to a rational patriot. I fear obumbler is neither.
Subotai #60
Here is an aspect nobody has yet considered – What if the Norks were to win somehow? Perhaps a coup de main, or a failure of Southern political or military leadership.
Please humor me for a moment while I make a brief digression. In 1814 Tsar Aleksandr I pursued Napoleon back to Paris, unintentionally introducing his army to the politics, culture and lifestyle of Western Europe. The junior officers, all of them gentry and junior nobility, were impressed and as a proximate result, formed the discussion circles which culminated in the Decembrist Uprising of 1825. Again in 1914, the Russian Army invading East Prussia, on their way to Tannenberg, observed the prosperous and well-kept Prussian farms and villages, and drew diheartening contrast with their own reality. Yet again, in 1945, even in the midst of battlefield carnage, the peasants again noted the contrast. And again the contrast still there in DDR days. This was one reason the Soviets were reluctant to allow all but their elites to travel to the West. I’m sure you know where I am taking this. The Norks shield their “shitizens” from any accurate news about the South. The South of Nork myth is a weird funhouse mirror of the Nork reality. What will those legions of semi-starved Norks think when they see with their own eyes the condition of their “exploited” ROK cousins? Questions may not be voiced, but they will be formed. Might the ROK prove a ‘puffer fish” for the Nork?
Rosinante,
Ref your math regarding the bombardment of Seoul.
IIRC, you counted up the explosives and compared the amount to B17 raids.
Would it make a difference if you calculated that, say, half of the bombload was casing?
Or did you?
CONPLAN 8022 sounds like the real alternative to an invasion of Japan if the nuclear attacks had not been an option. The problem with doing it today is getting people to wait for it to work. No doubt we would have a rising tide of protests over the terrible things we were doing and the horrific impact on the civilian population of N. Korea. And Obama would not be able to ignore the anguished cries of “his” people. These are people who think sanctions are a bold and vicious response.
Subotai #60: An interesting analysis. Are you familiar with the reports that North Korea obtained some Soviet Sawfly SLBMs in the 90′s and even sold some to Iran? Some think that this was confirmed by their Unha space booster launch. That would give them some additional capabilities.
I guess if I had some subs and wanted to use them to best effect to shore up Kim’s tottering regime I would send them out to attack oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Not only would people freak, on top of what has already happened, but that would make Iran’s oil more valuable and thus make a pre-emptive strike on the Mad Mullas more fraught, as the British say.
Russian paratroopers to undergo training in NATO countries
” Grains didn’t become a staple of human diets until the neolithic, and then only among those who took up farming in a serious way. Humans dealt with the digestibility and assimilation of grains through processing.”
A theory. Another theory is that early humans grazed like any other animal”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,228459,00.html
I’m talking about pulling the head off a stalk of grass and chewing it as you walk by. You are talking about cooking, I think.
Mr. X, what is the SVS paying now a days?
Russia invaded Georgia in as blatant and illegal a power grab as the Post war era has seen. Proving yet again that Russia is just the Soviet Union with new pumps. Same old tart, new handbag.
ALL the evidence shows that the entire operation was planned, up to and including the ambush of Georgian troops that started it. Bush should have blown the tunnel and used F-22′s (air) and B-1′s (sea) to keep the Russians from supplying their troops caught in Georgia. As far as the rest, look who is running the Ukraine today.
{snipped} from here;
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/russia/articles/20100522.aspx
“There are so many Internet regulations, that just about any Russian Internet user can be prosecuted, and the government increasingly does this for web users that are saying things the government does not like. The government also cultivates pro-government Internet user groups, who can be directed to attack Internet based critics of the government, or Russia in general.”
“There is growing public unrest in Ukraine, against the pro-Russia policies of the newly elected government. Russia provided covert support to newly elected president Viktor Yanukovych. To the east, Russia apparently played a key role in the recent change of government (via an uprising) in Kyrgyzstan. The new government there contains a lot of politicians known to be more friendly towards Russia. This is how Russia prefers to deal with neighbors.”
Yes, we are watching a new wave of dominos fall. Bush threw away 40 years of effort when he allowed Russia to get away with invading Georgia.
How to Deal with the Threat of N.Korea’s Special Forces?
RWE/70–send subs from Korea to the Gulf of Mexico? Would that be around the Cape of Good Hope or via the Panama Canal?
North Korean Special Operations Forces and the Second Front
Gordon #74
The PRC runs the Panama Canal now, so I guess either is a possibility.
But the Norks have ships and they go all the way to places such as the Med, Germany and the Persian Gulf. They could do a little sub tending enroute.
This is all getting rather Tom Clancyish. We should write a novel.
Of course, I recall an incident when I was at the Pentagon that had us walking the halls going “This is real, but it sounds like something right out of Tom Clancy.”
Antonov AN-2 / Nanchang Y-5.
62-year old technology. Low observable. 9-cylinder radial piston engine is about the only thing radar might pick up, and the radar operators probably won’t recognize it. Nork desantniki will ride these in to battle against a sophisticated, First-world client of what used to be until a year and a half ago THE global hegemon.
It’s funny until somebody gets hurt. Then it’s hilarious.
Subotai Bahadur,
There are precedents for successful dispersal and reconstitution programs, just none that I am aware of in Korean history. The Soviets moved much of the government, and much of their industrial capacity, from Moscow to East of the Urals in 1941-42. The propaganda value in giving everyone something to do during a national crisis, as opposed to allowing them to be passive observers, was as important as the preservation of assets. In that case it resonated with the existing Russian national mythos of triumph following the withdrawal before Napoleon in 1812.
More closely attuned to the Korean story might be that of their cultural big brother China in WW-II. The withdrawal of the Nationalists to their National Redoubt in Szechuan was intended as a similar unifying epic. While it has since been overshadowed in the popular imagination by the victory of the Communists following the Long March educated Asians may appreciate the symbolism, as Americans did when they watched Frank Capra’s monumental “Why We Fight” series episode The Battle of China.
China could trade space for time. Unfortunately Korea lacks both. As an aside years ago I took several classes from Tang Tsou, the author of America’s Failure in China: 1941 – 1950. He had received his undergraduate degree in Kunming when dispersed in the face of the Japanese invasion. Properly executed a program of national survival in the face of invasion can help unify a nation and build credibility for the leadership. The reverse can also happen.
To be blogged under the title “Victory Through Dispersal.”
Gordon; RWE: What you guys got against Cape Horn? Why do you insist upon diuscriminating against a perfectly good sneak-attack route?
Okay, so that is sorta like sending dirty laundry from San Francisco to Honolulu and back—by sailing ship.
Which was a ploy that made a couple of folks rich, or at least gave them a sizeable nest egg for farther ventures.
Hmm. Wonder which way the U234 was going to go with that load of U235, plus ME262 and V2?
Submarine-launched WMDs do not appear imminent at this time but they are a possibility to be kept in mind.
Remember folks: North Korea is running an extortion ring. And all extortionists have to either make good on their dire threats or turn themselves in.
I am still of the belief that the best way to achieve the latter is to place suppressive fires north of the Z, employ land, sea and air flanking movements and drive to the Yalu, bypassing Pyonyang. Then charter some cruise ships to take the Nork nomenclatura to their
new comfortable digs elsewhere.
Bring the rations with you but leave the blankety-blank welfare state behind. Wal-Mart will bring the PX north shortly thereafter and industrialists will bring jobs as well. The people will pull through just fine, or at least with no more than the usual annual quota of deaths.
I do not mean to make everything sound more rosy thatn it will be, but this still looks like the best approach to take.
CONPLAN? Looks like a pretty good way to pave the way for the rest. Rummy done right well there, if a bit incomplete.
Before any thing else though, do the folllowing three things:
1) Sink the Pueblo
2) Sink the Pueblo
3) Sink the Pueblo.
Just go sink the old ship without warning, or fanfare, or explanation. One day it is there as the turista
symbol of invulnerability, the next day it is a shattered hulk.
The deification of Beloved Leader, Dear Leader and all the other dufus Han Guk Sarams comes to a screeching halt. And to the maximum esxtent possible the denial that leads them to believe they can get away with it forever will be replaced with a new sense of reality
and how to put cloth over the kum ding ee.
A PSYOP opportunity of this nature does not come along very often. Wish somebody would stop ignoring it.
Wretchard, regarding Obama’s decision-making, I am reminded of a quote from the Holy Scriptures: “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
programmer (#43): “You all are sure a North Korean sub sunk the South Korean boat. How do you know for sure?”
I know for sure it wasn’t; it was the JOOOOS!
Cannoneer (#50): “Anybody here read Proud Legions?”
Maybe I’ll do so one day. Until then, I highly recommend that people read the essay by Fehrenbach that John Antal almost certainly got his title from. It is a chapter from his classic and indispensable history of the Korean War, This Kind of War. (And to complete the plugs, I’ll mention that I first read this essay in Pournelle’s pretty good There Will Be War series.)
Subotai (#60): “And short of occupying the area to ensure the logistics of distribution, millions will die.”
And the Lancet will publish a study explaining how half a billion innocent people are dead because of the US.
Dave (#81):
The motto you’re looking for is Pueblo delenda est.
Bob: Fehrenbach is still writing a column a week. Check him out at “mysa.com”.
Check out the last two or three columns. The ones on nukes and the forces of western civilization are The Master Still At Work.
I recall his prediction that having Battalion Commanders direct platoons to keep Korean casualties down would have consequences. That not allowing Second Lieutenants to make their mistakes would mean those mistakes would be made when they were Lieutenant Colonels. And said mistakes would be worse.
I got a good example of what he meant on my last field trip in VN. We took 22 dead and 32 wounded. And of the wounded, 22 had to be medically discharged. My team of 8 people took 5 dead on the spot with number 6 expiring a week or so later. Number 7 got a band-aid wound and Yours Truly walked away (that time) without a scratch. Do Guardian Angels get overtime? If they do, mine has remained in a much higher tax brackett.
#68 Rurik
I agree that the sudden dose of reality facing Nork troops if they did win would be destabilizing, just as the relative prosperity of Germany even in defeat was to the Soviet trooper. However, there are the same tried and true methods of dealing with the problem. Enough activity by the Korean local equivalent of Beria’s NKVD will suppress any loose tongues. You can be sure that anything of value that was not well nailed down was taken back to the Rodina and something similar would happen to the ROKs. Loot and pillage will ease a lot of mental qualms. It will take a while before any doubts surfaced, since expressing such doubts tends to be fatal.
Another point is that even during the Cold War, there were plenty of Russians who were stationed in the countries of their “fraternal” Warsaw Pact allies. They had to see the signs not only of past prosperity, but since those countries tended to have more contact with the West; signs of current Western prosperity. It took an awful long time for Russians to do anything about their corrupt and failed system, even with those hints.
I don’t think that there would be time for anything useful to us to take place. We are in a crunch. Depending on which metaphor one prefers, we are domestically either in the equivalent of the late 1760′s-early 1770′s or 1860. As far as foreign affairs, we are in the equivalent of either 731 AD in the Kingdom of the Franks, mid-June 1914, or perhaps August 1939. Economically, we have a choice of what amounts to combine in the mix from the Dutch Tulip Bubble of 1637, Weimar Germany in 1923, or Zimbabwe in 2004-2008 [inflation rate of 6.5 x 10 to the 108th power]. The more adventurous will want to add a soupçon of New York City in mid-October 1929.
There is no solace to be found in defeat in Korea.
Subotai Bahadur
I have a vision of Kim Jong Il whispering in Chairman and Supreme Leader Wen Jiabao’s right ear about how the ROKs won’t move without approval from president Obama, and in the left ear how president Obama won’t do anything. “This Foolish Won is as weak as the Toothy Won (Carter), why see how he sent Horny Won (Clinton) to rescue the foolish little girls.” Switching now to the left ear, “Foolish Won won’t let the South have honor even when we sink their ships and kill their sailors.” And back to the right ear, “It isn’t like you have Trillions to loose, Foolish Won will not pay you anyway. Do nothing and watch now again as Foolish Won is saying too much and is swallowing clouds (wonton)”…escalates
#23 Weary G
Do you remember where you read that anecdote about the Japanese Battleship?
Cannoneer #77:
Flew into Hawthorne Airport in early 1982 and saw that Northrop had a Colt that they were experimenting with. Of course at that time they were secretly developing stealth aircraft. Wonder what they were doing with that An-2?
During Vietnam the Soviet Spetsnaz tried to take out Lima Site 85 in Laos by jumping from a Colt. With no fixed wing air cover available in time the Site 85 guys climbed into a Huey and had a dogfight with the An-2. Now that would be an airshow!
When the NVA finally took out Site 85 the relief force found the last one of our guys that went down with an empty M-16 in each hand and enemy dead stacked all around him. If he had still been USAF and not an Agency contractor he would have gotten the MoH. Remember those guys on Memorial Day, too.
I have little knowledge of the Korean peninsula and the geopolitics surrounding it. Even so, I have a question about Chinese goals with North Korea.
Question: Don’t the Chinese have an incentive to keep some client state in the area occupied by Kim?
Rationale:
1. If North Korea ceased to exist, the West in the guise of the South Koreans would be on the Chinese border. This would allow Western “spies” to have easier entry into China by avoiding entirely the modern equivalent of the Great Wall.
2. If North Korea falls apart, are the North Korean people more likely to head north or south? The South already has a line of guns pointing into the North. What does China have? Something similar?
3. North Korea as a military client gives plausible deniability to Chinese attempts to test Western responses.
4. Should armed conflict arise between China and the West, China’s stated goal of Taiwan is one front. Korea is a potential second front. The North cannot hold the West for long, but at least slows the advance to the Chinese border and avoids easy preparation and SOF infilitration through #1 above.
Rosinnate @72,
Most wild grasses have very little in the way of grains. Most calories for neolithic nomads came from meat and then berries.
Mr. Fernandez:
“{South Korea} would be forced, as a matter of necessity, to occupy the North to ensure that no traces of its nuclear program remained. That would of course expose it to Pyongyang’s ultimate weapon: the starving refugees of the Worker’s Paradise who can be expected to descend like locusts on the South. It is doubtful whether the Koreans or the US could find it in themselves to fire on these miserable wretches as they stumble towards the nearest available food.”
Why do you think that these people would be liabilities?
Given 3 regular meals a day, I foresee a vast pool of willing volunteers to fight for Seoul, and these chaps, in addition to being motivated by a full belly for themselves and their families, would also have the added impetus of payback.
If Kim and his butt-boys wish to go underground, then that would save all of his enemies the trouble of killing them first.
Seal them all inside of their bunkers and let them eat each other while One Free Korea is built over their heads.
One other thing that strikes me from reading this comment thread.
It seems that people are misreading what a totalitarian dictatorship is really like.
If we could lob a stealthed-up cruise missile salvo at Kim’s bedroom and take the little weaslpenis and his commanders out, this would absolutely PARALYZE the NorK’s response.
Initiative is not something that is rewarded in a dictatorship’s military,(frankly, it’s not really treated with unalloyed enthusiasm in our own forces), so if Kim isn’t able to give the order to open fire, then his operational and tactical commanders will default to the “safest” and most “prudent” course of action, which is to await orders.
And they can wait for orders right up until they’re ordered to surrender or are blown to kingdom come.
I daresay that while we may not have had an invasion plan for Afghanistan in 2001, we have many plans and options for war with NK in various safes in the Pentagon and 2nd Division Headquarters.
Step 1 in all of them is to take out those arty tubes overlooking Seoul. Then the destruction of their logistics and communications – maybe a couple of tries against Kim himself. Actual battles would be short and horribly one-sided. While SK civilian casualties would be nasty, NK military casualties would be beyond belief.
Think Desert Storm but NK’s equipment is far more outdated now than Iraq’s was 20 years ago. T-54’s against M1A2’s and South Korean equivalents (maybe better) – MIG 21’s against the latest F-15’s and 16’s. If a real shooting war starts, only Chinese intervention could save North Korea from a quick collapse and defeat.
Whiskey, how I wish I could grant your wish to be black. We sure wouldn’t be subjected to your current drivel but you’d no doubt simplistically replace it with something equally noxious. And remarkably similar to the folks you currently rail against.
I mean, what else could such a limited intellect as yours do if suddenly granted a wish to be black but think as you currently do — race & sex, sex & race. Are you really so lacking in self-awareness that you can’t see that you *ARE* Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Put that superior white male brain to work and think about it.
@RWE
An Air Combat First
A couple of decades ago, the Colt raid on Site 85 was detailed in a novel.
Not too many years later, the entire Site 85 subject hit the papers. I think it had been classified until then, because, among other things, the site provided nav beacons for B52 strikes.
But when the thing hit the papers–some television news show, actually–only the NVA ground assault was mentioned.
This stuff is slippery, but I recall various rumors around the barracks or wherever, which would later turn up in a novel of SEA combat, and, most satisfyingly, turn out to be true.
It’s said that truth is stranger than fiction, but in these cases, fiction is truer than what passes for truth.
They found the remains of the torpedo on the ocean floor beneath the
ship. The propeller and drive shaft of torpedo survived the blast.
“ALL the evidence shows that the entire operation was planned, up to and including the ambush of Georgian troops that started it.” I’ve never heard of this ambush. I guess he means the South Ossetians ‘ambushing’ the Georgian troops sent to kill them and kick their families out of their homes.
That’s what Michael Totten in his softball interview with Misha the Tie Eater called it. Except that if closing the Roki Tunnel was of such vital importance they would have bypassed Tskinval and gone straight to it (though of course only someone as delusional as Saako would believe that Georgians could hold it against an all-out Russian assault or that Georgians would die in such numbers as to hold it). Instead they went to Tskinval because their objective was ethnic cleansing, fast and furious like the Croats in Operation Storm in 1993. The most incredible thing to me, both when looking at Saako and all his American advisors is this: did they seriously think Russia was just going to sit there and watch its citizens get driven out of their houses at gunpoint? (You of course think that granting citizenship to South Ossetians is illegitimate – well fine, but no American President could tolerate similar treatment of our citizens anywhere without being called weak) If they did, they had their heads up their asses, and Saako is just as Ivy League disconnected from reality as many of the other pols you BCers love to bash here. But when an out of touch Ivy Leaguer says he’s fighting the Evil Empire and gives out golden pistols to John McCain, nevermind his Soros funding, you guys swoon. It just cracks me up.
“Bush should have blown the tunnel and used F-22’s (air) and B-1’s (sea) to keep the Russians from supplying their troops caught in Georgia. As far as the rest, look who is running the Ukraine today.”
Rocinante, I’m not going to waste time arguing with someone who thinks our client state in the Caucasus Mountains was such a vital U.S. national interest that it was worth risking nuclear war to prevent our client president and his nation’s humiliation.
Cannoneer #945:
Excellent! I heard about Site 85 from frind of mine, a USAF officer during VN who had the job of reviewing medals and unit citations.
I believe that Lima Site 85 was a TACAN site for guiding our aicraft going to and from NVN, rather than a radar site.
And yes, I understand that it is in a novel; my friend even appears in that book I think. I have read one of the other books in that series but not that one.
Another officer I served with was involved in aiding B-52 strikes. He said that they woul get hauled out to a remote hilltop and set up a beacon of the type used to support bomb scoring when SAC would simulate an attack
on a U.S. city. They were used to bombing by refernce to that type of beacon so it was a simple matter to use one to guide an ARCLIGHT mission. There the guys were on a remote hilltop, not even knowing where, with minimal support and no air cover. Luckily, they never came under attack.
Old soldier #92: I think that S Korea fears most of all a N Korean “quick collapse and defeat.” Imagine having your most unfavorite in-laws – and THEIR most unfavorite relatives – come and stay with you forever. Kind of like the reunification of E and W Germany if E Germany was like modern day Rhodesia.
China has no love for ROK. The fact Lil Kim was summoned to Beijing on his deathbed and forced to explain in person testifies China is not comfortable with what ROK is doing.
The fantasy scenarios on this thread are entertaining, but not close to reality; ROK is collapsing, China is smuggling DVD’s into ROK what life is in a capitalist society, there is an underground counter govt movement in ROK…things are not looking good for North Korea and this latest event brought unwanted Pressure on China.
I would expect China told Lil Kim that he is placing his countries head in the noose, if they don’t behave China will kick the chair out from under them.
#88 hekktor
I am not an expert, by any means; but if I may, let me try to answer your questions:
1. If North Korea ceased to exist, the West in the guise of the South Koreans would be on the Chinese border. This would allow Western “spies” to have easier entry into China by avoiding entirely the modern equivalent of the Great Wall.
The North Korean-Chinese border is far from unguarded. In fact it is pretty well fortified and has natural barriers such as rivers and mountains to block access. Chinese policy has been to just barely keep the Norks going and on a short leash. Item, there are 6 major railway bridges/routes from China to North Korea. There are only a few trains a week bringing goods into North Korea, and much of that consists of items that the Norks need to make their missiles for export and to keep their nuclear program operational. If China wanted to raise the standard of living in North Korea, one train a week of fertilizer would have tremendous effect. If China wanted to restrain North Korea, they could do it with a phone call. If North Korea is doing anything, it is with Chinese approval.
North Korea is the crazy uncle in China’s attack that they can unleash in the neighborhood at will, and not be held responsible for his actions.
Those who enter China from North Korea now, do so by bribing the border guards. That is possible, but not exactly guaranteed. Women are frequently sold into sexual slavery in China [they being somewhat short of women due to their own policies], the men are robbed and either killed or turned back over to the Norks to be killed or imprisoned. If the military get the order to plant mines and shoot to kill, not many are getting in.
2. If North Korea falls apart, are the North Korean people more likely to head north or south? The South already has a line of guns pointing into the North. What does China have? Something similar?
As noted above, the North Korean-China border is fortified and can become more so right smartly. As far as which way the North Korean population will go, most will stay in one place and die. To pick up and move requires that you have both the initiative to do so, and the physical ability.
For over half a century, the government has beaten, starved, and propagandized initiative out of the North Korean people. It is not a matter of, “I and my family are now starving, so I will do anything to get them elsewhere where there may be food.” They have been starving for literally generations. All they know is fear, propaganda [which says that North Korea is the pinnacle of human economic achievement, and that China and South Korea are in worse shape], and starvation to the point where they can barely physically function at all. It is all they know. It is all that they can remember from their fathers, and it is all that they have been taught to expect for their children.
One of the first effects of prolonged starvation is loss of higher mental functions, the ability to plan and get up and do things goes quickly. You become apathetic about anything outside your normal routine. Most would not be able to plan and execute a movement either way. And for those few who could muster the will, they would not have the ability. There is no food to sustain them on the trip. A 20 mile forced march without food would kill most of them.
3. North Korea as a military client gives plausible deniability to Chinese attempts to test Western responses.
Granted, but keep in mind that even if China is using North Korea as a weapon against the West; once the mission is accomplished, the weapon can be considered expendable. In this country, Asians tend to get along a lot more than they do in the old countries. In high school, I had both Japanese and Filipino friends. All of our parents [first generation here] were scandalized. In Asia … Chinese do not like Koreans of any flavor, and many do not consider them to be human. Regardless of ideology, culture is the internal guide for actions.
China. Chung Kuo. “The Middle Kingdom”, the center of the universe. The font of civilization surrounded by not fully human barbarians. Culturally, we Chinese are a bunch of ethnocentric buggers. China does not give an obese rodent’s gluts about the survival of Korea or Koreans in any form, so long as their demise serves China’s purposes.
China has used North Korea masterfully. For over a decade it has used North Korea to arm our enemies, successfully threaten our friends, threaten us directly, and to draw our strategic attention at will. All, not only without any downside for China, but it has become the standard paradigm over much of our body politic that the only way any given North Korean problem can be solved is by begging the Chinese to use their presumed “good offices” as a neutral third party. It is akin to trying to negotiate with the NSDAP’s Ahnenerbe over the petty details of the screening procedures used by the Totenkopfverbände in the operation of Auschwitz.
China has succeeded in using North Korea as the catspaw that proves that the United States is absolutely useless, and dangerous, as an ally. Both for Asian nations, and around the world. Blatant acts of war against any nation unfortunate enough to be allied by treaty with the United States trigger no effective response from the United States. South Korea knows this, Japan surely has noted this. As has Taiwan, India, and of course Israel. Europe is too lost in delusion to conceive of any threats in the world, or the need to have someone [either themselves or a powerful ally] ready to counter them. South and Central America knows for a fact that the United States is allied with dictators acting against the democracies there.
China has gotten what it wants. Its client state has forced the primary adversary to abandon its allies in the region. If that client state self destructs, it is no skin off of the noses of the inhabitants of Zhongnanhai.
Now that the way is clear, the Chinese pressure is in progress in Asia and the Middle East. China is backing Iran, with all that implies. Chinese naval vessels and aircraft are making incursions as we speak in seas claimed by Japan. Taiwan is watch carefully.
We may see, if things don’t go terminally stupid on KJI’s part, in a short period of time that South Korea may try to establish a closer relationship with China; because otherwise it is naked to any Chinese sponsored acts of aggression. As might Japan.
If it does come to military action, at very least China knows that it is safe from any US response; at least so long as Buraq Hussein Obama and any Democrats are in power. The tool has served its purpose. It can be discarded as easily as a used tissue.
4. Should armed conflict arise between China and the West, China’s stated goal of Taiwan is one front. Korea is a potential second front. The North cannot hold the West for long, but at least slows the advance to the Chinese border and avoids easy preparation and SOF infilitration through #1 above.
North Korea has negated that threat against China. They know now that the United States will not allow South Korea to act unilaterally. The United States will not act in concert with South Korea to attack North Korea. The only threat on that front is if KJI goes Chiroptera feces and attacks South Korea openly on a broad front. In which case, IF Buraq responds, he will do no more than to seek a return to the status quo ante going no farther than returning to the DMZ. If Buraq avoids a US response, the ROKs may act themselves, but they have neither the desire, nor possibly the ability [logistics] to conquer, hold, and administer the North. The US will have effectively formally repudiated any military alliances worldwide. All of our adversaries will have the world as a free fire zone.
If KJI just keeps up low level warfare, Buraq will do nothing; and if the ROK government fails to act it will fall. Given ROK politics, the replacement government has a good chance of being willing to become a Chinese client state. China’s use of North Korea has been successful with no downside for China or our country’s other enemies. It will continue to be so, just so long as we are under the regime of Buraq Hussein Obama. If we ever get a government of patriots, the Chinese will not be able to assume American submission and will have to recalibrate. Although we can depend on some sort of test to see if the new government is as afraid as the old.
#90 Bilgeman
Why do you think that these people would be liabilities?
Given 3 regular meals a day, I foresee a vast pool of willing volunteers to fight for Seoul, and these chaps, in addition to being motivated by a full belly for themselves and their families, would also have the added impetus of payback.
I think we differ on our assessment of the status of the civilian population of North Korea. I discussed this a bit above, but from what I have seen the North Korean population will require generations to recover.
For 3 generations, they have been isolated from the rest of the world. The experience with refugees and defectors from North Korea who have made it south in the last generation is that they do not make the adjustment well. And these are the ones in the best condition and with the most initiative. The rest are in worse shape.
The closest thing culturally I can think of that I have seen is what happened to the Laotian H’mong people when they came to this country as refugees. Note that those refugees had some idea of the cultural/economic differences, liked and trusted Americans, and hated the communists who were trying to kill them. H’mong came from a tribal, primitive by our standards, pre-modern culture. They, especially H’mong males, are not coping easily and well even where our society is making every effort to assimilate them. The suicide rate is horrendous, H’mong males are not moving well into our economy and culture, and the females and those males who are transitioning are rejected by the elders of the H’mong culture. That elder generation is showing every sign of what is referred to as culture shock.
Even in Germany, where the Federal German government did everything to make the transition as easy as possible, the Osties have not made the cultural transition to even the highly socialist version of modern Western culture that prevails in Europe. There is economic malaise in the former DDR, there is nostalgia for the old regime, and beliefs that it was better because the government took care of them.
And this is for a country that has living memory of a more prosperous time, an educational system that while communist at least had some relationship to the modern world, and a population that has not been starved, literally starved, for generations.
The sequalae of mass, prolonged starvation take an awful long time to overcome, and lasts for generations. North Korean civilians are a half-step above the survivors of the concentration camp my dad liberated in 1945. Just a half step.
To put it another way, Haiti is an absolute cesspool. It has a totally disfunctional, brutal culture. 2/3 of the land is mountainous. Much of the rest is arid, and there is very little arable land. That land has been stripped and exhausted. Natural disasters are the norm. The country only exists at the sufferance of international aid.
Haitians are orders of magnitude in better shape to deal with freedom and the modern world than North Koreans.
———
As I said above, I do not pretend to be an expert of any sort. I “calls ‘em as I sees ‘em”; and may be full of it. If anyone wants to comment or critique, I consider that part of the learning process.
Subotai Bahadur
A theory. Another theory is that early humans grazed like any other animal”
No, sorry Rosinante. More than a theory. It is pretty much a given that humans did not become dependent on cereal grains until the neolithic. Early humans did not ‘graze’ in the hoofed animal sense, but ‘gathered’ and ‘foraged’ in the more accurate sense. They didn’t munch grass, just all sorts of other stuff.
Too much is made of purported genetic ‘advantages’ and ‘disadvantages’ in human paleohistory, and too little made of the human adaptability that got us to where we are now.
#100 Subotai Bahadur
Disturbing even if well laid out.
Your response shows a great appreciation for subtlety.
All of your response deal well with the current administration’s foreseeable actions.
How would your analysis change if we had an administration that understood how to deal with these Asian tyrants like KJI and China?
Is there a foreseeable and workable solution?
What is most worthy of debate with those who believe in human “biodiversity” is their assumption that if only the truth about this diversity were known it would mean the end of affirmative action and the like – we’d stop trying to build the perfect equality of results. But why wouldn’t some future scientific consensus on racial differences rather only enforce the guilty desire to make equal what circumstances have otherwise wrought? In other words, without a serious understanding of the origins of the human moral intutition about equality, do we really know what we will get from new understandings of difference? The HBD crowd may be end up with a “victory” they will only more regret in pangs of envy.
Dave (#83): “Fehrenbach is still writing a column a week. Check him out at ‘mysa.com’.”
Wow, I did not know that. I’ll start reading the latest stuff forthwith. Thanks for the tip.
Subotai (#100): “If we ever get a government of patriots, the Chinese will not be able to assume American submission and will have to recalibrate. Although we can depend on some sort of test to see if the new government is as afraid as the old.”
For those with short memories, google “Hainan Island Incident,” the handling of which did not fill me, at the time, with respect for the new Bush administration.
Silly me, I had forgotten what initially motivated me to comment. From Wretchard’s initial WaPo link:
Dearie me! Pass me the smelling salts, I feel faint!
I am reminded of the reports on Obama’s feelings on US doomsday planning.
I’ll grant that my opinion of Obama is not particularly high, but given that this article is from 2005, all I can say is rlly? If the US is faced with an imminent nuclear strike which can only be prevented by nuking the launch site, then it is “difficult to imagine a U.S. president” doing so? What the hell is wrong with (some of) us?
#102 hekktor
Given the deep hole that we are in, assuming that a) elections happen, b) that the votes are honestly counted, c) that TWANLOC lose enough control of Congress so that this country’s enemies cannot keep digging, d) that TWANLOC will allow the winners of the Congressional races to be seated, and e) that our enemies do not manage to deliberately destroy the country between said elections and the seating of a new Congress [all of which are conditional assumptions that may not be of >50% probability individually and with the appropriate statistical assumptions for a concatenation]; the best we can hope for is holding the line, blocking the implementation of the enemy’s plans, and letting the world and country know that TWANLOC does not speak for all of us, nor will we allow their acts to stand indefinitely. There is a dark night, but by [Basque expletive deleted due to house rules], there WILL be a dawn. And it eventually will not be a good thing to have stood against the dawn.
For 45 years, the Democratic Party has been the political party automatically supporting any enemy that the United States has encountered. The only exception has been for a few months after 9/11. But even while New Yorkers were digging the remains of the murdered out of Ground Zero, Democrats began removing what for them must have been the bitter taste left in their mouths from their publicity stunt of standing in front of the Capitol singing “God Bless America”. No matter where we were fighting, it became the wrong war and the wrong place. Now we are at the point where the Democrats’ President bows to the King of Saudi Arabia, grovels to the Iranians threatening to nuke the world, and deliberately leaves our fighting men and women vulnerable to attack as they place their lives on the line defending us. Under the Democrats and other TWANLOC, terrorists caught in the act of attacking Americans are coddled, American citizens governing themselves are denominated terrorists, and illegal aliens invading this country are considered to be above the law.
IF a coalition of Conservatives, TEA Party Supporters, Libertarians, and other Patriots [that might even include Republicans] takes control of Congress; they have to become the Party of the United States and its freedom loving friends in the world. They have to push back hard.
IF we have elections in November as noted above, and we survive as a free and intact nation to 2012, a Patriot president has got to leave no doubt that we are back. We have to leave no doubt that despite the Democrats, we will stand with our allies, and that it is not a good idea to deliberately make us an enemy. We have to leave no doubt that we are going to get our fiscal house in order; ending bailouts and prosecuting those who have defrauded us, and the politicians who enabled and conspired with them. And we have to stop declaring war on the productive people in our country. There are fiscal, tax, energy production, and other aspects of this.
This will literally be a fight to the death. If we fail, we will not survive. And TWANLOC will not go quietly and abandon their dream of permanent power. There are no longer any easy solutions to anything.
/rant
#104 Bob
For those with short memories, google “Hainan Island Incident,” the handling of which did not fill me, at the time, with respect for the new Bush administration.
Agreed. In fact I was thinking of just that incident when I wrote that line. Hainan Island was a test. Bush abjectly failed. Keep in mind that Bush was an establishment Republican, not a Conservative. Other, of course, than in comparison with his opponent. I will grant that after 9/11 Bush changed to a great extent. He did not become a Conservative, he was always more than willing to take TWANLOC at face value and at their mendacious word. And like an establishment Republican, he was always ready to attack Conservatives to curry favor with the Left. He, at least, was willing to acknowledge that we were at war, and to fight it. Just not prosecute it to the extent that we could have and should have. He was flawed, and we cannot place our faith in establishment Republicans again. We no longer have the design margin to tolerate the temporizing implicit in that.
I will say, however, that unlike the current resident of the White House, he did not hate this country, its people, and its heritage. In these times, that grants some indulgences for a number of sins.
Subotai Bahadur
RWE – Pretty funny. Re-unification would be like having your hillbilly, trailer-trash, second cousins move in with you permanently.
Ironically, the pre-communist northern half of Korea was where most of their industry was located. I don’t care for MacArthur, but wow was he right when he refused to allow the Russians to share the occupation of Japan.
#100 Subhotai Bahadur:
“I think we differ on our assessment of the status of the civilian population of North Korea. I discussed this a bit above, but from what I have seen the North Korean population will require generations to recover.”
Point granted, but that is the long view. I’m concerned with the immediate task to hand, which is to gakk Kim and what toadies he has that have a mind to fire on the ROK and the US.
Frankly, I could give a hang about how the former NorK civilians assimilate under freedom, since it would be largely Seoul’s problem, and a vastly preferable one to trying to carry on a 1st world economy under the guns of a conniving Stalinist autocrat.
If we can enlist the NorK population to turn coat and lead the hunt to uproot the Kim machine, so much the better.
“The sequalae of mass, prolonged starvation take an awful long time to overcome, and lasts for generations. North Korean civilians are a half-step above the survivors of the concentration camp my dad liberated in 1945. Just a half step.”
Again, granted, but I’d observe that 3 short years later, many of those same concentration camp inmates bested all comers to establish Eretz Israel, so I wouldn’t write them all off quite yet…especially when their main task would be to turn on their tormentors.
I think they might be rather good at that, and that is all we really need from them in the short term, isn’t it?
#108 Bilgeman
I think we are going to end up agreeing to disagree as to the effects of the prolonged starvation. I do not argue with the desireability of having a whole bunch of pissed off Norks dragging DPRK officials out of whatever holes they are hiding in, and introducing them to one point vertical dynamic cervical suspension. I just don’t think that they can do it.
I thought about the founders of Israel when I wrote the comment. 1) The first waves of the Aliyah to Israel were those few who had not been totally broken by the KZL’s. 2) there was a substantial population of Jews in Israel already that formed a basis for an independent Jewish state. 3) There was substantial support from around the world. And most importantly, 4) as horrific as the death camps were, the people who survived them started out essentially healthy. If they were not, they were selected for death as they came off the train. They had the possibility of recovering if they survived.
We know what happens developmentally when children are deprived of critical nutrients, both pre-natal and pre-adolescent. They NEVER recover the mental or physical ability of “normally” raised children. They are permanently prone to fatal illnesses as their immune systems are shot, or rather never fully develop. They never make a lot of the essential neural connections in the brain and are permanently damaged intellectually. Being raised in a permanent famine probably does not do anything good to their emotional or mental health either. I think it would tend to create sociopaths in mass quantities. Add in indoctrination in Juche from birth and there is not an aspect of their lives that does not make a football bat look positively functional.
We have three generations of this. I am figuring that it will take at least two generations to begin a recovery.
Yeah, it is largely South Korea’s long term problem. And it is one that they very much do not want [despite some lip-service, as far as serious policy discussions are concerned, they are terrified of what happened to Germany and know that trying to assimilate North Korea will make what happened to Germany look like an ascension into heaven]; and they have every means to avoid it.
The three strategic drivers pushing the ROKs, as far as I can see if war breaks out, are: a) pushing the border back to place their capitol out of easy strike range, b) progressively taking out any remnants of Nork capability to pose a threat to the ROK. This is both conventional and nuclear. Taking out the hydro plants in the north, taking out the known sites associated with their nuclear program, and taking out their POL storage and distribution system will reduce the ability of the Norks to damage the South., c) some level of family reunification, if only for domestic political reasons. There is no strategic upside to taking over North Korea, and a lot of disincentives. It probably would not bother them if China just came down to whatever stop line the ROKs chose. China is the enemy, sure; but that would just stimulate nationalism in the ROK. And while China is the enemy, they have the advantage of not being Chiroptera feces crazy. And a Chinese move south would relieve the ROK of the worry of what to do with starving, crazy Norks.
A move by the ROK army north to a line roughly at the level of say Haeju-Kumgang at most would relieve the threat to Seoul, and create a buffer zone between the FEBA and the current DMZ fortifications that would be under ROK control. Within that zone they could sort out at leisure who, if anyone, they would let south to join their families.
The area north of the FEBA not occupied by the Chinese would be subject to the strikes as noted above until the Nork military capability had been degraded. Life, such as it is, in the area between the FEBA and wherever the Chinese have their border will make Germany during the 30 Years War look like a land of milk and honey. In fact I would expect armed bands of Norks to be imitating the mercenaries ravaging Germany in the 1600′s.
All this is assuming that nukes are not used. And assuming that the use of chemical weapons by the Norks is within the bounds that the world will tolerate for use by dictators [that in itself is a pretty high ceiling; especially compared to the zero tolerance of use by Western powers]. If it becomes a WMD war, life may become interesting on a number of levels.
I do not believe that the ROKs have nukes yet, but I could well be wrong. If they have half a lick of sense they would have considered making them a couple of years ago. They have the capability of doing so. They export nuclear reactors and I think process their own fuel cycle, for pity sake. Don’t know how long it would take them, but if you have the fissile materials [35 kg. of weapons grade U-235 per device, notationally] and access to industrial equipment for working with the nasty stuff; making a crude gun type device that can be carried on an aircraft and will work, albeitly not at the highest efficiency, should not take long. There will not be luxuries like PAL’s but when having a nuclear deterrent is necessary for national survival, they can get fancy with the next generation.
Japan is quite probably just a few wrench turns from having a missile based nuclear deterrent. Taiwan may or may not have one. There are domestically made missiles being deployed there that make absolutely no sense in terms of payload, numbers, and CEP with anything but nuclear warheads. Taiwan was working on arms projects with both Israel and South Africa, both of which developed nuclear weapons. They have the scientists [who worked with us on our nuke program] and a nuclear industrial base. I am not betting against it. And even if they cannot use missiles, they have the same easy route to an air delivered deterrent as South Korea.
I rather suspect that we may find out exactly how crazy KJI is, how much backing he has for his actions by China [and possibly Iran and Russia], exactly how feckless our NCA is, and exactly how resilient and survivable the Nork population is, very shortly. Maybe even today. We just don’t know.
Mind you, I would rather you be right. But I just don’t see it.
Subotai Bahadur
#109 Subotai Bahadur:
“I think we are going to end up agreeing to disagree as to the effects of the prolonged starvation.”
Nop, I don’t think we’re in fundamental disagreement about that at all. I’ve seen the effects of childhood malnutrition at first hand. You’re right, it blights the adult that the child later becomes…on many levels.
However, I can train a dog to attack and kill a human being for a chicken bone, and that’s essentially all that I’m really after here.
“Add in indoctrination in Juche from birth and there is not an aspect of their lives that does not make a football bat look positively functional.”
Juche…that’s the term I was looking for, thanks.
The extreme xenophobia and slavish hero-worship “wiring” having already been “installed” via Juche, I ken that reprogramming the “NoKoKillbots” to our purposes would be rather more easily accomplished than would otherwise be the case.
Will it happen? Who knows? We know that it WON’T happen if it isn’t tried, though.
“A move by the ROK army north to a line roughly at the level of say Haeju-Kumgang at most would relieve the threat to Seoul, and create a buffer zone between the FEBA and the current DMZ fortifications that would be under ROK control. Within that zone they could sort out at leisure who, if anyone, they would let south to join their families.”
One of the reasons I didn’t join Vodkapundit’s thread on this is that too many people over there were kicking off the festivities with a US nuke.
I don’t mind some fiction, but the suspension of disbelief required to accept that the US would try a Shock and Awe decapitation strike with a purple plutonium flash-bulb just beggars common sense…especially from the Alleged Hawaiian and his O-dministration.
The incremental conquest approach you lay out here has a lot going for it, and plays to one the Asians’ general long suits: patience. If Seoul can keep the Juche-believers in a well-denmarcated cage and only bite off as much North Korean territory and population as they can digest at a sitting, that has a LOT to be said for it.
“Mind you, I would rather you be right. But I just don’t see it.”
Oi!
Subotai, much of what you say makes sense.
But just a small note praising George Bush.
For all his faults he was a real leader and almost no one stood beside him as he turned the War in Iraq around.
We are still coasting off that victory.
Also consider the alternatives. J Fricken Kerry and Gore the Global Warming Scammer.
While Bush was President, the War on Terror was taken seriously and to simplify there were no or few successful Al Qaeda attacks here at home after 9/11. With the coming of Obama, 14 have now died in Texas and hundreds are alive only due to a Dutchman, a Tshirt vendor and the grace of God.
Because of Bush’s victory, we are in a vastly better position to survive the debacles of Barak. Our enemies and allies know that when we chose to turn our will toward victory again we have the men and the tools.
George Bush was not a small man. For him, there was an earnestness and few slick words. He did not have his former friends and grandmother crowded under the bus.
He was not perfect, but I think history will be kind to George Bush.