Iraq Vs. North Korea: Can someone explain this to me, please?

Great Debates
1

First off, let me say this. I never really cared anything about national/wold news or politics untill the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01 took place. I was 21 when it happened, and I suppose it just woke me up, as it did many people throughout the world. Anyhow, here we go…

…just why are we threatening war with Iraq and taking the diplomatic route so far with North Korea? I simply can not understand this, and I am chalking it up to my limited knowledge of world events and the such so far. From what I understand, both are under a dictatorship. Iraq is allowing UN inspectors, and have stated they do NOT have weapons of mass destruction, and yet we are charging into war with them. North Korea on the other hand is kicking UN inspectors OUT, and have basicly SAID that they do have weapons of mass destruction, and plan on making more, and we are sitting back as of right now with them, taking the diplomatic route.

I must say that I do feel that we do need to go to Iraq and take care of that once and for all, but on the same hand I feel that we should take the same route with N.K. Are we not doing so simply because we do not want to face two major wars at the same time? Is there something more to this that I do not understand? Just WHY are we taking such a different route with one over the other?

Thanks a lot, I really want to clear this up for myself.

2

China, for one.

3

My thoughts are that it is because George W Bush and all his friends in the oil business are gonna get even richer when the US takes over Iraq and ask the US oil companies to manage the oil wells.

North Korea has zero in the way of natural resources. Why would we want to attack?

There are many countries in the middle east that have a much clearer tie to terrorism than Iraq.

My view is that Saddam will stay where he is but Kim Jung Il is as crazy as his father was and will sell Nukes as soon as he gets them.

4

Well, I am not a foreign policy advisor…

But it strikes me as a whole lot safer to attack a country that doesn’t have nukes but wants them than to attack a country that already has them.

If a guy is just putting bullets in his gun, you can hit him before he gets it loaded. If it’s already loaded and pointed at you, a bit more discretion is called for.

5

True, but the White House claims to have proof that Iraq already has these weapons as well, ya know?

6

North Korea is a much bigger threat to certain very important U.S. allies in the immediate vicinity than Iraq is, namely South Korea (and to a lesser extent Japan). There’s pretty much nothing but an imaginary line separating two very small countries on one small peninsula. Worse, there’s a capital with a population 10,000,000 plus a very short distance from that line, well within striking distance from North Korea. South Korea is of economic and strategic importance to the U.S., and if we felt that Iraq was as much of a threat to U.S. allies in the Gulf region as Korea is in East Asia we’d probably be treating them with the kid gloves too.

7

Cite?

8

(What with this excellent seasonal ale dulling my inhibitions about posting in GD without completely knowing what I’m talking about…)

Well, Iraq maybe has nuclear explosives, but most likely doesn’t yet have a long-range delivery system for them. Other than maybe putting one on a cargo ship and sailing it into a US port city—which is not a terribly effective military application.

Whereas NK, from what I seem to recall hearing, does have medium range ballistic missiles to put their nukes in.

I don’t want to seem to be defending the possibly pending decision to attack Iraq, mind you, just discussing some practical issues.

9

What do you mean? It’s been all over the news for the past few months.

10

[patiently] When . . . did . . . the . . . White . . . House . . . say . . . that . . . Iraq . . . already . . . has . . . nuclear . . . weapons?[/patiently]

There’s a big difference between having and seeking, which was Ferrous’s point.

11

why don’t we go to war with ourselves? we got more nukes than anybody …

no really, why do we hate NK ? i am totally clueless …

12

North Korea is a police state run by a megalomaniacal dictator and has a history of instigating attacks on South Korea, selling arms to Middle East bad guys, and is suspected of amassing a devil’s cauldron of NBC weapons. North Korea orchestrates the lives of its people to a degree that we in the United States can scarcle understand. People who arew caught in their attempts to flee North Korea and are retruend are shot, along with their immediate families. Friends and family spy on each other and a casual remark that can be interpreted as anti-state sentiment can land someone in one of the Kumgangsan gulags.

North Korea has committed many acts of aggression against its southern neighbor over the years:
In 1968, NK captured the USS Pueblo and imprisoned and tortured its crew for a year.

1n 1974, NK killed the wife of Park Chung Hee, South Koerea’s president.

In 1976, a squad of North Korean soldiers killed two US soldiers with axes in the DMZ.

1n 1983, NK agents tried to kill President Chun Doo Hwan during a visit to Burma and succeeded in killing 17 members of the South Korean delegation.

In 1987, North Korean agents blew up a South Korean civilian airliner, killing 155 people.
In addition, there have been several violations of the armistice by North Korean military incursions into South Korean territory, including tunnels dug under the DMZ to allow men and vehicles to invade the South. When I was living in South Korea, North Korean warmongers were threatening to turn Seoul into a "lake of fire, " North Korean infiltrators engaged in a crossfire woth South Korean forces near Puyo in Chungnam province, and a North Korean subs were captured in South Korean waters.

North Korea is a very bad actor.

13

but, since NK doesn’t have oil, we’ll let them slide until Cheney & Co. sews up the Iraqi oil business (cutting in France, which was the price of getting them to go along - who knows what Germany is going to get out of it?)

14

I’ll take this one, DR…

Cite?

15

IIRC, Cheney & Co = Halliburton, selling oil field equipment to Iraq (in violation of the UN terms about which we are now so deeply concerned)

France’s quiessence was bought by a promise that the “new regime” in Iraq would honor the (sizable - reactors aren’t cheap) debts to French companies.

Germany has been all over the place re supporting a war - never, well - maybe, if the UN authorized it, well maybe the US/UK could go it alone - they’re fishing for something.

16

I think what you missed, happyheathen, is that North Korea actually does have quite a bit of oil - it just hasn’t been exploited. Some estimates are as high as 8-10 billion tons of high-grade crude, or about 70 billion barrels, mostly offshore. In comparison, Iraq’s oil reserves are about 115 billion barrels.

You leftists just have to learn to let go of the big oil conspiracy. It’s nutty.

17

Dream on Sam. N Korean oil is unattainable with current technology. At least that’s what my buddies and clients in the oil business out here say. It’s the same old news over those silly islands that Japan, Korea and China (actually it was some publicity stunt by some Hong Kongese and one drowned). Apologies for not remembering the name of the islands.

Anyhoo, there may be oil but it can’t be had easily or economically, whereas Iraq oil is pretty cheap to extract.

I would also like to see a cite where it’s been proven that Iraq has nuclear weapons. The German Chancellor didn’t seem to think there was substantiated proof.

18

Reasons 1-4 would be oil, but really aren’t. The only way we got the UN to say diddly was to let Russia and the hypocritical French get their assurance that their oil contracts would be carried over should a new government take over.

Reason 5 is the appearance of the War on Terrorism (tm 2001, USA, known as Wot from now on). Face it, Americans are lazy and dumb, and it is a lot easier to buy the whole “They’re Arabs just like them Saudis in Afghanistan using Pakistan that we’re using and ignoring conveniently along with the Saudis themselves”)

Reason 6 is Oh Crap We Are Running Out Of Allies Around There Hey We Need A Puppet Government In A Key Location.

Reasons 5+6 is Reason 11, which is to keep rolling on and throw off the balance of power entirely. Our biggest failure in Desert Storm was that we didn’t change squat when we left. Now we have an excuse, we have a reason to hide behind (Wot), and doing so would hand us a state with a rebellious population willing to co-operate and run a puppet government, which would change the balance of power in places as diverse as Saudi Arabia and the Saudi part of Arabia. It takes a major pain of an arms shipper and harbor of all kinds of undesirables out of the picture.

The Beast of History looming in the distance is hissing and reminding me that half the regimes that we set up as puppet states pretty much immediately considered us enemies, but for now we can push that out of our minds… even though the groups we would work with have every right to turn on us… ah, a discussion for a future year.

Really, I think a lot of it comes down to image. Take out the Taliban, and no one really cares. They didn’t have a huge army and modern state. Take out Iraq, and it looks like the mighty fist of American power has reached out and vaporized a strong institution, undoubtably making other nations shake in their booties (or turbans, if you want to be racist). Basically, there are a number of good reasons to take out Iraq, most of them rotating around it being easiest of the “Axis of Evil” (and here I thought our ass was getting nice and shiny from Iran playing nice).

Interesting game of cat and mouse. Makes me wonder how we’re going to convince China to take out North Korea for us. Oops. Can’t wait until we get to Africa. That’ll be a bloody mess. But then again, considering our sharp response to terrorism in Pakistan, we’ll probably turn a blind eye because it is more difficult.

19

Well, China does need to test out the troops…Naw, really, that one is a little far fetched. It’s not like China needs more poor population, they’ve got enough of their own already in the NE provinces that border N. Korea.

20

War with Iraq is intended to enforce the terms of the cease-fire Iraq agreed to at the end of the Gulf War. North Korea hasn’t invaded South Korea and attempted to annex her lately (as Iraq did with Kuwait), and no UN resolution has been passed regarding North Korea’s hideous human rights violations. So the situations are quite different, diplomatically.

North Korea has nukes and we want to prevent her from using them either to attack or to intimidate. Iraq wants nukes, and we want to prevent her from acquiring them. Hence the sanctions, and the threats of regime change to ensure that Saddam does not revert to his usual “cheat and retreat” strategy.

I suspect if, absent nukes, North Korea invaded South Korea and/or China and were driven out, and some cease-fire agreed to, and it was violated as Iraq violates her agreements, North Korea would be in a situation similar to that of Iraq today. But it has been some fifty years or so since North Korea was driven out of South Korea, and most of the violations mentioned in gobear’s post are low-level from a diplomatic point of view.

North Korea isn’t any better than Iraq, they are just in a different geo-political relation with the rest of the world.

In both cases, however, we are trying to avert nuclear war, and the use of other WMD. We have to approach NK differently, since they already have the bomb.

Regards,
Shodan