Just lose the “Axis of Evil” phrase. Your boy blew it. Saddam Hussein was no threat. Iranian legislators are no real threat.
NK is, a bit. But your boy was too busy to do anything about it.
No, it wasn’t. Reaching the Moon, especially with a two way craft with people on board goes far beyond what’s necessary for that.
I’ve heard (today) that the Persian phrase “marg bar X”, literally translated as “death to X”, is standardly used idiomatically like our own “down with X”, without such violent connotations as the literal translation brings to mind.
Whether or not that’s true, I’d like to see a cite that Iranian legislative sessions are routinely closed with such a chant directed at America, if that is indeed what you are claiming.
Can we just sticky a thread in GD for endlessly rehashing the Iraq War debate and people can just link it when they feel a hijack coming on?
North Korea’s missiles are of questionable quality, it’s nukes are of limited number and questionable quality and they certainly don’t have the capability to play the same MAD game we engaged in with Russia.
Their primary deterrent is the same it’s been for the last fifty years. They can use conventional weapons to destroy the (pop. 10 million) city of Seoul in a very short amount of time and China will come to their defense if we invade without a go ahead from Beijing.
New question and slight highjack…
Lets say the worst case scenario with NK comes true. We currently have so many forces in the middle East, what do we have left to send to NK? Personally, I think China would be on our side, so maybe we wouldn’t need 50k or 100k soldiers over there.
North Korea launchs a nuclear weapon against the United States? Here’s what happens.
Kim announces via North Korean television that he has defied the American dragon and all oppressed nations of the Earth can rally under his banner. He is surprised when every other country on Earth, including Cuba and Iran, denounce him as a crazy warmonger. Even Osama bin Laden sends him a snippy note for upstaging him.
Barack Obama appears before Congress and tells them that North Korea has declared war on the United States via their unprovoked attack. A few legal scholars quibble that we’re technically already at war with North Korea. But just to be sure we’re all on the same page, Congress unanimously votes to give the President full authorization to do whatever is necessary to prevent further attacks and authorizes the use of military force.
Obama appears before the United Nations and calls upon Kim to surrender to avoid further bloodshed. Kim, delusional as ever, thinks he can hold out.
A special assembly of the United Nations Security Council is called. Hillary Clinton tells them the United States is invading North Korea next Tuesday and does anyone have any objections they’d like to raise? Everyone says no, Kim’s on his own, do what you got to do.
Operation Victory and Guaranteed Re-Election commences. North Korea learns the difference between being a regional power and a superpower. Kim and his generals are shot by Chinese border guards while trying to flee the country. VK Day is declared two weeks after the nuclear attack.
The problem with rogue states like NK having these weapons is that MAD doesn’t exist. We have the capacity to destroy them, but they do not have the same capacity.
The point to developing these weapons are not to allow NK to perform a first strike on us it is to deter* us *from attacking them conventionally. This way it keeps our and SK’s force on the southern side of the DMZ and gives him a bargaining chip to allow him to sabre rattle with us to show his people that he is still a relevent world leader that America has to reckon with. As long as he has the capacity to hit Hawaii or Japan or South Korea we are forced to occasionally look at him and sigh while muttering “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You are such a big man, here’s some money. go away.”, which for him counts as a victory.
Hmmm. When was the last time the US or SK violated NK’s territory?
I agree that he wants to join the Nuclear club, and, in some way, garner more international respect or bargaining power, but I don’t think there is any credence in NK’s claims that the US wants to restart the Korean War.
If NK actually threatened to Nuke SK, Japan, or American targets (even in an attempt to get more grain shipments out of the US or something), he will have become a more real threat than Bush claimed Saddam was.
In short, I don’t see how getting more (or more reliable) missile and nukes is going to substantially change NK’s position on the world stage.
Possibly, but you forgot the last step.
After the invasion, it turns out he got rid of all his WMDs already.
Then Bush wakes up next to Suzanne Pleshette, and it was all a dream.
Regards,
Shodan
We send the South Koreans. They have a fine army of their own. Then we reinforce and support them for the mid- to long-term.
My take on the situation is a little different. I don’t think NK has any intention of nuking anybody. I think he is testing Obama, wanting to see if he’ll be able to get a better deal than he was offered under the previous administration.
Also think he’s mistaken in thinking Obama is somehow “softer” than Bush on foreign policy and nuclear sabre rattling. Obama seems willing to take action if necessary, after exhausting all reasonable alternatives.
An attack on SK, Japan, or the U.S. is suicide for Kim, and likely the begining of the end for his country.
As for a direct response on what could we do if…as noted above, we possess the present ability to make any point on the face of the earth a radioactive wasteland. We also have the ability to deliver conventional bombs pretty much anywhere on the planet, whether by airplane or ship/sub-launched cruise missles. We can dominate the sky over all of Korea fairly easily with air assets already in the neighborhood plus whatever carriers are handy. On the ground, we have enough forces in place to at least slow down an all out assualt into SK, without even considering the SK military.
Don’t forget the part that as soon as we actually begin to stage resources, or state that we will without question, be invading, that Seoul is immediately bombarded by artillery and rocket attack, possibly with chemical weapons.
What sucks about that is, no matter how badly he works to destory Seoul, it won’t matter. And he probably knows that, but once he pulls the trigger, he HAS to try to hit SK.
Yeah, like that regularly happens. :rolleyes:
Well, it’s not like N. Korea nukes an American city very regularly either.
I suspect China would not only be on are side against N. Korea if such a thing happened, but try and launch their own invasion quickly to try and prevent the US/S. Koreans from taking over the country without having to give the Chinese a say in its fate.
I think it does. Getting more allows them to have some, and, more importantly, sell them to other countries/organizations. So, even if the range is only 4k miles, launching it from a different country opens up more targets (Israel, Europe). I think while NK is a threat by having nukes, NK selling them is an even graver threat.
I also don’t think North Korea will ever launch a nuke at any anyone because their Government will have been overthrown before that ever happens.
This doesn’t seem likely. If NK puts a hot space track up in the air, the American artillery in SK would bury the country, or at least any likely site capable of launching further missiles or planes. No way the US lets the bird land and then chats about it so that NK has a chance to put another up. If NK comes across the border into SK same things going to happen, and I doubt Obama would even get consulted.
If the nuke is not shot down or intercepted at sea, or fissles, I agree with everything you said.
If that nuke goes off and kills americans, then no , the ball game changes.
Declan
That seems likely to me. If they were as crazy as some poeple like to claim, they’d long since have done something, well, crazy that got them destroyed.
I find that highly unlikely. If they sold it to someone who used it on, say, us, we’d smash them. And it would be another country, not an “organization”, in the unlikely event they sold it to anyone.
Is Hamas an organization or a country? It might be semantics, but that’s who I’m thinking of.
Yea, we’d smash em real good. It won’t ever get to that point. I don’t think they will sell it to anyone, because NK will be no longer before it gets to that point.
If this isn’t taken care of through diplomatic and economic means, then we’ll preventively attack them and remove the Government and unify Korea.
From what I understand China is largely keeping them afloat plus a lot of aid the US has delivered in the past to buy them off of the Nuke issue.
China is very against the fall of North Korea for one main reason, illegal immigration. China has no desire to all of a sudden support 10 million illegal aliens jumping the fence. What largely keeps this in check now are the extremely harsh punishments NK hands to anyone caught (those prison camps we hear so much about these days).