Nope. I’m sure that you’ll be suitably shocked that the North Korean air force includes a wide variety of fighters and bombers, most of them much newer than you seem to believe:
Most of it is still somewhat dated, but not from the 1950s. For example, the nation has approximately 40 Mig-29s, which are from the 1980s:
You’re zero for two, my friend. The vast majority of the 20 Romeos used by the North Korean navy were in fact built in North Korea no earlier than the 1970s:
Dude please, don’t tell me you’re trying to convince us the NK military is something to be reckoned with, it’s not. It can have all the best weapons in the world, but if it’s maintainence is neglected, it’s pretty much becomes a paper army. The NK leadership is aware of this, and this is why it goes to lengths to use its military as a deterrent, rather than anything else. i.e offensive force.
First of all, it is not your right to determine what kind of future the Afghanis need. That is a question for them and them alone. Your typical Imperial arrogance sickens and disgusts me.
Secondly, agreeing with a war’s aims does not automatically prevent it from being a quagmire. It’s a quagmire not because it’s unjust, but because you’re still getting slaughtered nearly a decade after “victory.” In fact, the brave Afghani freedom fighters are slaughtering more and more of you invaders with each passing year:
http://icasualties.org/OEF/index.aspx
You are seriously misguided. You couldn’t defeat North Korea 50 years ago, and you cannot defeat Afghanistan now… But somehow you would presently magically win a hypothetical war against a well-armed opponent? Right. The Empire is anything but gun-shy; the fact that it hasn’t tried to invade North Korea in half a century should tell you something.
And what are you babbling about when you assert that North Korea can’t “feed a moving army?” What, a “moving” army will outrun the food supply? They have trucks, you know. If they can feed a stationary army, they can feed a moving one.
Well, there you go. If they could feed anyone, there’d be no problem. Once again, care to guess who’s actually providing the food to the failed state due north of my locale? And the United Nations forces had pretty much defeated the North Korean forces back in the 1950s. Do you know what happened? The Chinese sent massive numbers of troops, ostensibly volunteers but really were no such thing, across the river between China and Korea.
No, there’s no if involved here, unless you are incredibly uninformed or, more likely, intentionally misinformed when you purport to live in the US. The UN Command has no worries about utimately winning an actual shooting war against the DPRK. The issue for them, and what the DPRK is relying on, is how much damage will be done to the ROK before that blight, the DPRK, is gone for good.
And they got to vote for their leadership rather than the Taliban rule-by-force fiefdom that existed so because of our intervention you got your wish.
And you’re 1950’s political rants on communism ignores the abysmal track record communism has had throughout history. that you can ignore the millions of citizens who died under those regimes is mind boggling.
Again, if there was any way to insert you into one of those countries it would do wonders for your education.
I’m not condoning their actions either. I am just trying to dispel the notion that this was some random act of violence. It was a response to South Korean military exercises that fired artillery into North Korean waters in an environment that has gotten very tense recently.
My second point is that while much of the tension is the result of the nuclearization of North Korea, a lot of it is the result of the change in diplomatic posture by South Korea since they elected a conservative government.
In other words, much of the tension is a result of the south refusing to continue being extorted by North Korea while NK violated treaties, attacked the south and nuked up.
Much like much of the tension in a mugging is over that stubborn bastard refusing to give up his wallet.
That’s my opinion of it. The North threatens and postures, and occasionally does outrageous things, while expecting the South to lie back, take it, and continue to pony up aid and food. (Obviously, if their system was superior, they wouldn’t need it.) Now it’s Blame The Victim time by saying “Well, if the South hadn’t stopped bending over to take it, the North wouldn’t be getting all worked up!” That’s bullshit, clear and simple.
Behavior that is rewarded is repeated. Stop rewarding the behavior.
:rolleyes:
And I have to dispel the notion that I said something like that (that it was a random act of violence).
I already acknowledged that the South did shot first at the sea that the North claims. Once again the point stands, even if the North is correct on where the shells landed, still the response was beyond what anyone can accept as civilized.
I will go here for what **FinnAgain **said.
Much like the type of governments that you support that suppress and murder their own people en masse, effectively making decisions for them, sickens me.
You are the one that is seriously misguided if you’re comparing Afghanistan to North Korea. We could have defeated North Korea 50 years ago…but thought better of waging a war directly against China once they intervened as we were pushing our way northwards…if MacArthur had had his way, North Korea and parts of China would have been smoking holes of radioactive ash.
And why would we have invaded North Korea all these years when everything up until recently was in a nice state of detente? They are of no strategic interest to us…and are somewhat tolerated and supported by a major economic trading partner of ours.
And furthermore, North Korea gets mass amounts of food from South Korea. Why do you keep dodging that point? Its South Korea that is a peaceful, prosperous nation that is trying to help out the people of the North (read: not the horrible government regime) and most of them probably want a reunification of the peninsula as well, but that’s a pipe dream as long as the Kim family keeps its people in a brainwashed cloud of subjugation.
So, the South is at fault because the North is claiming the water around an island the South already occupies and when the South fires shells southward and the shells fall into those waters, it’s an attack on the North.
Does that even approach the realm of logic?
I’ve been going over the Wikipedia article on the NK Airforce, & it looks grim for Kim.
Most of his cr@p would be hard-pressed to outfly a beagle in a Spwith Camel, much less the US Naval Air arm.
Whole damn war might be over before we get anything other than Navy & Airborne forces over there.
South Korea could own these clowns, any Saturday night.
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?162240-Bluffer-s-Guide-North-Korea-strikes
This might actually be more useful than wikipedia. The gentleman who wrote this spent a long time doing photoanalysis of Google Earth results, and has largely pinpointed most NK artillery pieces. It’s… actually not quite as bad for South Korea as I thought. It might be possible to stomp them if SK attacked first.
Maybe.
There’s a detailed analysis of North Korea’s air force and their artillery corps, which is very educational.
The deal is that, unlike North Korea, the South long ago committed to not attacking first.
Yeah and that idea was being used to defend why the South Koreans weren’t prepared. My point is that no matter how many times North Korea bluffs, you can’t lob artillery shells into their territory and be unprepared for some sort of retaliation.
I don’t know if you truly didn’t understand what I was saying and thought I literally meant that I approved of what NK did or if you are being deliberately obtuse.
The measurement isn’t subjective. Either shooting artillery into someone else’s territory is or is not a big deal. Once again, I don’t condone anything NK did but once again, this wasn’t some random act of violence. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13176014&postcount=72
I don’t remember saying anything about WWIII. So you think that we wouldn’t really give a shit if Russia started lobbing shells into our side of the Bering strait, less than 10 miles from Alaskan land. Good to know.
Well its not. Once again, I don’t condone anything NK did but they warned SK that they would attack if they did that splishy splashy thing, SK went ahead and went splish splash and NK sent some artillery shells at a SK military base and killed two soldiers and two civilians. I’m not excusing what NK did but they were provoked, SK wasn’t doing something that was “well within it rights” they were thumbing their nose at NK and NK stuck their finger in SK eye. SK can now turn around and kick NK in the groin and so forth and so on but that is not a one sided argument.
It was not unprovoked and it was against a military base. I don’t excuse NK’s actions but there are two sides to this argument, even SK media wonders out loud why SK was shooting artillery into contested territory. THEIR media wonders whether the current administration is to blame for the deterioration of relations between NK and SK.
From the article: “The main aim of the policy was to soften North Korea’s attitudes towards the South by encouraging interaction and economic assistance.”
I don’t see where it says that the purpose of the sunshine policy was based on NK nuclear program. That sounds like projection to me. You WANT it to be about NK nuclear program but the sunshine policy achieved quite a bit.
The industrial park in NK has factories owned and oerated by Samsung, LG, Daewoo and almost every other large SK company.
NK opened its most prominent tourist attractions to SK citizens for the first time in half a century.
SK citizens were able to visit long lost relatives on the NK side for the first time since war broke out in 1950.
Relations between NK and SK were getting considerably warmer stoking speculation about reunification and the opening of NK.
You’re joking, right? Over half their inventory is MiG-17s, Il-28s, Su-7, J-5 ( a Chinese MiG-17 knockoff), and J-6s (Chinese MiG-19 knockoff). These were state of the art in Soviet aviation in the 1950s.
If you’d just gone one more click on wiki you’d see that the Romeo is a Soviet design from the 1950s:
Yeah and that idea was being used to defend why the South Koreans weren’t prepared. My point is that no matter how many times North Korea bluffs, you can’t lob artillery shells into their territory and be unprepared for some sort of retaliation.
I don’t know if you truly didn’t understand what I was saying and thought I literally meant that I approved of what NK did or if you are being deliberately obtuse.
The measurement isn’t subjective. Either shooting artillery into someone else’s territory is or is not a big deal. Once again, I don’t condone anything NK did but once again, this wasn’t some random act of violence. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13176014&postcount=72
I don’t remember saying anything about WWIII. So you think that we wouldn’t really give a shit if Russia started lobbing shells into our side of the Bering strait, less than 10 miles from Alaskan land. Good to know.
Well its not. Once again, I don’t condone anything NK did but they warned SK that they would attack if they did that splishy splashy thing, SK went ahead and went splish splash and NK sent some artillery shells at a SK military base and killed two soldiers and two civilians. I’m not excusing what NK did but they were provoked, SK wasn’t doing something that was “well within it rights” they were thumbing their nose at NK and NK stuck their finger in SK eye. SK can now turn around and kick NK in the groin and so forth and so on but that is not a one sided argument.
It was not unprovoked and it was against a military base. I don’t excuse NK’s actions but there are two sides to this argument, even SK media wonders out loud why SK was shooting artillery into contested territory. THEIR media wonders whether the current administration is to blame for the deterioration of relations between NK and SK.
From the article: “The main aim of the policy was to soften North Korea’s attitudes towards the South by encouraging interaction and economic assistance.”
I don’t see where it says that the purpose of the sunshine policy was based on NK nuclear program. That sounds like projection to me. You WANT it to be about NK nuclear program but the sunshine policy achieved quite a bit.
The industrial park in NK has factories owned and oerated by Samsung, LG, Daewoo and almost every other large SK company.
NK opened its most prominent tourist attractions to SK citizens for the first time in half a century.
SK citizens were able to visit long lost relatives on the NK side for the first time since war broke out in 1950.
Relations between NK and SK were getting considerably warmer stoking speculation about reunification and the opening of NK.
How about just continuing the sunshine policy? SK citizens were pretty happy with that policy and the results it was getting.
If anything I have said indicates I am taking NK’s side over SK then I must not be communicating very well or failing to convey the not so subtle nuance I am trying to convey.
NK is a failing state that is undergoing a succession crisis and the current SK administration’s militaristic attitude is tipping an already unstable sitUATION.
I’d forgive them for breaking that commitment.
South Korean media confirms that the SK military exercise involved shooting artillery into contested waters (almost all the water surrounding that military base is contested).
Sending food aid is something that happens regardless of how crazy they act. Most nations do not condition humanitarian aid on the behaviour of the government. If Cuba was in famine, we would ship them food, if Iran’s people were suffering famine or suffering the aftermath of a deadly earthquake, we would send them food and aid.
The one area where we do “bribe” them is we offer them alternative technology (I think we gave them the technology for light water nuclear reactors, the kind that you can’t use to create nukes) and may have even offered to build it for them) to get them to stop pursuing their nuclear ambitions.