That’s like arguing that a 100-degree (F) fever doesn’t count as a medical symptom because your body temperature is already about 99% of the way to 100 degrees at any given moment.
Just because most readings occur far over to one end of the scale doesn’t necessarily mean that small differences in the readings are unimportant.
[QUOTE=Velocity]
It’s nothing but a solemn-pretending stunt to whip up hysteria.
[/QUOTE]
Yup, because everybody knows how uneventful and boring world events were back in 1947 when the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists first introducd the Doomsday Clock (set at seven minutes to midnight). Nobody really had anything better to do than to whip up a little hysteria.
Is there good reason to believe a successor would be reasonable and moderate? I worry that the closest aides, called upon to control the “button” in Kim’s absence, might be brainwashed fanatics.
Events might backfire if a petulant Trump learns where Kim is spending the night and takes him out with a cruise missile.
Great news-war with N. K. is a lot less likely! At least based on the latest news.
The Pentagon now says that the only way to assure that all nuclear weapons are removed from N. K. would be a land invasion.
While the only significant, to the US, goal is to remove the long-range missiles, I don’t believe Trump would start a war and not promise to remove the nukes. Nukes are the scary bit. People won’t get excited about a missile by itself. And I don’t think either he or anyone in the US is willing to start a land war in asia. Which to me means that Trump is going to have to start some other tweet storm to distract the public from his backing down on war with N. K…
You’re missing the point. You are the one arguing that the status quo that has existed within the Korean peninsula over the last 64 years is imminently going to change. It’s been pointed out to you many times that 64 years without an attack leads most of us to believe the peace will be sustained. You have yet to respond to that from I can see.
So what is so fundamentally different now from any other time over the last 64 years?
I’d guess (I’m not going to count for you) that close to 100 US Service men have been killed by NK since the end of the war and still there was no war.
A US warship was captured and it’s crew tortured and held for close to a year, NK still holds the ship and still no war.
Other than the unsubstantiated belief that you have that the Pentagon is just chomping at the bit to invade another country, what evidence do you have that at the very least the US and SK are ready to attack NK? You’re making the claim that a fundamental shift is imminent now. The burden of proof is on you, not on us.
I’m not arguing that anything substantial has changed on the Korean peninsula. I’m arguing that something substantial has changed in the U.S., and military and government officials here are stating that something has fundamentally changed to elevate North Korea from annoyance to immediate problem that we have to deal with, now.
I’m also arguing that our foreign policy has shifted over the last 16 years so that neither broad support, U.N. approval, nor Congressional approval is required for us to attack another country. I think I’ve made it relatively clear why I’m taking this position, so I won’t bother rehashing it again.
I suspect unless you haven’t been following any news for the last year, you know exactly what I’m talking about. There isn’t a week that goes by that the President. general, or U.S. official isn’t being quoted in the news about the North Korean crisis. I might continue to share unique developments, but I’m not going to out of my way to demonstrate that a problem exists in the first place. The question is what our response to the problem will be.
Interesting read, thank you. I maintain that an incident such as this in 1968, versus one that happened today, would be handled quite differently.I don’t understand how you can possibly maintain that the current administration would employ diplomacy rather than launching an attack in response to North Korea firing on a U.S. warship, much less capturing one, but it would certainly be nice.
I’ll grant that a nuclear NK with ICBM capability has changed the discussion somewhat. Making a war with NK imminent, not even close.
Well Congress passed the War Powers Act in 1973, so I think your 16 year time frame is a bit off. Presidents have been pushing to have less restraint in using the military since WWII. Your 16 year window goes back to Bush, and I’m sure you’re not a fan of his obviously. But he did have Congressional approval (some would argue given under false pretenses).
I get the impression that by imminent, you truly think it’s within the next couple of weeks. I don’t think you understand the type of war that the US would have with NK. I don’t know how old you are (not a slam) but the build up for the wars in the Middle east in 1990 and 2003 required an extensive buildup. To attack NK, the US would have to have hand-in-glove cooperation with SK, who would have to except extensive civilian casualties. So there is a bit of a build in governor in US ability to go to war with NK.
You really don’t think the US could invade next week do you?
This might be a “my bad” on my part then. If you just wanted to backhandedly argue that the Trump administration is as blood thirsty as the Pentagon, I wish I had caught that earlier, and I wouldn’t have jumped into this at all. I thought this was deeper than the standard Trump = Evil but perhaps not.