US and Korea "Slipping Into War"

[Q Classic]

Let the Chinese deal with their problem child. They've propped up this mess of a nation for years and now are trying to back out. Sorry. No dice.

If the US gets involved to rid the world of this nasty regime, how long before the rest of the world starts howling about imperialism again? I say we pass on this one.

we're involved. we're allied with skorea. they're involved.

we were the ones who allowed the soviet army to come in the north, because we didn't have the manpower to take it all ourselves.

we've been involved since the inception of the two halves.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Gunk: Since Europeans are saying the same about the US in Iraq, I can symphatize with that statement .

But we should get in there and help out because we aren't as petty as those Eurocoms .

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
we're involved. we're allied with skorea. they're involved.

Speaking of which, has Roh moved beyond the cheap talk he has used in the past and started demanding some degree of reciprocity from the North for the aid they give?

[Whaleboy]

As a matter of interest, what objective right does any nation have to nukes, and what separates NK from the USA in that respect?

[Japher]

The Pacific?

[Sava]

As a matter of interest, what objective right does any nation have to nukes, and what separates NK from the USA in that respect?

Sorry, I don't want evil people having nukes... call me hypocritical... but that's the way I see it.

[HershOstropoler]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Gunk: Since Europeans are saying the same about the US in Iraq, I can symphatize with that statement .

Well there's a slight difference between NK and Iraq.

[Whaleboy]

Who/What/where/why/how is evil?

Its all very well to say "I am a nation and I have nukes, and I dont want any others to have them", but I dont respect that.

I respect an independent body who says "a nation can or cant have nukes".

IMO its down to the individual nation to decide, and if others dont like it, then they should not force their views on another, as that other has the same right to nukes as they do.

Of course, ideally, I'd like no nation to have nukes.

[gunkulator]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Q Cubed
we're involved. we're allied with skorea. they're involved.[/quote

The Cold War is over. Time for North and South Korea to work out their differences by themselves. China and Japan have some regional interests because they would bear the brunt of any refugees but this really isn't the US' domain anymore.

we were the ones who allowed the soviet army to come in the north, because we didn't have the manpower to take it all ourselves.

So one military mistake 50 years ago is the basis for foreign policy today? No, I don't think so. Besides, once Russia or China was involved, we had to back down. Now all the big players want to back out and leave it to the locals. What's wrong with that?

we've been involved since the inception of the two halves.

We've also meddled with the creation Phillipines, Panama and Israel. Today those countries manage themselves - with the US and other countries providing aid of course. I have nothing against helping SK function as a nation, but it should stand mostly on its own. OTOH, a UN led intervention is another story.

Imran

Since Europeans are saying the same about the US in Iraq, I can symphatize with that statement

Indeed. At the moment there's no one coming out against US intervention, but I would expect that to change once the shooting starts. There apparently is a lot of political gain to be made in other countries by dumping on the US. I guess it's only OK for the US to topple dictatorships if we gain no benefit whatsoever - oh, and if we also don't hurt our allies' cushy deals with evil regimes.

[edit- didn't finish a sentence]

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Japher
The Pacific?

Good enough for me.

[Pekka]

I think Europeans don't condemn NK as bad as Iraq if attack happens. NK has openly threatened the US, has admitted having nukes etc. It is also hostile, and not very friendly to anyone. It is also weird place. I think NK at the moment is very legit target.

[Q Classic]

pres. roh? nobody likes him.
and i don't think his policy's changed that much. he says he wants reciprocation, and that nkorea must denuclearize in order for skorea to continue aiding it, but he's shown himself to be a weak president, caving to labor unions and not doing anything well.

[Q Classic]

Now all the big players want to back out and leave it to the locals. What's wrong with that?

does it look like the big players want out? nope. the us is still there. so's china. leaving it to the locals would be allowing the koreans to do what they damn well want to do, which is reunify.

We've also meddled with the creation Phillipines, Panama and Israel. Today those countries manage themselves - with the US and other countries providing aid of course. I have nothing against helping SK function as a nation, but it should stand mostly on its own. OTOH, a UN led intervention is another story.

sk does stand on its own. korea does manage itself, far better than the philippines and panama do, mind you, and without the global recrimination israel gets. you think the 37k american actually do anything in korea? they're a speed bump that ensures that the us is involved.

what i was saying is that america is involved, no matter what we want. nkorea doesn't want to extort things from skorea; there's no sport in it. it wants to extort things from the us. that's the issue here.

Indeed. At the moment there's no one coming out against US intervention, but I would expect that to change once the shooting starts.

actually, nobody in the world wants us military intervention in nkorea.
least of all those most directly affected, the skoreans, japanese, and chinese.

[Q Classic]

btw, about the title:

these days (since the 70's and early 80's, anyway), saying "korea" by itself is linked more to south korea. before then, it generally referred to the north.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
does it look like the big players want out? nope. the us is still there. so's china. leaving it to the locals would be allowing the koreans to do what they damn well want to do, which is reunify.

Then they don't need us. We'll just take our troops out and let you two go at it.

[Q Classic]

We'll just take our troops out and let you two go at it.

you'd lose two of the countries that make up a good bunch of your electronics (skorea, and japan with missiles is likely, just 'cause kji is a crazy fcuk.). i bet you'd be unhappy about that.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by elijah
Of course, ideally, I'd like no nation to have nukes.

So would the US.

[gunkulator]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
does it look like the big players want out? nope. the us is still there. so's china.

US is there at SK's request. We have no interest other than historical. As for China, they'd like nothing more than to rid themselves of their little noisy monster. China is working hard to improve its relationships with other nations. NK only drags it down.

leaving it to the locals would be allowing the koreans to do what they damn well want to do, which is reunify.

By all means, they should go right ahead. Who would stop them and why?

you think the 37k american actually do anything in korea? they're a speed bump that ensures that the us is involved.

Agreed. It costs us money and gains us nothing. I say bring 'em home. In any case they should pose no threat to reunification.

it wants to extort things from the us. that's the issue here.

And unfortunately, Clinton was fool enough to fall for it. The best thing Bush has done is completely ignore the yapping little dog that is NK.

actually, nobody in the world wants us military intervention in nkorea.
least of all those most directly affected, the skoreans, japanese, and chinese.

Of course, so SK should tell its pesky little brother to stop threatening the world's most powerful nation. NK foreign policy is completely dense. Bush ain't Clinton. He's proven he's not afraid to pull the trigger when the mood strikes him. Kim's threats to Dubya are more likely to result in a cruise missile up his @ss than the filthy lucre that he's really after.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well there's a slight difference between NK and Iraq.

The key word is 'slight'. North Korea is China's *****.

[gopher]

North, South Korea Soldiers Exchange Fire
29 minutes ago Add World -

From AP World Wire

SEOUL, South Korea - South and North Korean soldiers briefly exchanged machine gun fire along their border on Thursday, but the South Korean military said it did not suffer casualties in the shootout.



It was not immediately known whether any North Korean troops were injured or killed in the firefight in the Demilitarized Zone, a buffer area that was created at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War to keep opposing armies apart.


Tension on the Korean Peninsula is high over North Korea (news - web sites)'s suspected development of nuclear weapons, and such shooting incidents in the DMZ are rare. In recent years, however, reconciliation efforts have moved forward despite such outbreaks of violence.


In Washington, the Pentagon (news - web sites) had no comment.


North Korean soldiers fired four rounds at 6:10 a.m., and South Korean soldiers fired 17 rounds in response one minute later, said Maj. Lee of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff. He speculated the North Koreans were using machine guns, and said the South was using a machine gun called a K-3.


Under terms of the armistice that ended the Korean War, North and South Korean soldiers can patrol in the DMZ, but they are not allowed to carry heavy weapons such as machine guns.


Lee, who did not give his first name, said he could not comment on whether the South Korean soldiers were violating the weaponry rules. He said the incident happened near the South Korean town of Yonchon.


Over the decades, violence has periodically erupted at the DMZ, though such incidents have tapered off in recent years. The area is laced with tank traps, minefields, fences and observation posts.


The nuclear dispute flared in October when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted it had a clandestine nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement with Washington.


The United States and its allies suspended fuel shipments promised under the 1994 deal, and Pyongyang retaliated by expelling U.N. monitors, restarting facilities capable of making fuel for nuclear bombs and withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.


This week, U.S. officials said they were not sure whether North Korean representatives were bluffing or telling the truth when they claimed last week to have finished extracting plutonium — a key ingredient for nuclear weapons — from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods.

Looks like NK is really trying to press the buttons, eh?

[Ned]

I think we are a bit overstreached militarily and are trying to avoid a war with NK. In today's news con, the new CentCom Commander said that we did not have troops to relieve the last two brigades of the 3rd ID in Iraq until September. Since this Iraqi war will continue for some time, the US will have to avoid conflicts elsewhere or beef up the military. However, the latter choice may be politically unpopular due to the cost. So I actually see nothing happening in NK for a number of years.

[mindseye]

I'm afraid the US is at this moment quite unable to go to war with anyone else (which is why NK is getting so bold lately). We've probably got at least five years of guerilla war in "W's Vietnam" before we can take on anything else.

[Vandal-1]

Originally posted by Q Cubed

Quote:

We'll just take our troops out and let you two go at it.

you'd lose two of the countries that make up a good bunch of your electronics (skorea, and japan with missiles is likely, just 'cause kji is a crazy fcuk.). i bet you'd be unhappy about that.

Illegal N Korean cargo now in Japanese sights
By Mark Riley and Shane Green in Tokyo
July 14 2003





Japan is expected to pledge its support this week for a multinational naval force to intercept North Korean vessels suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction or illicit drugs.

North Korea's nuclear arms program will be at the top of the agenda when the Prime Minister, John Howard, meets his Japanese counterpart, Junichiro Koizumi, in Tokyo on Wednesday.

Japanese newspapers reported yesterday that the leaders planned to sign a bilateral agreement that would commit Japan to backing the joint position taken by the 11 member nations of the Protection Security Initiative (PSI) in Brisbane last week.

The PSI nations agreed to pursue an international legal framework that would allow them to launch a military blockade of North Korean vessels.

Japan's Yomiuri newspaper said the agreement would beef up the export control system in the Asia-Pacific Rim, with the aim of putting pressure on Pyongyang.


Mr Howard's week-long Asian visit begins today in Manila, where he and the Philippine President, Gloria Arroyo will discuss the broadening of Australia's bilateral security agreement. After Tokyo he will visit the new South Korean President, Roh Moo-Hyun, who has asked the West for caution in its response to North Korea's sabre-rattling.

But the most crucial phase of the trip will be in Tokyo, amid claims that North Korea has reprocessed all 8000 spent nuclear fuel rods at its Yongbyon nuclear plant and that it already has one or two crude nuclear bombs.

According to the reports, carried by American, Japanese and South Korean media, the US detected krypton-85, a byproduct of the reprocessing, in the air near Yongbyon.

The fresh intelligence, delivered to the White House late last week, was confirmed by South Korea's Yonhap news agency. "North Korean delegates told US officials in an unofficial meeting in New York on July 8 that the reprocessing of spent fuel rods was completed on June 30," said Chang Sung-min, a leading intelligence aide to the former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung.

The 8000 rods at Yongbyon could produce enough plutonium to make between six and 12 nuclear weapons.

Mr Howard will have to deal with anxiety in Japan and South Korea about provoking a military response from Pyongyang.

Over the weekend, an inter-ministerial meeting between the north and south in Seoul agreed to seek a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis.

As I said The Japanese and the Pacific countries have quite a big interest in dealing with this problem
and they may be the first to act.Should nt they be ?

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by elijah
Who/What/where/why/how is evil?

Here ya go, knock yourself out.



http://1stopkorea.com/nk-trip1.htm

[TCO]

Remember the Pueblo.

[Q Classic]

By all means, they should go right ahead. Who would stop them and why?

you don't understand. they want to reunify yes. they don't agree on how. the north wants it to be communist by any means necessary. the south wants it to be democratic by any means necessary.
you'd have a war on your hands in the name of reunification.
but, i suppose you don't really care, do you? i shouldn't expect you to.

Agreed. It costs us money and gains us nothing. I say bring 'em home. In any case they should pose no threat to reunification.

i'm tired of defending it. they want americans there. just not on prime real estate in downtown seoul, and they don't want to feel disrespected.

The best thing Bush has done is completely ignore the yapping little dog that is NK.

except it's turned nkorea into an even more belligerent and rabid little dog that's become a greater threat to the region.
oh, and it's not like bush's policy is anything clearly defined. he went from being the anti-clinton (leaving koizumi and kim high and dry), to turning back around to being clinton (after kim became a bit scandal-ridden and koizumi more interested in rapproachment due to the entire admission of kidnappings), to his current ambiguosity.
his advisors are hamstrung at what to do, and they have no clear policy.

Of course, so SK should tell its pesky little brother to stop threatening the world's most powerful nation.

nkorea doesn't listen to skorea.
it's like having agathon and asher arguing about which is better, mac or windows. neither of them listen to each other, just talk at each other; both call the other idiot and hold them in low regard; the only difference is that they can actually kill each other, while asher and agathon can't.

Who/What/where/why/how is evil?

how did i miss this gem?
you want evil? how about a stalinist regime that not only jails the dissident, but jails three generations of the family--from the parents to the children; grandparents and grandchildren are also often taken to the labor camps as well, if they're around.
how about a regime which kidnaps civilians from both japan and korea, forces them to live up north to train spies?
how about a regime which attacked and killed american troops in cold blood for trying to trim a tree? (that's what tmm's axes refers to.)
how about a regime which has endorsed terrorism against its southern neighbor in the past, including placing a bomb on a 747 killing everyone aboard, to planting a bomb meant to assassinate a former president (he was a dictator, but nonetheless...).
how about a regime which starves its people to feed a military reaching obsolescence, but unwilling to admit it, leaving children to eat grass, twigs, bark, and dirt, driving others to cannibalism, and sending refugees up to china in conditions not unlike mexicans fleeing to texas? at least the mexicans will stay alive if they're sent back. the nkoreans will die by execution.
is that enough to convince you? no?

[TCO]

Ignoring the silliness is the best thing. It's either ignore it or take action against it. Until we get the other people on board to take action, we won't take action.

Going on and on with concern or paying more bribes is not the right way to go.

Of course, they are going to rant more and more. that is what they do. Until SK decides that it is a problem, we can't/won't do anything. Makes sense.

It's not like we are going to nuke NK. tHat is just insanity. there are people there.

[The Mad Monk]

how about a regime which attacked and killed american troops in cold blood for trying to trim a tree? (that's what tmm's axes refers to.)

Yep. Another "how about" on that one:

How about a regime that does that, and then puts said axe on display in a tourist center as a point of pride?

[DarthVeda]

The north korean nation can only end in bloodshed.

[TCO]

Originally posted by mindseye
I'm afraid the US is at this moment quite unable to go to war with anyone else (which is why NK is getting so bold lately). We've probably got at least five years of guerilla war in "W's Vietnam" before we can take on anything else.

1. Looks like we need more of that 2 MRC military that got cut.

2. NK is going to get frisky regardless. They are frisky because they think it will help them get stuff and that weak sisters like you and others who spend too much time writing dumb opeds will pay attantion to them.

3. The NK noticed what happened to Saddam. That sent a way better lesson than if we had shyed away.

4. In extremis, we could move forces out of Iraq. We would have to take off some kid gloves. But we could move significant forces and still control the country.