North Korea Attacks South Korea

Originally Posted by SDW2001

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101123...20101123092327



Very concerning. This would seem to be more than a "skirmish." Then again, the response from the US, China and the South itself seems to indicate the primary focus in lack of escalation. My question is...how many times is this going to happen before it triggers a full-scale war? One has to wonder about China's role as well. While they are regarded as the North's only real ally, I can't imagine they would tolerate an invasion of the South. Perhaps that is the only thing stopping it from happening.

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

Everyone seems to be overlooking that Sarah's new book is coming out today. It would seem therefore that someone high up in the NWO is pulling these strings.

Originally Posted by jazzguru

Obama is "outraged".

That will certainly make NK think twice about escalating things.

In an earlier statement released before dawn, shortly after the latest humiliating groping by a government agent, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called on the TSA to "to halt its offensive and invasive actions and to fully abide by the terms of the US constitution," the 1787 document that governs the US and outlines the rights of the people within the US.

INCHEON, South Korea (Reuters) A U.S. aircraft carrier headed toward the Korean peninsula on Wednesday, a day after North Korea launched dozens of artillery shells on a South Korean island.
The nuclear-powered USS George Washington, which carries 75 warplanes and has a crew of over 6,000, left a naval base south of Tokyo on Wednesday morning and would join exercises with South Korea from Sunday to the following Wednesday, U.S. officials in Seoul said.
"This exercise is defensive in nature," U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement. "While planned well before yesterday's unprovoked artillery attack, it demonstrates the strength of the ROK (South Korea)-U.S. alliance and our commitment to regional stability through deterrence."

The Obama administration has so far reacted to North Korea's latest and deadly tantrum with cautious outrage, a clear sign it sees no good immediate options for dealing with the reclusive and increasingly unpredictable country.

SEOUL, South Korea The forests on distant Yeonpyeong Island were ablaze on Wednesday, one day after a ferocious artillery exchange between North and South Korean military units. But to many residents of Seoul, the violent attack on the tiny island seemed largely contained and unthreatening.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101123...20101123092327



Very concerning. This would seem to be more than a "skirmish." Then again, the response from the US, China and the South itself seems to indicate the primary focus in lack of escalation. My question is...how many times is this going to happen before it triggers a full-scale war? One has to wonder about China's role as well. While they are regarded as the North's only real ally, I can't imagine they would tolerate an invasion of the South. Perhaps that is the only thing stopping it from happening.

Originally Posted by gerald apple

I truly hope Obama does not get involved in this mess with these 2 countries.We are fighting 2 wars which is enough. Let us but out.

...Even as North Korea's intransigence and unpredictability has grown, China has hesitated to criticize its isolated ally too harshly. The reasoning has been simple: Not only do the countries share a historical ideological bond, but Beijing wants to avoid a collapse of the North Korean regime lest a deluge of refugees flood over into northeastern China. It's also an important cushion between China and a major U.S. military ally, South Korea. In fact, relations between Pyongyang and its one and only ally are so close that North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il - hardly a world traveler - has twice visited China this year.

But Beijing's quiescent North Korea policy raises concerns that China is not willing to engage in regional affairs on a level commensurate with its rising-power status. In the wake of the Yeonpyeong attack, Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, who once served in China as a diplomat, said what many other nations have surely been thinking: "I believe it's important now for China to bring all of its influence to bear on North Korea." The island artillery fire comes just days after an American academic visited a North Korean facility, where he said he saw over a thousand centrifuges used for enriching uranium - a key step in eventually developing nuclear weapons. "This is a huge test for Chinese diplomacy," says John Delury, an assistant professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, who studies Chinese-North Korean relations. "China needs to move quickly. It needs to find ways to acknowledge the severity of the situation and then do whatever it can to turn the focus back to dialogue and negotiation."....

No one can completely understand the motivations of the North Koreans, but it is entirely possible that their recent revelation of their uranium enrichment centrifuges and Pyongyang's shelling of a South Korean island Tuesday are designed to remind the world that they deserve respect in negotiations that will shape their future. Ultimately, the choice for the United States may be between diplomatic niceties and avoiding a catastrophic confrontation......

Originally Posted by SDW2001

He/we may have no choice. What if the South responds forcefully, triggering NK's retaliation?
What if it escalates into the North invading? If that happens. the US will have to mount a full scale counter-attack. There will be no choice.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

You know, that was really uncalled for. I realize that you and I go back and forth, but it was really unnecessary. This is a forum where people share opinions, thoughts, ideas, etc. I shared my concerns on what may happen in this situation. And here you come to attempt to politicize the debate. The irony is palatable.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

You know, that was really uncalled for. I realize that you and I go back and forth, but it was really unnecessary. This is a forum where people share opinions, thoughts, ideas, etc. I shared my concerns on what may happen in this situation. And here you come to attempt to politicize the debate. The irony is palatable.

sarcasm
Obviously this is some clever new Republican meme being put out there in an attempt to discredit President Obama.

This isn't happening. The world respects everyone now. The sea levels have stopped rising. The war monger proclaiming mission accomplished and labeling parts of the world an axis of evil is gone.

SDW, do you want your daughter to die from an abortion in a back alley? Do you want to deny black people the right to vote? Why do you hate all Muslims?

Besides this is Bush's fault. North Korea wouldn't be shooting at South Korea if he didn't need to make up some more fake enemies just so his friends could go steal all the oil in Iraq.

Well done, you leftist bastard!

Originally Posted by SDW2001

Not a problem. I can't say I'm surprised at his comment.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

What the hell are you talking about? Save a few comments early on, the thread hasn't even gone in a direction critical of Obama. Further, I (the OP) have not gone in that direction. Why accuse me of politicizing the issue?

Originally Posted by SDW2001

Dude...he was being sarcastic. One knows that because he stated he was being sarcastic. My response was nothing more than humor. Relax. Now all that said, if you would LIKE to discuss the political dimension here, that is fine with me. It's really up to you.

he was being sarcastic

Originally Posted by Splinemodel

I'm supposed to attend a business conference in Seoul next week. So far, nothing has been cancelled. On the plus side, the likelihood of being upgraded to the top part of the 747 is increasing. \ I know we try to book hotels on the south side of the Han river, which is out of range of NK artillery. Ironically, the Korean War museum is not. If you're in Seoul, you should check it out -- it was the first proxy-war, and a real mess. NK was not a bunch of utopianists, not even at first. It was always a power play.

Now that North Korea has unleashed an artillery barrage on a South Korean island that killed four people including two civilians and raised tensions in the heavily armed region, Beijing again appears unwilling to rein in its neighbor.....

Politically, Beijing has upped its engagement too, sending a stream of leaders to Pyongyang and twice hosting reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il this summer. The first trip came weeks after the Cheonan sinking. The second time came just before North Korea's Worker's Party held a rare conclave and then a nationwide pageant for the elevation of Kim's son, Kim Jong Un, as dictator-in-waiting. Chinese Politburo member Zhou Yongkang stood with the elder Kim during the festivities.

The steadfastness of Beijing's support at the expense of its international image and relations with Seoul and Washington have raised criticisms even in China that the North Korean tail sometimes wags the Chinese dog. Chinese officials and experts acknowledge the risk, saying Beijing's leverage is limited, given that it is unwilling to throw its economic heft.

"Even if China tried to tell North Korea what to do, it's unlikely they would easily listen," said Gong Keyu, deputy director of the Asia-Pacific Research Center at Shanghai's Institute for International Studies.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

Sometimes I wonder if you actually believe what you write.

Originally Posted by sammi jo

I imagine you know that the post I entered is pretty much factually correct, and the reason you answered me in that way was because you know it is true, but you are in denial;

Originally Posted by sammi jo

Unless the country is the US, which tends to attack other nations for reasons which (a) are hard to pin down, (b) turn out to be lies or (c) make a show of wielding power to the rest of the world, or (d) for the benefit of big business, acts of war like this usually conducted in anger; retaliation for some other act of aggression. In this case, we shall probably never know how this spat got started; in the last significant incident when a S. Korean ship was torpedoed, allegedly by NK, it turned out that the torpedo was of German manufacture. Arms trade has no barriers, huh?

Maybe this latest attack is Krazy Kim showing off to the world that he's got a big dick? Or perhaps he's taken a leaf out of the neoconservative doctrine, as championed by the George W. Bush Administration, which has demonstrated that it's perfectly OK to attack others, just because we can.

Originally Posted by gerald apple

I truly hope Obama does not get involved in this mess with these 2 countries.We are fighting 2 wars which is enough. Let us but out.

Originally Posted by jimmac

Sarcasm or no he was editorializing. Bringing in a seperate subject ( his hate for all things left ) when it was unnecessary.

And SDW as far as I'm concerned you've aready discussed your take on the political dimension.

Originally Posted by trumptman

You know Sammi, it is okay to call it neoconservative when Bush is the one swinging the stick at people but since Obama and the Democrats are in power, you ought to call this doctrine something else because it is the exact same policy but no longer being done by a leftist who has moved away from the hard left due to their anti-Americanism.

The "new" right has to be "new for some reason, otherwise they are still just the old left.

Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that supports using economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries.[1][2][3] In economics, unlike paleoconservatives and libertarians, neoconservatives are generally comfortable with a limited welfare state; and, while rhetorically supportive of free markets, they are willing to interfere for overriding social purposes.[4].........

"New" conservatives initially approached this view from the political left. The forerunners of neoconservatism were most often socialists or sometimes liberals who strongly supported the Allied cause in World War II, and who were influenced by the Great Depression-era ideas of the New Deal, trade unionism, and Trotskyism, particularly those who followed the political ideas of Max Shachtman.[citation needed] A number of future neoconservatives, such as Jeane Kirkpatrick,[citation needed] were Shachtmanites in their youth; some were later involved with Social Democrats USA...........

Or as Michael Lind notes...

Neoconservatism... originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry ('Scoop') Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves 'paleoliberals.' [After the end of the Cold War]... many 'paleoliberals' drifted back to the Democratic center... Today's neocons are a shrunken remnant of the original broad neocon coalition. Nevertheless, the origins of their ideology on the left are still apparent. The fact that most of the younger neocons were never on the left is irrelevant; they are the intellectual (and, in the case of William Kristol and John Podhoretz, the literal) heirs of older ex-leftists.

If someone from the right is engaging in these policies, feel free to call them a neocon for it is new and different for the typically isolationist right to want to play cop for the world. However don't dare call it that when we are under Democratic rule because it isn't new or different there. It is old hat. New Con = Old Liberal.




What makes you think we ever stopped fighting the Korean war. What makes you think we ever stopped fighting WWII? Sure no bullets or bombs are flying, but the TROOPS are still there.

We've got more troops in Germany than in Iraq. Why does no one question that? We've got more troops in Japan than in South Korea. Why is that no concern?

Why does no one care to bring those troops home?



I'm consistent on the matter. I approached the political blinders bit with some humor. Instead you have to wander in and PERSONIFY the very truth in that bit of sarcasm. You've ruined the joke Jimmac because now it's just profoundly ironic in a manner far too dark to be funny. You've got blood on your hands because you only care about the troops in harms way when there is a Republican president. When you refuse to admit the problem, then the problem will remain.

The Korean war was a proxy war fought under a Democratic president. What makes you think anything has changed or will change, especially with enablers like yourself? The United Nations was created by FDR and all the lines in the sand they have drawn since their creation are still being fought over and often have 30-50k American troops nearby to enforce. A different approach needs to be tried and it doesn't matter if we want to call it new conservative or old liberal, it is still the same damn approach.

Something new must be done. South Korea is no longer some backwash outpost that any country could easily overrun. They can easily stand on their own two feet against North Korea if not for the nuclear issue and since that came about under Clinton, and I have no doubt Iran will do the same under Obama, how does that really change anything?

All the claims about the wars under Bush were due to America as empire. We are letting the TSA molest our kids and we are giving away our freedoms due to the fact that while the faces have changed, the actions haven't and folks like yourself no longer care precisely because of politics, aka your team won. Show some principles for goodness sakes and demand we stop policing the world, start policing our own borders and then we can stop most of this stupid bullshit we call security internally.

I'm consistent on the matter. I approached the political blinders bit with some humor. Instead you have to wander in and PERSONIFY the very truth in that bit of sarcasm. You've ruined the joke Jimmac because now it's just profoundly ironic in a manner far too dark to be funny. You've got blood on your hands because you only care about the troops in harms way when there is a Republican president. When you refuse to admit the problem, then the problem will remain.