Let’s just nuke North Korea out of existence if they fire that missile towards Hawaii next week. Leave a few thousand stunned citizens stumbling through the rubble, give South Korea the nod to take over the whole area after the radiation burns off. Tell China to kiss our Walmart shopping hiney’s if they’re feeling huffy after the fallout. Give Kim fair warning we’ll consider his brazen spear throwing an act of war.
The next swift decision should be Afghanistan. What is the point of this bloody and expensive exercise? Subduing the Taliban? Give me a break, they freely operate in 80% of the country and enjoy full support in the Pashtun regions. We will never win these men’s hearts and minds or the ignorant hordes who steadily feed their ranks with endless numbers of fully indoctrinated children. If the point in Afghanistan is to eliminate Muslim extremism, you need to wipe out the entire population in the northern region and Pakistan’s autonomous region. Go Ghengis Khan on their ass and be done with it or get the hell out. I couldn’t give a good damn if these people have democracy, make sure they know terrorist training camps will not be permitted and let them loose to rule like animals in a well watched preserve or kill every last man, woman and child to eliminate the threat.
I’m done dicking around with third world barbarians.
You do aim to shock.
This sounds insane and will continue to sound insane right up until the moment when a suitcase nuke goes off Manhattan. At which point the enlighted American public will say, “Didn’t we stash some nukes in flyover country? How many? Oh, that should be enough. I think we should fire them at everybody who’s ever given us a mean look. Gimme a second, I have a list. Nuclear winter? Well, that should be just the thing for this damned global warming. In any case, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
“In short, as is the way of a democracy, in the panic of the moment they were ready to be as prudent as possible” (Thucydides, VIII.1).
By the way, I can’t help observing that this post proves that there is a slippery slop between spanking and thermonuclear annihilation. badumpbump.
It is not easy remaining the football Super Bowl champs for the same reason discussed here in an earlier post. Envy !
Who do you think you are America ? You’re not superior to any other country ! You got this King of the Hill attitude, talking about freedom, human rights, excellent standard of living for the masses. You got your big-bad military, and what’cha gonna to now, huh? It’s past due you were taken down to size, fall on your face so you can have a taste of how the rest of the world lives.
If you buy into that, crap line of thinking, then you’re probably correct…we aren’t superior.
By no means do I advocate dropping the ‘big one’ on anyone’s head. But if we want to maintain our ever weakening position in the world, then we need to do what’s necessary to deal with the evil directed toward this country. How about sending the stealth B-2 bombers to surgically castrate both Iran and North Korea, one moonless night and take out their reactors. There-by avoiding an all out WW3, which is probably, more than not, waiting down the road.
The other evil doers will get the message, that we will issue spankings as necessary. Of course we will probably loose some of our popularity…but then we will be:
“done dicking around with third world barbarians.” for a while.
Ennui, what if that rocket goes slightly further than we’re estimating? Back that up a notch, why aren’t we considering this threat as serious? He’s stated he’s launching a missile at us.
Fuck that, if he launches, nuke his demented ass. Seriously, I don’t care one bit the ensuing carnage. I know I’m supposed to, but I don’t. I care about my own more. We didn’t start this slippery slope, we can end it.
Stoney, you said a lot but I don’t get what you think. Short and sweet works best in my world.
As I said someplace else a day ago: beware of a she-bear with cabs behind her.
Rightly so.
Ennui, what if that rocket goes slightly further than we’re estimating? Back that up a notch, why aren’t we considering this threat as serious? He’s stated he’s launching a missile at us.
Hey, I don’t know if I’m with ya the whole monty but I’m generally on the same page. My point is that using nukes is going to sound like crazy talk right up til the point where it doesn’t sound crazy at all – the point where we’ve been hurt very, very badly. At that point everyone will go all in with dizzying speed. Before Pearl Harbor America was collectively putting it’s fingers in it ears singing “I can’t hear you.” Until the thing happened and the very next day we declared war on a global scale.
I’m not saying anything as crass “we don’t start fights, we finish them.” I’m just saying that public opinion is a lot more unstable than is generally supposed. Right now I would guess that most people would consider the idea of pre-emptively* nuking even N. Korea extreme in, well, the extreme. But under certain circumstances I could see that opinion changing in about 24 hours.
As for the main point, what to do about North Korea if I think nuking them at this point sounds like crazy talk? I haven’t a clue. Or a clue bag. One thing I wouldn’t do is cancel missile defense programs just now. Beyond that, it’s the standard “try to get the Chinese off their asses” and “hope for the best.” Which is to say, your idea is at least as good as mine.
*You might not consider this a fair reading of what you’re saying. It might not be a fair reading. As I understand it, you’d consider a launch as a act of war, like in the cold war, and not a “test.” But last I heard nobody thinks that they can actually launch nukes on a rocket, yet. Of course, nobody thought that someone would fly planes into buildings.
Be back tomorrow, bed is calling.
Talk about escalating violence, just a couple days ago we were discussing whether to spank or not to spank. Now we be going Hiroshima on folks’ asses?
North Korea has made wacky threats for decades. If a missle were to fly at Hawaii, then our response should be war. If not, then not.
We had Afghanistan, but then someone decided to go looking for wmd in Iraq and we kinda lost our way. Eliminating the nation’s innocent population is what our enemies strive to do, not what we strive to do.
Maybe if someone had taken a switch to his rear end a long time ago, he wouldn’t be threatening to shoot missiles at innocent people.
What is the goal in Afghanistan, Mahons?
It isn’t as if the North Korean people actually have a say in any of their government’s misadventures.
Daphne for khan! As in:
khan 1 (kän, kān)
n.
1. A ruler, an official, or an important person in India and some central Asian countries.
2. A medieval ruler of a Mongol, Tartar, or Turkish tribe.
[Middle English chan, from Old French can, from Turkish khān (from Old Turkic qaghan) and from Mongolian qā'ān, ruler.]
You got my vote. For life. Mongols, Tartars, and Turks knew how to rule and were pretty danged good at it, too. While they lasted.
Daphne – According to Mr. Bush it is to hunt the terrorists down where they live and plan so that we may fight them on their streets and not our own. According to Mr. Obama it to eliminate those who attacked us and would continue to do so, and to focus on Al Q and Osama as opposed to more specualtive threats like Saddam.
We hit a beehive with a baseball bat in both places and we’ve got to clean up our mess even while getting stung from time to time.
Taking into consideration all of the foreign policy reports I’ve been reading, the Taliban and Al Queda have merged into one very large unit, with broad appeal and massive support in the Pashtun regions. Killing them all doesn’t seem very feasible at this point and our ongoing war in Afghanistan has now destabilized Pakistan to the brink of disaster.
I think we should get the hell out if we aren’t willing to take the harsh measures necessary to eradicate this tribe of people who will continue to feed AQ and the Taliban their full support and their sons. We will never cherry pick “just the bad guys”, these people are breeding a new generation to replace every last man we kill. How long do you feel like offering up our children for an impossible task?
Islam translates to mean submission. But whether it is Taliban or NorKooks, such ativistic cultures neither understand nor tolerate any shades between submision and domination. I am told that this also was once a characteristic very dear to the Prussian, as well as the Japanese. See the result.
When we behave toward such cultures by ignoring their custom and substututing our own, we send them a signal that they are not to take us seriously. That does them no kindness; quite the contrary. They require certainty, and they are really quite happy with whatever form it takes.
This will cost everyone a great deal. Our immediate problem is that the Obots are also part of that culture, but mean for us to submit, not dominate. They are waving the yellow flag as wildly as they know how, and expect the message to get though in due time. But subliminal messages between lunatics are not a sure way to conduct policy.
So we kill them all right?
It is not that Arthur does not know the answer, but that he does not know the question. After it has been read to him.
Your fortune cookie for today is from Machiavelli–
Those before whom you have openly demeaned yourself by yielding will not stop, but will seek to extort further, and the less they esteem you the more incensed they will become.
Arthur just likes to get everyone’s hair flying, he finds it amusing.
Yes, Arthur we kill them all or get the fuck out of dodge. The middle ground is futile and stupid.
Of course I know the question. And Daphne answered though ‘go all Genghis Khan’ was a pretty good hint. I love picturing Wilson Googling up a suitable quote. Or eating a lot of Chinese.
I saw a vid on Defense Tech (should still be front page). Some US troops glad-handed the tribal elders and said, “fellas we’d like to build you a road* and we’ll pay your sons well to work on it”. They were told to eff off. Aparently the sons are off Talibanning anyway. They are incorrigible. Basically if they want to exert all their energies in keeping the place a medieval shit-hole then basically fuck ‘em.
I also saw something on Sky TV about the RAF Regiment in Kandahar. They sent a US Army vet to a nearby village to look at the goats and stuff to win hearts and minds. He was escorted in convoy by the soldiers in armoured vehicles armed to the teeth. And they had to sweep for mines. If a vet can’t make a house call without about 40 troops then…
Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
And as to the Norks… I agree Daphne. Obliterate them if they launch towards Hawaii. We wouldn’t have this problem if we’d been tougher – no food aid** and if the RoK wasn’t engaged in it’s “Sunshine policy” and if the Japs (and they have the capacity) shot down everything the Norks launched over them and then sent something amusing back. That might have made the Great Leader think twice whilst cowering in his Batcave.
And whilst we’re at it send in Delta and the SAS to scrobble Pakistan’s nukes and take-out the mullah’s in Qom. Mr Obama that would be change I could believe in.
And it’s not difficult. I reckon I could penetrate Nork airspace astride a Singer sewing machine. I’ve seen their propaganda vids and it’s all clapped out 1960s Sov junk. They did seem to exult in their flamethrower tanks but that’s just a red-rag to an IR Maverick missile.
I reckon the RoK with nothing but intel and logistics support from the US and Japan could take the Norks in a week. Trouble is re-unification costs would make Germany’s look like building a doghouse. Oh and the Norks have umpty thou artillery pieces within range of Seoul.
*They had a goat path before that.
**Did ya know before 9/11 the largest aid donor to the ’stan was the USA?
The question of Seoul’s vulnerability is the only thing I haven’t worked out yet, a problem to be sure.
We’ve been very good at providing copious amounts of aid to a wide variety of thugs, dictators and sociopaths in futile attempts to control or purchase their behavior, which leads me to believe that the State Department is the ancestral home of well-heeled mental defectives.
[...] exactly what I also think about the ’stan. We need to get out or get medieval on their asses. She puts it better than me though. If you don’t have Jaded Haven bookmarked you are wasting the money you pay your [...]
Stoney sez…
How about sending the stealth B-2 bombers to surgically castrate both Iran and North Korea, one moonless night and take out their reactors. There-by avoiding an all out WW3, which is probably, more than not, waiting down the road.
That should have been done back in 1994, when it first came to light that the Norks were reprocessing those spent fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium. One bunker-buster dropped from a B-2 would have blown that reprocessing plant at Yongbyun to a gazillion pieces. Would have set the Norks back ten or twenty years…maybe even long enough to achieve “regime change” into something less interested in threatening and needlessly provoking the United States.
Instead, the Clinton Administration sent Carter to bribe them, and look where it got us.
Insert Iran for North Korea above. Same deal. They should have been dealt with about 3 weeks after the fall of Baghdad. A full ground invasion in either case isn’t necessary. Blow up the research and enrichment facilities…and in the Norks’ case, the launch pad on the coast as well. A cruise missile would do nicely on the latter task. No need to risk American servicemens’ lives…just blow whatever-it-is to smithereens. Problem solved, for awhile at least.
What are they going to do – fire artillery at Seoul or Baghdad, respectively? Would be the last dumb thing either of them does.
Why is this so fricking complicated?