Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
edited June 2009
Man they'd be pissed if we followed through.
Like "AW GODDAMNIT I DIDN'T KNOW YOU'D ACTUALLY DO IT SHIT CAN WE GET DO-OVERS?"
Man this situation is fucked up. Part of me thinks we should deliver a very harsh ultimatum along the lines of "If you don't give them to us we'll take them" TEAM AMERICA-style bullshit, but the logical part of me knows these people are pretty much fucked unless we make some HUGE concessions to a nation run by a fucking nutbar.
North Korea must be pissed Iran is stealing the spotlight.
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ViscountalphaThe pen is mightier than the swordhttp://youtu.be/G_sBOsh-vyIRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
I would love to see North korea's missile launch sites eliminated. They don't deserve a space program and a missile launch program if they are going to be such gigantic dicks.
Let's just put a giant dome over the whole place. It'll give 'em what they want, total lack of contact with the outside world, plus it would be hilarious to see them launch a nuke and have it hit a wall
Let's just put a giant dome over the whole place. It'll give 'em what they want, total lack of contact with the outside world, plus it would be hilarious to see them launch a nuke and have it hit a wall
Why don't you just put the whole world in a bottle?
Let's just put a giant dome over the whole place. It'll give 'em what they want, total lack of contact with the outside world, plus it would be hilarious to see them launch a nuke and have it hit a wall
Why don't you just put the whole world in a bottle?
Comrade of Steel
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FandyienBut Otto, what about us? Registered Userregular
edited June 2009
You know, if we went to war with North Korea, I find myself thinking "Man, I'd join up and do my part, because fuck that place".
Which is totally weird, because I'm an anti-war pot smoking hippie.
FandyienBut Otto, what about us? Registered Userregular
edited June 2009
Well, one of my weird interests that I constantly pursue is North Korea. That place is awful. And the successor Kim-Jong Il chose? Even worse.
The whole place is stuck in this bizzare totalitarian setting. Everything, technologically, architecturally, and otherwise is stuck in 1975. The whole place is a horrible corrupt brainwashing entity brimming with sex slavery, corruption, brutality, drug dissemination, and all kinds of things that we in the west hear mentioned but don't usually think about the sheer extent of the brutality
I dunno, I've been doing lots of reading and thinking about North Korea, and I genuinely would fight to free the people there
A lot of stuff that has incensed me has come from an obviously biased but nonetheless unique source, www.dailynk.com
It's published by refugees and partisans, so it's hella not balanced, but it also has personal contacts with North Korean citizens and lots of information you could only get from someone who had lived in that hellish quagmire for decades
That's not why we aren't invading though. Even if it wouldn't be as bogged down as vietnam was.. bad bad things would happen if we invaded.
In Vietnam, we were fighting a guerrilla force at a time when our military was not prepared to combat guerrilla tactics.
North Korea's military is mostly conventional, though the "liberated" populous could easily turn into an insurgent force as it did in Iraq. Even in that contingency, the US military is much better suited to such a conflict than it once was. While certain parallels are possible somewhere down the line, I suspect they'd be overwhelmed by the risk of drastic, indiscriminate and irrational retaliatory attacks.
The US has allies near North Korea who could very reasonably be seriously harmed if North Korea becomes less stable.
FandyienBut Otto, what about us? Registered Userregular
edited June 2009
North Koreas military is huge but awful. The citizenry is not content. Shit, huge contigents of the army are nigh on dissident
Since every single North Korean youth is conscripted out of middle school and forced into the military environment (which is almost as awful as being a farmer or generic shitty person) that generates a shitload of discontent among families and students
Military conscription is technically voluntary - you sign a form upon graduation. I remember reading about a whole middle school class that refused to sign the 'voluntary' form. The students and their entire families were all sent to collective farms (effectively a life sentence of total misery and toil), with the exception of students related to officials in Pyongyang who basically said "Hey, wait, these guys aren't the sons or daughters of regular citizens" and they were allowed to join the officer corps.
NK might have a huge military, but it's also a shit-ass one.
Solid personal reasons include: he believes in the cause of liberating the North Koreans
Also, dissemination of methamphetamine and sex slaves over the chinese border and the established tacit relationship between the two nations of returning refugees to be murdered by the NK government
My brother is going to a chinese port town to teach english for six months in august that is as close to the NK border as you can really get, so I'm sorta scurred for him, as it were
Solid personal reasons include: he believes in the cause of liberating the North Koreans
Well, that would be opposed to something a politician would say, like that we aim to liberate oppressed peoples, when really we want access to a valuable natural resource
Not that NK has any that I know of, but I'm just saying Fandy honestly supports helping these people
Let's just put a giant dome over the whole place. It'll give 'em what they want, total lack of contact with the outside world, plus it would be hilarious to see them launch a nuke and have it hit a wall
Why don't you just put the whole world in a bottle?
That's not why we aren't invading though. Even if it wouldn't be as bogged down as vietnam was.. bad bad things would happen if we invaded.
In Vietnam, we were fighting a guerrilla force at a time when our military was not prepared to combat guerrilla tactics.
North Korea's military is mostly conventional, though the "liberated" populous could easily turn into an insurgent force as it did in Iraq. Even in that contingency, the US military is much better suited to such a conflict than it once was. While certain parallels are possible somewhere down the line, I suspect they'd be overwhelmed by the risk of drastic, indiscriminate and irrational retaliatory attacks.
The US has allies near North Korea who could very reasonably be seriously harmed if North Korea becomes less stable.
This is the bad stuff I was talking about.
Honestly I would be 95% behind a war if certain conditions were met, but that is not saying much as I even supported the Iraq war's idea if not the execution. However, while I have said previously that we do have the resources to devastate North Korea, that is not enough. That is actually the situation we want to avoid. Right now the United States does not have the resources to mitigate damage to the region and stick around to rebuild the country from the ground up. Conflict would completely destabilize the region in a variety of ways. First of all, militarily. It is more stable now than it had been in the past, with China being a major player for the "good guys" nominally. Now is actually a better chance than in the past and in the future, in the future China will be a much larger player and will get to dictate the terms, but for now it is stuck doing what the world wants more or less. In the past it was firmly in the "bad guys" camp from our point of view and was just weak enough that we didn't have a lot of control over it, if that makes any sense.
But right now our economies are so intertwined it would be senseless for China to do anything too crazy. However, there are other military regimes in the region that would probably take advantage of the chaos in the smaller countries.
The biggest factor is the economic and human cost. It would economically devastate the region. Even assuming the South avoided all physical harm from a war, the North's collapse would cost far more in aid and refugee support than it could possibly afford because the North is so damn destitute right now. In the past, while the North still had a strong economy going, maybe, but not anymore. China would take a large hit as well, maybe one it could technically "afford", but not one it is by any means willing to.
This is to say nothing of the retaliation by the North Koreans. They do not have the delivery capability to launch nukes any further than their neighboring countries. They don't have the bombers or missiles capable of long distance delivery so it would have to be by ground or something similar, maybe a boat. We have a good chance of intercepting that sort of thing maybe, but the biggest threat there is just it being smuggled out to a non-state actor such as the taliban.
The conventional damage would be far greater. It is by no means strong enough to win a war, but the first couple of days or weeks would be chaotic enough and the army would hold together enough to do too much damage to the South and Japan before we halt their advance.
This all brings two scenarios into play. I am pretty damn confident in what I have said thus far but I am wandering out of my real purview right now so I would like some input here because I'm kind of speaking out of my ass. 1) China runs in to "help" territory from the South that the North took out. Well, who is to say they wouldn't just keep it, along with the North, leading to a situation that may be "better" than what we have now, but still far from ideal. 2) The Peoples Republic of China takes advantage of the destabilization of the region to make a move on the Republic of China.
I am by no means confident in those later assessments but they seem somewhat likely from what I know.
So to wrap up, I think if we had not been involved in several lengthy and costly wars we might, with the backing of a large world coalition, be able to mitigate physical war damage to the region that isn't North Korea itself, but the economic costs right now would be completely unacceptable without unprecedented amounts of support from the entire globe, which is just unrealistic.
You know, if we went to war with North Korea, I find myself thinking "Man, I'd join up and do my part, because fuck that place".
Which is totally weird, because I'm an anti-war pot smoking hippie.
I'm not an anti-war pot smoking hippie, but I am a fucking pansy, that would rather run away from a fight than find out who I'm fighting in the first place.
And frankly, I feel the same way. If we decided to fuck up NK, I'd probably sign up after work today. As has been mentioned before, there's pretty much no room for any less-than-altruistic intentions, if you decide to end NK. You're doing it for world peace and saving the folks over there. You won't get used for some BS, or someone else's ulterior motive.
Just, if we do decide to put an end to NK, send me over with a deck of 52.
ArtreusI'm a wizardAnd that looks fucked upRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
Also on a personal note, I both want this to be over and I don't. For a little while now I've been hoping to end up in an embassy position in that region and I've recently been focusing on the Korea's. It is a weird thought to think that your career choice might be wrong because the country you are hoping to help might not be there anymore. I mean I could just shift back to US-Japanese-Chinese relations, because those are going to remain players for quite some time and they are still up and coming. But I think by the time I graduate and get into the field, something big will have happened.
Posts
Like "AW GODDAMNIT I DIDN'T KNOW YOU'D ACTUALLY DO IT SHIT CAN WE GET DO-OVERS?"
Man this situation is fucked up. Part of me thinks we should deliver a very harsh ultimatum along the lines of "If you don't give them to us we'll take them" TEAM AMERICA-style bullshit, but the logical part of me knows these people are pretty much fucked unless we make some HUGE concessions to a nation run by a fucking nutbar.
Then building those gigantic dicks and sending them into space.
It couldn't possibly turn into another vietnam.
Tanks and all.
i got banned for using socialism
That's not why we aren't invading though. Even if it wouldn't be as bogged down as vietnam was.. bad bad things would happen if we invaded.
See: they would nuke everyone.
they may be able to lob some nukes at their neighbors
but even that's questionable
leave us vulnerable to white martians
Rad.
And, for once, it's a war I would support. Strangely.
Dr. Evil apparently works for NASA
BF3: Spazzway
Steam : Paul [Team Bad]
Why don't you just put the whole world in a bottle?
Comrade of Steel
Which is totally weird, because I'm an anti-war pot smoking hippie.
what is your reasoning there, out of curiosity?
The whole place is stuck in this bizzare totalitarian setting. Everything, technologically, architecturally, and otherwise is stuck in 1975. The whole place is a horrible corrupt brainwashing entity brimming with sex slavery, corruption, brutality, drug dissemination, and all kinds of things that we in the west hear mentioned but don't usually think about the sheer extent of the brutality
I dunno, I've been doing lots of reading and thinking about North Korea, and I genuinely would fight to free the people there
A lot of stuff that has incensed me has come from an obviously biased but nonetheless unique source, www.dailynk.com
It's published by refugees and partisans, so it's hella not balanced, but it also has personal contacts with North Korean citizens and lots of information you could only get from someone who had lived in that hellish quagmire for decades
In Vietnam, we were fighting a guerrilla force at a time when our military was not prepared to combat guerrilla tactics.
North Korea's military is mostly conventional, though the "liberated" populous could easily turn into an insurgent force as it did in Iraq. Even in that contingency, the US military is much better suited to such a conflict than it once was. While certain parallels are possible somewhere down the line, I suspect they'd be overwhelmed by the risk of drastic, indiscriminate and irrational retaliatory attacks.
The US has allies near North Korea who could very reasonably be seriously harmed if North Korea becomes less stable.
Since every single North Korean youth is conscripted out of middle school and forced into the military environment (which is almost as awful as being a farmer or generic shitty person) that generates a shitload of discontent among families and students
Military conscription is technically voluntary - you sign a form upon graduation. I remember reading about a whole middle school class that refused to sign the 'voluntary' form. The students and their entire families were all sent to collective farms (effectively a life sentence of total misery and toil), with the exception of students related to officials in Pyongyang who basically said "Hey, wait, these guys aren't the sons or daughters of regular citizens" and they were allowed to join the officer corps.
NK might have a huge military, but it's also a shit-ass one.
Also, dissemination of methamphetamine and sex slaves over the chinese border and the established tacit relationship between the two nations of returning refugees to be murdered by the NK government
My brother is going to a chinese port town to teach english for six months in august that is as close to the NK border as you can really get, so I'm sorta scurred for him, as it were
Well, that would be opposed to something a politician would say, like that we aim to liberate oppressed peoples, when really we want access to a valuable natural resource
Not that NK has any that I know of, but I'm just saying Fandy honestly supports helping these people
I knew someone would do this
This is the bad stuff I was talking about.
Honestly I would be 95% behind a war if certain conditions were met, but that is not saying much as I even supported the Iraq war's idea if not the execution. However, while I have said previously that we do have the resources to devastate North Korea, that is not enough. That is actually the situation we want to avoid. Right now the United States does not have the resources to mitigate damage to the region and stick around to rebuild the country from the ground up. Conflict would completely destabilize the region in a variety of ways. First of all, militarily. It is more stable now than it had been in the past, with China being a major player for the "good guys" nominally. Now is actually a better chance than in the past and in the future, in the future China will be a much larger player and will get to dictate the terms, but for now it is stuck doing what the world wants more or less. In the past it was firmly in the "bad guys" camp from our point of view and was just weak enough that we didn't have a lot of control over it, if that makes any sense.
But right now our economies are so intertwined it would be senseless for China to do anything too crazy. However, there are other military regimes in the region that would probably take advantage of the chaos in the smaller countries.
The biggest factor is the economic and human cost. It would economically devastate the region. Even assuming the South avoided all physical harm from a war, the North's collapse would cost far more in aid and refugee support than it could possibly afford because the North is so damn destitute right now. In the past, while the North still had a strong economy going, maybe, but not anymore. China would take a large hit as well, maybe one it could technically "afford", but not one it is by any means willing to.
This is to say nothing of the retaliation by the North Koreans. They do not have the delivery capability to launch nukes any further than their neighboring countries. They don't have the bombers or missiles capable of long distance delivery so it would have to be by ground or something similar, maybe a boat. We have a good chance of intercepting that sort of thing maybe, but the biggest threat there is just it being smuggled out to a non-state actor such as the taliban.
The conventional damage would be far greater. It is by no means strong enough to win a war, but the first couple of days or weeks would be chaotic enough and the army would hold together enough to do too much damage to the South and Japan before we halt their advance.
This all brings two scenarios into play. I am pretty damn confident in what I have said thus far but I am wandering out of my real purview right now so I would like some input here because I'm kind of speaking out of my ass. 1) China runs in to "help" territory from the South that the North took out. Well, who is to say they wouldn't just keep it, along with the North, leading to a situation that may be "better" than what we have now, but still far from ideal. 2) The Peoples Republic of China takes advantage of the destabilization of the region to make a move on the Republic of China.
I am by no means confident in those later assessments but they seem somewhat likely from what I know.
So to wrap up, I think if we had not been involved in several lengthy and costly wars we might, with the backing of a large world coalition, be able to mitigate physical war damage to the region that isn't North Korea itself, but the economic costs right now would be completely unacceptable without unprecedented amounts of support from the entire globe, which is just unrealistic.
I'm not an anti-war pot smoking hippie, but I am a fucking pansy, that would rather run away from a fight than find out who I'm fighting in the first place.
And frankly, I feel the same way. If we decided to fuck up NK, I'd probably sign up after work today. As has been mentioned before, there's pretty much no room for any less-than-altruistic intentions, if you decide to end NK. You're doing it for world peace and saving the folks over there. You won't get used for some BS, or someone else's ulterior motive.
Just, if we do decide to put an end to NK, send me over with a deck of 52.
More like pussies
you're like a toothless dog barking frantically at a harmless kitten because you need to feel important
this thing pays for itself