Removing Kim from the equation saves thousands of lives. I would much rather see an attempt to save those lives, then just go to war.
Don't confuse Mr. Kim with the DPRK. The death of Stalin didn't cause the USSR to go away any more than Mao Zedong's death caused the dissolution of the CCP. The US wants the DPRK to dissolve and thinks that they'll run out of resources if China cuts them off. Without external supplies of goods and money they'll be unable to supply their forces, pay their troops, and maintain their lifestyles: it will force reform because of their inefficient distribution of labor and material.
If the DRPK decides to unilaterally declare war on South Korea and the US, the Chinese will probably dogpile on them just to make sure they get a piece of the action afterwards; they don't want US bases any closer to them. Which for US purposes would be extremely agreeable.
My first question, is America really scared of China? I would say the politicians (and Obama) would look at a war with NK as a way to erase the debt owed to China.
If you break it, you own it. The US is allies with South Korea and Japan, that's not a point of debate or contention. The issue is that North Korea has several thousands of artillery batteries within range of Seoul, and nobody wants to see thousands of civilians get bombarded. That is why any actions taken against North Korea are done with a grain of salt.
Quote from bocephus »
My second thought is, is America willing to hand over an SK in order to keep peace? What would that look like to the rest of the American allies?
What is that supposed to mean? We're not handing over SK to anybody, their role as a de facto vassal state reliant on US military muscle notwithstanding. The biggest issue with our current crop of allies remains, shockingly enough, in the Middle East.
Quote from bocephus »
On the assassination aspect, we have the technology to fly a drone that can not be picked up by radar into NK and kill who we wish. Its not like the old days where we have to send in a team to extract some one.
Unannounced acts of war aren't exactly the sort of thing you can just do and get away with. Even with an administration notoriously as drone happy as this one. Killing Mr. Kim will accomplish...what, exactly? There's some question as to who the real power is in the DPRK, and you might serve to do nothing more than bump a puppet off a throne, while they threaten artillery strikes on the capital of an ally. The Chinese will start shooting down drones if they see the Americans putting them up over NK.
The status quo for North Korea is what's going on right now, the only real paradigm shift is the change in (nominal?) leadership and them trying to acquire nukes with increasing amounts of success. It isn't like this because the people involved are stupid. As much as some folks like to rag on the state department and various administrations, the status quo there isn't the status quo because it's something arbitrary or easily changed.
If the puppet warlords forstall any major conflict, I see it as acceptable. If the puppet warlord in question gets out of hand, an assassination disguised as a coup to liberate the warlord's subject seems to be the best recourse.
Assassination is notoriously ineffective and if it fails, it makes any situation worse. If Kim Jong Un is a puppet, he's a puppet of one of the DPRK's ruling factions. China uses them as a buffer to prevent American troops and spies from being on their border. Really they're a holdover from the Cold War, and will eventually get swept away or opened up.
The US and South Korea haven't retaliated vs. North Korea because the North Koreans have THOUSANDS of artillery batteries within range of Seoul. In the event of conflict, the big concern is they'll light up the capital of South Korea - a heavily urbanized megalopolis - with said batteries. THAT is the credible threat.
The US isn't going to start a war with North Korea because they're an ally of China, they're right next to China, and it doesn't serve any sort of long term strategic interest, particularly in light of the new generation of Chinese leadership becoming increasingly impatient with them. The DPRK is a tempest in a teapot. They cause all sorts of trouble but getting rid of them would be even worse.
There is no shred of evidence that the N.K. ruling body is rational. Absolute dictatorships tend to be like that. As such, it is also the case that they may determine they have nothing to lose in a misjudgment.
Hogwash.
The fact the Kim dynasty is now in its third generation (and didn't destroy itself with supposedly 'insane' behavior two generations ago) demonstrates they are quite rational.
For forty years now, every single time they engage in this sort of silliness, they know exactly how far they can take it before something really bad happens to them. And then they pull back just short of doing that.
The danger this time is that this guy (if he is even 100% in charge, which is actually doubtful) is so inexperienced, the analysts aren't sure if he will follow the same very rational playbook they last two Kims did.
As dictator, he has everything to lose. Those surrounding him do too. In fact, they might be the only people in the whole country with anything to lose.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. The DPRK isn't going to start a war, and the US isn't going to start a war. Kim Jong Il used belligerence to extort aid from foreign powers while trying to develop a nuclear program for both military deterrence and to extort even more foreign aid. Any individual action should be seen in context of the broader plan - it's pretty clear that in order to maintain stability they need resources, primarily to feed their own military apparatus. They've ground their little patch of dirt into dust, squandered their human capital, and abandoned any pretense of attempting to engage the rest of the world economically. If China was really concerned about them, they'd have stopped them already by freezing their accounts in Chinese banks and halting all shipments strategic assets across the border.
If the North Koreans launched a rocket, the US and SK would retaliate by targeting artillery positions targeting Seoul. The threat of thousands of civilian casualties is the big thing preventing foreign regimes from meddling. That's why the US wants China to stop feeding them petrol - without cheap oil, they grind to a halt without any real targets for their belligerence. We think they're desperate enough, when pushed, to put one of those nukes they've been developing into an artillery piece and launch it at Seoul - or just open fire with what the Economist said was their 10k artillery sites that can hit the capital. Other than what the DPRK or its factions would do, the South Korean and US forces involved would be restricted to conventional weapons due to the highly populated nature of the peninsula and the presence of allies and competitors that would not be well served by fallout.
Morality that declares evil to exist in the first place. No framework for evil to exist in, no evil.
That old chestnut "Money is the root of all evil" is actually an abridged version of the complete phrase "The love of money is the root of all evil". Selfishness - the desire to put the self above others, heedless of consequences, is certainly responsible for its fair share of wickedness, and arguably contains several of your classic sins. Although, another man whose name eludes me said "If only the wicked did evil, the Lord would return tomorrow."
Attributing any one cause to evil over simplifies the many ways people can be nasty little ****s to each other. I work in retail, and I used to think that some people were the goddamned devil, until I realized there's no way in hell that any self respecting demon could be that petty.
Its kinda impressive that the Romans would even have a chance of winning considering the 1000 year differential between the two.
Big leaps in technological advancement require a more urbanized civilization. Technology essentially stalled in Europe after the fall of the Roman empire until the Renaissance, and Indian, Arab, and Chinese civilizations were the ones making advancements - or at least they were until, lo and behold, 2 of the 3 were conquered by aforementioned Mongols. The Romans were supremely well armed and armored by the standards of the day, with metal armor that could shrug off the blows of most weapons. They would still lose in any straight up engagement with the Mongols because of the mobility of cavalry and their self contained logistics. They could simply never actually trap the Mongols and force an engagement unless they made a tactical blunder. The Mongols were ultimately defeated by the Black Plague.
It's not so much impressive as disappointing. Can you imagine what today would be like if we hadn't lost a millenia of potential scientific advancement?
Seems like people underestimate the Mongols and overestimate the Romans. To be expected, because Romans have more emphasis everywhere.
The Roman army was never the monster people think of it as. What made the Romans terrifying in warfare came from their willingness to experiment and adapt to situations and foreign tactics, while the enemies they faced tended to be dogmatic in their military tactics, and their sheer number. The romans outnumbered every army they faced, and were capable of replacing losses that no other powers could ever handle. That's how they won the 2nd Punic War, and everything else was a gnat compared to that.
But, really, the Romans tend to lose in actual fights fairly often.
In actual combat, the Romans would outnumber the Mongols. By a lot. But the Mongol army would basically run circles around the Romans and outmaneuver them. Basically what Hannibal did. What happened to the armies that faced Hannibal? They all died until Scipio Afticanus used similar tactics and countered Hannibal.
The Roman Republic at the the time frame given cannot win. The armies at the time frame cannot win.
It's true the Romans lost battles plenty of times. But they were well armed, well trained, disciplined legions regardless, and one of the most effective fighting forces in the world. The cavalry armies that were so frightening were a colossal investment of resources that conventional militaries couldn't match. With competent leadership, their legions were supremely dominant.
The mongols basically had an entire army of cavalry, each soldier having something like 2-4 horses -link. This allowed them unprecedented speed and logistical flexibility - they could travel 100 miles in a day, a conventional army by foot - 10. They forced their opponents between a rock and a hard place with horse mounted archers forcing tightly packed formations to scatter, which were then easily torn apart by lancers if they stayed on the field. Combined with a flexible command structure, their huge amount of archers (60% of their army) next to their sizeable quantity of lancers (the remainder) ripped apart any non mounted army and were capable of outmaneuvering the more heavily armed and armored knights. If they were outnumbered or their opponent could not be scattered, they never had to actually commit to any battle because they had cavalry, and could retreat, which at best caused their opponent to draw themselves into a line chasing after them, allowing them to pick them apart with their archers.
The Mongols were essentially the best pre-gunpowder army that existed. Their tactical accomplishments were only really defeatable by Renaissance+ technology - crossbows, arquebus, cannons, and muskets. It was similar to Alexander the Greats conquests - no one ever found a satisfactory answer to the mobility of cavalry before the advent of high power, easily used ranged weaponry. If they went on foot or were forced to brawl, yes, the Roman Legionnaire or Japanese Samurai would kick their asses. But they never needed to do anything so crude. People were still trying to use these tactics by the time of the Crimean War and American Civil War. The German concept of "Blitzkrieg" in WWII and the modern American "Shock and Awe" doctrines are both based off of fast, overwhelming cavalry assaults - tanks and aircraft in combined arms attacks, supported by infantry, that render defensive emplacements cumbersome and force rapid force re-deployments in order to cut off or otherwise limit enemy mobility, with the penalty for not doing so being flanked and cut off by superior firepower.
Nice. Somebody came into the store I was working at one day and paid with a silver dollar (1929), which I promptly swapped with a bill I had in my pocket.
Political philosophy derived from Hobbes and Locke states that all things are rights, and we surrender them to the state in order to gain the benefits of stability. In that sense, rights are no different than unmanaged privileges that the social order permits - you can do them without anyone batting an eye. Privileges are managed rights, such as voting, driving, and gun ownership in the US.
There is no such thing as an absolute right, and no rights are divinely inspired. While governments that do not respect their citizens can collapse, the mere existence of those that abrogate everything we consider to be a right is sufficient evidence that rights are social constructs that define the limits of society and citizens, not absolute in any way, shape, or form.
It's not particularly good historically, but it's the best instant speed draw in standard right now, as well as scaleable(!) for longer games. The life gain tacked onto it helps mitigate its rather crushing mana cost at xWUU. If you can put 3 or 4 into X, you're getting your mana's worth.
Another reason I had listed exceptions is to refute this very argument. The woman had a choice to have (usually, tho I realize no birth control is 100%) unprotected sex. We make choices, and choices we make have consequences.
You are either for, or against, murdering babies. There is no gray area here.
This is a connection that a lot of people have a lot of trouble making. Because there are many who believe there is a murky area, that life does not begin at conception, and a non viable fetus is the responsibility of the parents. If the father is absent, then it's the mothers responsibility, alone, and she makes a judgment call about whether or not she can or will care for the child, especially in a country with a paucity of children's services. The personal responsibility line taken this far is several logical leaps above where it begins.
In regards to anything from the CDC, I view with much skepticism. It is in so much bed with the Democrat party I find anything they say to be something to view with a very critical eye.
I have never heard of the CDC being called an aligned political tool, ever.
If anything will come of this, and I highly doubt that this will even be the case, it can be said that nothing good will come of it. Everything else is academic.
If anyone strikes, retaliatory action may be swift enough or it won't. Most of the UK papers guys say that retaliation will be too slow and that, if it isn't, it'll do a fat load of good.
Pretty much. Retaliation would be focused on preventing continuing artillery barrages and missile strikes, as the big threat is the DPRK launching artillery at civilian targets. It would take anywhere between minutes or hours for a broad response, so the promise of US protection is one of revenge as much as response.
What's more worrisome is the development of medium range missiles with 1900 mile ranges. While right now they aren't particularly troublesome, further development could hone their accuracy and reliability to the point where they can actually hit something and carry significant payloads while doing it. Conventional warheads have many benefits, but the DPRK relies on the strategic benefit of using them and its downtrodden populace as a sword of Damocles for China and SK.
Valuing the choice of the unborn child/fetus/whatever is basically equivalent to saying the mother, who actually has to care for the baby carried to term, doesn't get a choice beyond conception. Adoption is extremely expensive in the US - I know some folks who want to, but can't.
Ultimately this is about making a far reaching decision about what people can and cannot do with themselves and their lives. Once the child is born, the support of many in the pro life camp evaporates, which causes many of us who are supportive of choice to question the purity of motive behind it. While I agree in a perfect world none of this would be needed, this is not that world. Thus we play the cards we have, and I personally am of the opinion that the people responsible for their pregnancy and their child gets to make their decision. It isn't my business, or the states business, as neither I nor the state are going to be caring for their child.
Jim Crow laws were hardly ineffective by any reasonable metric - they worked extremely well for a century. The Oklahoma method is simply vastly superior in terms of getting these people what they want than directly challenging standing precedent, and much more difficult to overturn, as there is no single law that directly challenges federal law. If they come straight out and outlaw abortion, it'll just get overturned, like it always does. If they squeeze reproductive health clinics out of the state by tightening the standards on building codes and qualifications on employees, they'll succeed in actually achieving what they want.
These culture wars started because the people in legislatures don't have enough actual work to do. Their existence is a sign they should slash the state legislatures session by a few days each time they crop up. The courts aren't going to throw out Roe v Wade because it's precedent, albeit a complicated and largely bad ruling. Even still, there's no legal precedent for the federal or state governments to legislate health decisions.
Don't confuse Mr. Kim with the DPRK. The death of Stalin didn't cause the USSR to go away any more than Mao Zedong's death caused the dissolution of the CCP. The US wants the DPRK to dissolve and thinks that they'll run out of resources if China cuts them off. Without external supplies of goods and money they'll be unable to supply their forces, pay their troops, and maintain their lifestyles: it will force reform because of their inefficient distribution of labor and material.
If the DRPK decides to unilaterally declare war on South Korea and the US, the Chinese will probably dogpile on them just to make sure they get a piece of the action afterwards; they don't want US bases any closer to them. Which for US purposes would be extremely agreeable.
If you break it, you own it. The US is allies with South Korea and Japan, that's not a point of debate or contention. The issue is that North Korea has several thousands of artillery batteries within range of Seoul, and nobody wants to see thousands of civilians get bombarded. That is why any actions taken against North Korea are done with a grain of salt.
What is that supposed to mean? We're not handing over SK to anybody, their role as a de facto vassal state reliant on US military muscle notwithstanding. The biggest issue with our current crop of allies remains, shockingly enough, in the Middle East.
Unannounced acts of war aren't exactly the sort of thing you can just do and get away with. Even with an administration notoriously as drone happy as this one. Killing Mr. Kim will accomplish...what, exactly? There's some question as to who the real power is in the DPRK, and you might serve to do nothing more than bump a puppet off a throne, while they threaten artillery strikes on the capital of an ally. The Chinese will start shooting down drones if they see the Americans putting them up over NK.
The status quo for North Korea is what's going on right now, the only real paradigm shift is the change in (nominal?) leadership and them trying to acquire nukes with increasing amounts of success. It isn't like this because the people involved are stupid. As much as some folks like to rag on the state department and various administrations, the status quo there isn't the status quo because it's something arbitrary or easily changed.
Assassination is notoriously ineffective and if it fails, it makes any situation worse. If Kim Jong Un is a puppet, he's a puppet of one of the DPRK's ruling factions. China uses them as a buffer to prevent American troops and spies from being on their border. Really they're a holdover from the Cold War, and will eventually get swept away or opened up.
The US and South Korea haven't retaliated vs. North Korea because the North Koreans have THOUSANDS of artillery batteries within range of Seoul. In the event of conflict, the big concern is they'll light up the capital of South Korea - a heavily urbanized megalopolis - with said batteries. THAT is the credible threat.
The US isn't going to start a war with North Korea because they're an ally of China, they're right next to China, and it doesn't serve any sort of long term strategic interest, particularly in light of the new generation of Chinese leadership becoming increasingly impatient with them. The DPRK is a tempest in a teapot. They cause all sorts of trouble but getting rid of them would be even worse.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. The DPRK isn't going to start a war, and the US isn't going to start a war. Kim Jong Il used belligerence to extort aid from foreign powers while trying to develop a nuclear program for both military deterrence and to extort even more foreign aid. Any individual action should be seen in context of the broader plan - it's pretty clear that in order to maintain stability they need resources, primarily to feed their own military apparatus. They've ground their little patch of dirt into dust, squandered their human capital, and abandoned any pretense of attempting to engage the rest of the world economically. If China was really concerned about them, they'd have stopped them already by freezing their accounts in Chinese banks and halting all shipments strategic assets across the border.
If the North Koreans launched a rocket, the US and SK would retaliate by targeting artillery positions targeting Seoul. The threat of thousands of civilian casualties is the big thing preventing foreign regimes from meddling. That's why the US wants China to stop feeding them petrol - without cheap oil, they grind to a halt without any real targets for their belligerence. We think they're desperate enough, when pushed, to put one of those nukes they've been developing into an artillery piece and launch it at Seoul - or just open fire with what the Economist said was their 10k artillery sites that can hit the capital. Other than what the DPRK or its factions would do, the South Korean and US forces involved would be restricted to conventional weapons due to the highly populated nature of the peninsula and the presence of allies and competitors that would not be well served by fallout.
That old chestnut "Money is the root of all evil" is actually an abridged version of the complete phrase "The love of money is the root of all evil". Selfishness - the desire to put the self above others, heedless of consequences, is certainly responsible for its fair share of wickedness, and arguably contains several of your classic sins. Although, another man whose name eludes me said "If only the wicked did evil, the Lord would return tomorrow."
Attributing any one cause to evil over simplifies the many ways people can be nasty little ****s to each other. I work in retail, and I used to think that some people were the goddamned devil, until I realized there's no way in hell that any self respecting demon could be that petty.
Big leaps in technological advancement require a more urbanized civilization. Technology essentially stalled in Europe after the fall of the Roman empire until the Renaissance, and Indian, Arab, and Chinese civilizations were the ones making advancements - or at least they were until, lo and behold, 2 of the 3 were conquered by aforementioned Mongols. The Romans were supremely well armed and armored by the standards of the day, with metal armor that could shrug off the blows of most weapons. They would still lose in any straight up engagement with the Mongols because of the mobility of cavalry and their self contained logistics. They could simply never actually trap the Mongols and force an engagement unless they made a tactical blunder. The Mongols were ultimately defeated by the Black Plague.
It's not so much impressive as disappointing. Can you imagine what today would be like if we hadn't lost a millenia of potential scientific advancement?
It's true the Romans lost battles plenty of times. But they were well armed, well trained, disciplined legions regardless, and one of the most effective fighting forces in the world. The cavalry armies that were so frightening were a colossal investment of resources that conventional militaries couldn't match. With competent leadership, their legions were supremely dominant.
The Mongols were essentially the best pre-gunpowder army that existed. Their tactical accomplishments were only really defeatable by Renaissance+ technology - crossbows, arquebus, cannons, and muskets. It was similar to Alexander the Greats conquests - no one ever found a satisfactory answer to the mobility of cavalry before the advent of high power, easily used ranged weaponry. If they went on foot or were forced to brawl, yes, the Roman Legionnaire or Japanese Samurai would kick their asses. But they never needed to do anything so crude. People were still trying to use these tactics by the time of the Crimean War and American Civil War. The German concept of "Blitzkrieg" in WWII and the modern American "Shock and Awe" doctrines are both based off of fast, overwhelming cavalry assaults - tanks and aircraft in combined arms attacks, supported by infantry, that render defensive emplacements cumbersome and force rapid force re-deployments in order to cut off or otherwise limit enemy mobility, with the penalty for not doing so being flanked and cut off by superior firepower.
There is no such thing as an absolute right, and no rights are divinely inspired. While governments that do not respect their citizens can collapse, the mere existence of those that abrogate everything we consider to be a right is sufficient evidence that rights are social constructs that define the limits of society and citizens, not absolute in any way, shape, or form.
Which sounds great, until we get
This is a connection that a lot of people have a lot of trouble making. Because there are many who believe there is a murky area, that life does not begin at conception, and a non viable fetus is the responsibility of the parents. If the father is absent, then it's the mothers responsibility, alone, and she makes a judgment call about whether or not she can or will care for the child, especially in a country with a paucity of children's services. The personal responsibility line taken this far is several logical leaps above where it begins.
I have never heard of the CDC being called an aligned political tool, ever.
Pretty much. Retaliation would be focused on preventing continuing artillery barrages and missile strikes, as the big threat is the DPRK launching artillery at civilian targets. It would take anywhere between minutes or hours for a broad response, so the promise of US protection is one of revenge as much as response.
What's more worrisome is the development of medium range missiles with 1900 mile ranges. While right now they aren't particularly troublesome, further development could hone their accuracy and reliability to the point where they can actually hit something and carry significant payloads while doing it. Conventional warheads have many benefits, but the DPRK relies on the strategic benefit of using them and its downtrodden populace as a sword of Damocles for China and SK.
Ultimately this is about making a far reaching decision about what people can and cannot do with themselves and their lives. Once the child is born, the support of many in the pro life camp evaporates, which causes many of us who are supportive of choice to question the purity of motive behind it. While I agree in a perfect world none of this would be needed, this is not that world. Thus we play the cards we have, and I personally am of the opinion that the people responsible for their pregnancy and their child gets to make their decision. It isn't my business, or the states business, as neither I nor the state are going to be caring for their child.
These culture wars started because the people in legislatures don't have enough actual work to do. Their existence is a sign they should slash the state legislatures session by a few days each time they crop up. The courts aren't going to throw out Roe v Wade because it's precedent, albeit a complicated and largely bad ruling. Even still, there's no legal precedent for the federal or state governments to legislate health decisions.