War!! What is it good far?
Jan. 12th, 2003 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyRidding Europe and Asia of genocidal midgets circa 1939-45, mainly...After my offer of a double or quits bet to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
applez, he offered a counter bet that the US would pull troops out of Korea within the decade. A bit of a long-term bet, as it’s unwise to try and predict international relations more than 3-6 months ahead, I I said I’d look into it and see what I thought of the Korean Situation. In turn this lead to me looking more closely at a whole swathe of international politics issues, the thoughts on which I present here:
There is a significant difference between US and European attitudes to the current Middle East situation. In Europe, the anti-war movement grows in inverse proportion to the amount of actual war being fought, and even spokesmen for the British Government now say that odds against war are 60:40. However, tellingly, in an interview the other day Donald Frum, a senior White House operative was asked what he thought the odds of there being a war are. “Being a war?” he replied, incredulously. “We’re already at war.”
This difference in attitude says a lot about perceptions; as far as the US administration is concerned, the Sept 11th attack last year was a declaration of war by Islamic fundamentalism, and that war hasn’t ended yet. Perhaps the best analogy would be to the period of ‘Phoney War’ in 1939-40, when Britain and Germany growled at each other, but few shots were fired. If this is the case, there’s gonna be a flareup sooner or later.
So what has this to do with Korea? Well, Kim Jong-il’s pulling out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty seems remarkably well-timed. Every time for the last year when the US seems likely to start shooting in Iraq, something has popped up to take their eye off the ball: last spring’ escalation in Palestine, Saudi prince Abdullahs fictitious peace accord, and now North Korea.
To deal with Kim, the US would have to make a show of force to get him to back down again, and that would involve sending the carrier fleets back to the far East, delaying an attack on Iraq yet longer.
This would be an error, as Saddam Hussein is a far greater threat than the Koreans, for all that they are closer to having the bomb. Why?
North Koreans aren’t a threat to anyone but their own population. Whilst their army may be huge, it is reliant upon equipment that is at best 20 years out of date. They’re critically short of spare parts, supplies, and oil. The only people they’re capable of waging war against are the few internal dissidents they haven’t’ shot yet. Facing them across the 49th parallel are 37,500 troops, all fully armed & equipped and, frankly, itching to have a go – plus the South Korean army who Uncle Sam has been training and equipping for the last half-century. Frankly, the North Korean army isn’t going anywhere, and so without anything to back up a nuclear threat, they aren’t going to be starting anything anytime soon for fear that Pyongyang will quickly become a rapidly expanding radioactive cloud if they do.
So the US, I think, could safely pull out of Korea without leaving any threat to anyone – except the poor people of North Korea who, like 99% of the people who have lived in Socialist experiment countries, suffer and die daily for the ideals of their corrupt leaders. This does rather beg the question why the US should stay there at all – especially as China has busily been feeding North Korea Tributyl Phosphate, whose only use is extracting weapons grade plutonium. Uncle Sam should take the hint that China doesn’t mind Nuclear neighbours, sell a couple of dozen spare 20-kt tipped tomahawks to Japan and Taiwan, and leave.
Saddam Hussein, meanwhile has, by dint of cocking a snook at the US for the last decade, become a symbol of Arab resistance to the West of the sort that is just what the Fundamentalists need. Look at him, they say to the poor masses of Palestine, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Algeria. An Arab can stand up to the great Satan. If he can do it, so can you. And this sort of Arab symbol is, make no mistake, a great recruiting tool for people on the lookout for young idiots who will strap themselves to a bomb and detonate a couple of kids.
If there will be one lasting criticism of both Bush Snr and Clinton administrations, it’s that they didn’t take him out years ago; Bush because he lacked the political will to commit ground troops, and Clinton because it was handy to have someone to bomb when he needed attention taking away from where he’d stuck his cock that week. The upshot of this failure is that the Arab world has a figurehead of resistance to the West, and that’s just the last thing that we need right now, Al-Quedas and other Fundamentalist groups best recruiting tool is being able to show that it’s possible to act with impunity against the West, and so leaving Saddam in place is a really good way of condemning yet more tourists in places like Egypt, Bali, and the Philippines to an explosive and bloody death.
Saddam won’t be easy to shift – it will take a war, and people will die, and international law will be breached. To this I say: ‘Bummer’.
The US seizing a shipment of missiles bound to Iran last week has drawn condemnation for being illegal piracy on the high seas. Damn right, it is. However, bearing in mind that Rafsanjani (the moderate, reasonable leader of Iran) has gone on record as saying that if he ever gets his hands on deliverable Nuclear Weapons he’ll solve the Israel question once and for all suddenly makes the seizure so much more reasonable.
There’s a historic precedent of people talking about ‘solving the Jewish problem’. Oddly, however, I don’t hear anyone complaining about attempts to stop other people expressing the same views getting weapons.
So, what should we do? Well, the obvious answer is to take out Saddam and his regime as fast and efficiently as possible. Sadly, assassination is unlikely to work; Saddam is rather twitchy about his personal security, realising, perhaps, that when both the US and Israel want you dead it takes a little more than making sure you bolted the windows to remain hale & hearty.
So war it is, and the sooner the better. Remove Saddam Hussein and his entire regime and put a democratic structure in place in Iraq and, if anyone tries to take power legitimately through the ballot box in fair and open elections, stop them too.
I came up with an idea many years ago that I’ve never seen in print and so I can only assume that it is actually an original idea of my own; the Us may best be described as a Democratic fundamentalist state; you can have any form of government you like, so long as you vote for it.
Damn, I’m glad we’re on their side.
applez, he offered a counter bet that the US would pull troops out of Korea within the decade. A bit of a long-term bet, as it’s unwise to try and predict international relations more than 3-6 months ahead, I I said I’d look into it and see what I thought of the Korean Situation. In turn this lead to me looking more closely at a whole swathe of international politics issues, the thoughts on which I present here:There is a significant difference between US and European attitudes to the current Middle East situation. In Europe, the anti-war movement grows in inverse proportion to the amount of actual war being fought, and even spokesmen for the British Government now say that odds against war are 60:40. However, tellingly, in an interview the other day Donald Frum, a senior White House operative was asked what he thought the odds of there being a war are. “Being a war?” he replied, incredulously. “We’re already at war.”
This difference in attitude says a lot about perceptions; as far as the US administration is concerned, the Sept 11th attack last year was a declaration of war by Islamic fundamentalism, and that war hasn’t ended yet. Perhaps the best analogy would be to the period of ‘Phoney War’ in 1939-40, when Britain and Germany growled at each other, but few shots were fired. If this is the case, there’s gonna be a flareup sooner or later.
So what has this to do with Korea? Well, Kim Jong-il’s pulling out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty seems remarkably well-timed. Every time for the last year when the US seems likely to start shooting in Iraq, something has popped up to take their eye off the ball: last spring’ escalation in Palestine, Saudi prince Abdullahs fictitious peace accord, and now North Korea.
To deal with Kim, the US would have to make a show of force to get him to back down again, and that would involve sending the carrier fleets back to the far East, delaying an attack on Iraq yet longer.
This would be an error, as Saddam Hussein is a far greater threat than the Koreans, for all that they are closer to having the bomb. Why?
North Koreans aren’t a threat to anyone but their own population. Whilst their army may be huge, it is reliant upon equipment that is at best 20 years out of date. They’re critically short of spare parts, supplies, and oil. The only people they’re capable of waging war against are the few internal dissidents they haven’t’ shot yet. Facing them across the 49th parallel are 37,500 troops, all fully armed & equipped and, frankly, itching to have a go – plus the South Korean army who Uncle Sam has been training and equipping for the last half-century. Frankly, the North Korean army isn’t going anywhere, and so without anything to back up a nuclear threat, they aren’t going to be starting anything anytime soon for fear that Pyongyang will quickly become a rapidly expanding radioactive cloud if they do.
So the US, I think, could safely pull out of Korea without leaving any threat to anyone – except the poor people of North Korea who, like 99% of the people who have lived in Socialist experiment countries, suffer and die daily for the ideals of their corrupt leaders. This does rather beg the question why the US should stay there at all – especially as China has busily been feeding North Korea Tributyl Phosphate, whose only use is extracting weapons grade plutonium. Uncle Sam should take the hint that China doesn’t mind Nuclear neighbours, sell a couple of dozen spare 20-kt tipped tomahawks to Japan and Taiwan, and leave.
Saddam Hussein, meanwhile has, by dint of cocking a snook at the US for the last decade, become a symbol of Arab resistance to the West of the sort that is just what the Fundamentalists need. Look at him, they say to the poor masses of Palestine, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Algeria. An Arab can stand up to the great Satan. If he can do it, so can you. And this sort of Arab symbol is, make no mistake, a great recruiting tool for people on the lookout for young idiots who will strap themselves to a bomb and detonate a couple of kids.
If there will be one lasting criticism of both Bush Snr and Clinton administrations, it’s that they didn’t take him out years ago; Bush because he lacked the political will to commit ground troops, and Clinton because it was handy to have someone to bomb when he needed attention taking away from where he’d stuck his cock that week. The upshot of this failure is that the Arab world has a figurehead of resistance to the West, and that’s just the last thing that we need right now, Al-Quedas and other Fundamentalist groups best recruiting tool is being able to show that it’s possible to act with impunity against the West, and so leaving Saddam in place is a really good way of condemning yet more tourists in places like Egypt, Bali, and the Philippines to an explosive and bloody death.
Saddam won’t be easy to shift – it will take a war, and people will die, and international law will be breached. To this I say: ‘Bummer’.
The US seizing a shipment of missiles bound to Iran last week has drawn condemnation for being illegal piracy on the high seas. Damn right, it is. However, bearing in mind that Rafsanjani (the moderate, reasonable leader of Iran) has gone on record as saying that if he ever gets his hands on deliverable Nuclear Weapons he’ll solve the Israel question once and for all suddenly makes the seizure so much more reasonable.
There’s a historic precedent of people talking about ‘solving the Jewish problem’. Oddly, however, I don’t hear anyone complaining about attempts to stop other people expressing the same views getting weapons.
So, what should we do? Well, the obvious answer is to take out Saddam and his regime as fast and efficiently as possible. Sadly, assassination is unlikely to work; Saddam is rather twitchy about his personal security, realising, perhaps, that when both the US and Israel want you dead it takes a little more than making sure you bolted the windows to remain hale & hearty.
So war it is, and the sooner the better. Remove Saddam Hussein and his entire regime and put a democratic structure in place in Iraq and, if anyone tries to take power legitimately through the ballot box in fair and open elections, stop them too.
I came up with an idea many years ago that I’ve never seen in print and so I can only assume that it is actually an original idea of my own; the Us may best be described as a Democratic fundamentalist state; you can have any form of government you like, so long as you vote for it.
Damn, I’m glad we’re on their side.
Re: Attacking Iraq
Date: 2003-01-13 04:53 am (UTC)Still we can hope Iraq might take a cue from Zimbabwe in removing a brutal dictator...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2651687.stm
Neil
Re: Attacking Iraq
Date: 2003-01-13 04:56 am (UTC)Now is the time to invest heavily in fuel-cell tech companies, I think.
Re: Attacking Iraq
Date: 2003-01-13 05:08 am (UTC)Hasn't there always been an issue over using another country to provide Britain's power? Would be a good idea if is cheap and reliable though.
Am I right in thinking that it is the oil companies that are the main drivers in R&D in alternative power sources?
Neil
Re: Attacking Iraq
Date: 2003-01-13 05:20 am (UTC)The busses in Cambridge are already running on Fuel Cells as an experiment, and seem to be doing very well of it too.
Re: Attacking Iraq
Date: 2003-01-13 10:05 am (UTC)Do you have to pay on LJ?
Neil
Re: Attacking Iraq
Date: 2003-01-13 02:47 pm (UTC)Re: Attacking Iraq
Date: 2003-01-14 01:15 am (UTC)