North Korea

[Hal the IRC Bot]

Sanzoskitsune

I'm sorry but here's what I hear when I come in this thread and read some of the posts "Lets bomb everyone and make the entire world unliveable!" Yeah cause bombing the hell out of everything won't have serious enviromental repercussions.

Just so you know, this kind of thinking is exactly why other countries hate us.

As a matter of fact, that is the reason why some guys from my city made this song.

Here is a slightly cleaned-up version of the lyrics (they took out the marijuana, for one thing).

Also: this  

[Kerrigan_dragon]

Is anyone else reminded by lazycommie of the Nazis?  

[lazycommie]

TurtIe Tracks

lazycommie

TurtIe Tracks

I.. know pretty much nothing about the military (or law, for that matter) so I will also assume that you (lazycommie) are correct about what you said.

But I still don't think it's right to just nuke the capital and in such a way that'll give the North Koreans a lot of pain. I highly doubt that leaders like Kim Jong Il really care if we have the ability and/or the guts to do that to their citizens, I mean they already have no freedom and there are an estimated 200,000 in prison camps... not to mention like everyone in the country is starving to death. And you can say that the leaders care because they value their appearance, but really everyone already has a terrible impression of Kim Jong Il outside North Korea and inside it it doesn't really matter because everyone's brainwashed into either liking him or pretending they do.

No politician cares about the people. However, they do care about power and not being vaporized by a nuclear bombardment, being gassed to death or dying in a hellstorm of FAE's(which are banned under bogus international law because they work). Basically it's saying, "you're not safe, if you piss us off we will make sure you are dead, as well as everything around you for 20 miles".

The citizens of the nation really matter not, putting the madman in his place and getting all the other madmen to learn to STFU and pretend to love us, does.

But if it's just the politicians, is a nuke really necessary...?

The idea is to make a point of it, though. Not "we'll kill you" but "we'll kill you, wipe out your capitol so you can't just have someone else in your party come to power and then annex your country...maybe make it a state if y'all are good".

Sanzo: I'm starting to think you just like to attack me, lol.

Not "everything", or even close to everything. It's really only take hitting NK, as the rest of the world would fall into line quickly. Environmentally? Modern nukes are very clean, and it would only be a city targeted. No major fallout, no major ecological damage. Nuclear weapons won't "destroy the world" or anything of the sort. That's a fallacy pushed during the Cold War, grounded on completely idiotic and incorrect theories about dust dispersal and the climate, which were completely put to rest during the nuclear tests in the 50's and 60's, when nukes of all sizes were set off by the US and Russia to test different designs. If you want, I could write an entire thread devited to explaining nuclear weapons.

"The rest of the world" doesn't hate us. West Europe, Iran, Syria and NK hate us. W. Europe hates us because we outshined them and showed that they're not a world power, and are essentially obsolete. Iran and Syria hate us because they hate the West in general. NK hates us because Kim is, well...Kim. The remaining parts of thee world either don't care as long as we keep buying their stuff(Asia in general) or like us(E. Europe).


Kerr:

I don't see how I can be compared to the Nazis. I propose no genocide, don't address anything pertaining to race, and propose no fascism. I only propose using force to insure peace by making other nations realize that messing with us will make them hurt.  

[Sanzoskitsune]

*dies laughing* I'm sorry I can't take you seriously after this thread. We're not the only world power. We're not the only ones with bombs. And brute force has NEVER worked to keep peace, if it had we would HAVE peace.

It's not that I like to attack you, I just see huge problems in your thought process is all. I honestly don't think you take all things into account.  

[lazycommie]

Sanzoskitsune

*dies laughing* I'm sorry I can't take you seriously after this thread. We're not the only world power. We're not the only ones with bombs. And brute force has NEVER worked to keep peace, if it had we would HAVE peace.

It's not that I like to attack you, I just see huge problems in your thought process is all. I honestly don't think you take all things into account.

We are the only military superpower still standing. The USSR broke up and their military has yet to recover. They still have mnogo nukes, but most of them are non-functional. They're building new nukes, but not many of them, not enough to be significant. Their conventional forces are technologically similar to ours, but not as well trained. They are, however, likely to "fight dirty", like we should do. At this point in the world, Russia doesn't give two shits about anything pertaining to us. They like to rattle their sabers, but they know and we know that they're not going to do anything against us, just as they know we won't do anything against them.

China is one hell of an economic power-house, but is not militarily capable due to poor training and obsolete equipment. They are a very smart country, diplomatically, actually. They know that they can profit more off of being friendly with us than as our enemy, even if they don't much care for us. They could be seen as rather neutral towards us, but for a different reason than Russia. Russia just doesn't care, China's sitting between disliking us and liking us because they don't like us politically, but love our business. In a US vs China war, US would win but it would be a very costly war for both sides.

I'm not proposing brute force. I'm proposing using a single well placed attack that is less devistating and less costly(in terms of lives and money) than a conventional war, and using it to reaffirm our "credible threat". Think of the relative peace between the US and USSR during the "red scare" of the 50's. Neither side wanted to do anything overt, because it would wind up hurting them. We saw one small proxy war(Korea, which ended in a complete and utter stalemate) and a handful of revolutions in the 3rd world, but that's about it.



So, what happens if we launched against NK?

NK may have nuclear weapons, but absolutely no delivery means. They're sitting in warehouses, eating up money and resources. A nuke without a way to deliver it is nothing but a "money sink". The US, on the other hand, has lots of nukes, more than anyone but Russia(we have more methods of delivery and more accurate ones, though). Russia isn't going to launch, because they know we wouldn't launch against them anyway, and so they don't care. Ever since the Sino-Soviet split, NK has not had much dealings with Russia economically. China would not launch either, since they don't make any money off of NK, and in fact waste money on them. In general, NK is one big money sink, that everyone, even their supposed "allies" hate and wouldn't care if they disappeared.

If we sold NK to China, that would help pay our debts off as well, since I'm sure CHina wouldn't mind having more land and resources.


My comment about attacking me was a bit of a joke, hence the "lol" at the end. When it comes to military stuff, especially things pertaining to CBRN(chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear warfare) stuff, I am very thorough in my thoughts, and spend a lot of idle time thinking about it. I have maps in my room of fallout spread in the US and Russia based on 70's "full scale, everything we've got" scenarios, back when the world had more nukes than we have now(nukes have shelf lives, very short ones if not maintained, slightly longer if maintained)  

[Sanzoskitsune]

I'm not going to change your mind about your thoughts and I'm not going to try to. I will tell you this though, your plan is about brute force despite what you think. Bombing is use of brute force no matter what the situation. I'm not saying brute force isn't always necessary, Hiroshima and Nagisaka proved that. What I AM saying is that it seems to be your only option instead of diplomacy. I'm very glad you aren't in a seat of power because if you were you'd probably be responsible for the beginning of WWIII in which every country starts bombing the hell out of each other and we end up killing most of the human race off. That's what I see being the consequences to what you want to do.

By the way, the US is not the end all be all. It's a great country I'm not denying that but it really doesn't need to take control of other countries there are plenty of examples of it ******** others over for its own sake. Which is understandable everyone does it, doesn't mean I approve of it or even have to like it or that I think its something it should do again.  

[lazycommie]

Sanzoskitsune

I'm not going to change your mind about your thoughts and I'm not going to try to. I will tell you this though, your plan is about brute force despite what you think. Bombing is use of brute force no matter what the situation. I'm not saying brute force isn't always necessary, Hiroshima and Nagisaka proved that. What I AM saying is that it seems to be your only option instead of diplomacy. I'm very glad you aren't in a seat of power because if you were you'd probably be responsible for the beginning of WWIII in which every country starts bombing the hell out of each other and we end up killing most of the human race off. That's what I see being the consequences to what you want to do.

By the way, the US is not the end all be all. It's a great country I'm not denying that but it really doesn't need to take control of other countries there are plenty of examples of it ******** others over for its own sake. Which is understandable everyone does it, doesn't mean I approve of it or even have to like it or that I think its something it should do again.

We tried "diplomacy" with NK. We've tried it with Iran and Syria. There are just some people who you cannot deal with through peaceful negotiations. Also, people are a LOT more likely to want to negotiate peacefully with you if they know that, should you decide to go to war, you'll crush them utterly and then sell your country to the highest bidder.

Militarily, we are. Economically? Not anymore, not in a long time. Diplomatically? We have as much sway as Russia or China, but for different reasons(We have military might, China makes a lot of the world's goods and feeds a lot of the world, Russia has lots and lots of oil and coal). If it came to an out-and-out WWIII scenario, we'd "win", but would be hurting for a very long time afterwards.


I'm really tempted to write a thread debunking a lot of nuclear myths. A global thermonuclear war, at the height of the world's nuclear capability(mid 70's) would have, at most, killed maybe a few hundred million world-wide. Mostly in China and W. Europe, as China is in the fallout path from Russia and W. Europe was likely to see a mass of tactical nukes, combined with the poor(i.e. non-existent) preparations on part of W. European governments at the time to deal with such a situation and the density of the population in cities there, wiping it out heavily.

Russia would, casualty-wise, come out better than the US, solely through population density. The US would have come out better infrastructure-wise, as we simply had less land to keep working and less land to try and ship things over. South America and Africa would be pretty much unscathed and wouldn't even notice anything, due to them not having anything worth targeting.

Following the deaths due to the attacks would be deaths due to infrastructure failure. Starvation, rioting, hospitals not being able to meet medical needs of the elderly and extremely young, etc. This would claim another couple hundred million worldwide, at the very most. This again would be dependent upon geography. Places in the world that were never even hit, but depended on support from other places, would suffer just as bad, if not worse than, places that were. Major cities would essentially become useless(well, more useless...) until things pick back up, which wouldn't be for a while. Rural areas in the US, China and Russia would only hear about the war, and not really see the affects(except South Dakota and Colorado, where our silos are, those would be apt to be hit).


The reason I'm discussing the situation circa 1975 is because, since then, nukes have gotten smaller and their use has changed focus from leveling major cities to taking out hardened military targets. because of that, there would be much fewer casualties, probably only a couple hundred million total(nuclear war plus infrastructure failure).


The world would pick back up in a matter of months, and be back to "normal" in about a year or two, although with much less international trade and a distinct amount of isolationism and protectionism seen in all the rebuilding countries, not out of distrust so much as wanting to rebuild things and become economically viable again.  

[Sanzoskitsune]

Final point before I stop replying to you since you OBVIOUSLY don't get it. I never said that nuclear bombs would be the only ones that would be used or would ******** us over to begin with. Second, my point was that we may be a great country but we have no right to police or tell other countries what to do. After choosing to go to Iraq after the UN told us not to, we lost our sway in the UN greatly, proving that we are not the top of the "country food chain" to put it one way. We are not the best country in the world and should stop acting like it.

Oh and... you made a mention earlier in the thread about how NK wasn't really a threat so what would be the point in bombing it in the first place? Just to make other countries fall in line? Who are we to make other countries "fall in line"? I really would love to see what other countries have to say about that, like England, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, and so on and so forth. You know, countries that can team up and fight back.  

[lazycommie]

Sanzoskitsune

Final point before I stop replying to you since you OBVIOUSLY don't get it. I never said that nuclear bombs would be the only ones that would be used or would ******** us over to begin with. Second, my point was that we may be a great country but we have no right to police or tell other countries what to do. After choosing to go to Iraq after the UN told us not to, we lost our sway in the UN greatly, proving that we are not the top of the "country food chain" to put it one way. We are not the best country in the world and should stop acting like it.

Oh and... you made a mention earlier in the thread about how NK wasn't really a threat so what would be the point in bombing it in the first place? Just to make other countries fall in line? Who are we to make other countries "fall in line"? I really would love to see what other countries have to say about that, like England, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, and so on and so forth. You know, countries that can team up and fight back.

I get your point, you're just not getting mine.

Do you really think a war that went nuclear would ever go conventional? If WWIII ever happened, the major bases of all involved parties would be targeted. A conventional war would not last long in the modern age. Around 48 hours. It'd be pretty much an air-war, as well. Iraq and Afghanistan are not conventional wars, but rather unconventional wars. Such wars take a lot longer, because the US is still, for unknown reasons, subscribing to pointless "international law" that only serves to bind our hands and limit our effectiveness. It is also very difficult to root out guerrilla fighters. A conventional war, however, is an entirely different matter than an unconventional one.

Why do you think the Cold War never went "hot" conventionally, and was limited to a handful of proxy wars, revolutions and the like? Because it's messy, expensive and nobody could ever make a "win" without hurting badly. Nobody wanted to risk so much, for little gain. It's the same today. There can never be a non-nuclear WWIII, simply because nobody can afford to, in terms of men, machines and money.

The UN matters not. Nor does standing in the UN. Militarily, they're as useless as the XM-8. Diplomatically, they accomplish nothing. Economically, they make every situation worse and then some. They should be abolished as they're a complete and utter failure. The "country food chain" in the UN is nothing. In fact, I've been saying for years now that we should pull out of there and kick them off our land, or at the very least charge them rent for it. But I digress...

Why target NK? To make a point to the world. "You piss us off, or bother us enough, and we will wipe you out then sell you to the highest bidder". I'm NOT talking about "policing the world", I'm talking about protecting our interests. NK is no threat now. However allowing nations that are extremely vocal against us and keep trying(and failing, but still trying) to do something to harm us to stand causes our image of power to dim. The less powerful we look, the more likely we are that someone might decide to actually do something, instead of just saber rattling and yelling. If we do in ONE nation, the rest of the nations that "have a problem with us" will learn to play nice with us, because it becomes "play nice or die".

The nations you listed are not stupid. No nation is stupid enough to doom itself in such a way, simply because the leaders of said nations enjoy power too much. After seeing the US decide to actually use nuclear weapons for the first time in 60 some odd years, nobody would risk anything. Sure, there'd be a lot of foul words, maybe even a nasty letter or two, but nothing serious.