Korea conflicts discussion thread..

[andrewtexas123]

I kind the topic very interesting and filled with tension, Id love to talk to people about whats going on over there and where you stand on the situation?

For those that live in a hole this will get you caught up :

10/24/10 -- S.Korea lays to rest marines killed in N.Korea attack
10/26/10 -- North Korea Condemns US-South Korean Naval Exercises

I am not use to forums that allow political talk so I might as well take advantage of it!
-Andrew

[t walgamuth]

You're not allowed by whom?

[Skid Row Joe]

I seem to remember the last time our country had serious incidents with North Korea AND Iran crisis', was when Lyndon Johnson, then Jimmy Carter were pResident. USS Pueblo and the disasterous rescue helicopters crash and burning.

Not to mention Africa when Blackhawk down happened during Clinton's pResidency....

You have to ask yourself why these two bit despots around the globe do their dirty work when enablers are in power. Probably because they learned that NOTHING will be done by the U.S. with a limp wrist in the White House.

North Korea and Iran are both doing as they please today - as is Venezuela...... Some food for thought there.....

[davidmash]

I did not realize that the nukes and the build up occurred during the last two years. Thanks for clearing that up for me. As if they have been our best friends for the previous 20+ years. Give me a freaking break. And I suppose the fact that he is grooming his son has nothing to do with either. You also failed to mention the 3 wars your republican friends started. Funny how that crap always happens under republican administrations....

[Skid Row Joe]

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
PYONGYANG, North Korea
NY Times, July 19, 2005

Moored on a river here in the North Korean capital is the U.S.S. Pueblo, described as an "armed spy ship of the U.S. imperialist aggression forces."


The Pueblo is the Navy ship that North Korea seized in 1968 in waters off the country's east coast, setting off an international crisis. One American sailor was killed and 82 others were imprisoned for nearly a year and tortured into writing confessions. To signal that the confessions were forced, the sailors listed accomplices like the television character Maxwell Smart.


When forced to pose for a photo, some crew members extended their middle fingers to the camera, explaining to the North Korean photographer that this was a Hawaiian good luck sign.


After the photo was published and the North Korean guards realized they'd been had, the sailors suffered a week of particularly brutal torture.

As the first Navy vessel to surrender in peacetime since 1807, the Pueblo was a humiliation for America. And it has become a propaganda trophy for North Korea, with ordinary Koreans paraded through in organized tours to fire up nationalist support for the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il.


Then Mr. Kim decided the propaganda would be even better if the ship was moved from the east coast to the capital. So the Korean Navy disguised the Pueblo as a freighter, ran up the North Korean flag and sailed it for nine days through international waters around South Korea to the west coast of North Korea, and then up a river to Pyongyang. In 1999, the Pueblo opened triumphantly to crowds in Pyongyang.


"When this ship left Wonsan port [on the east coast], Japanese ships mobilized to check it," said Col. Kim Jung Rok, who as a 28-year-old sailor helped storm the Pueblo and is now in charge of it. "But then they saw it was an ordinary freighter and withdrew."


It's a bad sign that the Western intelligence experts who monitor North Korean ports and examine satellite images didn't notice that the Pueblo had moved. President Bush's refusal to engage North Korea, as the Clinton administration had done, has already led the North to revive plutonium production. Mr. Bush's backup plan is to stop North Korean nuclear proliferation by intercepting nuclear materials as they leave the country - but that's wishful thinking. If we couldn't detect the transfer of a famous 176-foot ship, it's ludicrous to think we could stop the smuggling of a grapefruit-size chunk of plutonium.


The Pueblo is also a reminder that Kim Jong Il is unrelenting in promoting nationalism - and hostility to the West - to keep himself in power. That prickly Korean nationalism - think of the French, cubed - offers the only shred of legitimacy the Dear Leader has. Many tens of thousands of ethnic Koreans in Japan support North Korea, not because they are Communists but because they are patriots - they see the Dear Leader as an authentic Korean nationalist, in contrast with the American quislings in the South.


The biggest mistake America has made since World War II has been to misunderstand nationalism. That myopia now bolsters Kim Jong Il. When Bush administration officials rattle sabers at North Korea, they're helping to keep Kim Jong Il in power.


Since the War of 1812, only two nations, Russia and China, have posed a major military threat to our home turf. Now North Korea, with its nuclear weapons and three-stage Taepodong missiles, is apparently joining that list, and emerging as a potential global eBay for anyone seeking plutonium. And our plans to deal with that problem by intercepting shipments are as loony as North Korea itself.
But the story of the Pueblo's capture also offers a hint of how to proceed. Initially, many Americans favored a hard line. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, for example, urged dropping a nuclear bomb on one North Korean city.


President Lyndon Johnson resisted, noting that bombing North Korea would not bring our hostages home. So the U.S. tried full-bore diplomacy. It was frustrating, slow and not wholly successful, but in the end was the best of a bunch of bad alternatives.



It's time for us to learn from the Pueblo again. The Bush administration's dismissal of serious, direct diplomacy has made Korea more dangerous. Engagement may be arduous, frustrating and often unsatisfying, but it's the only option we have left.

USS Pueblo, an 850-ton environmental research ship, was built at Kewaunee, Wisconsin, in 1944 as the the U.S. Army cargo ship FP-344. She was transferred to the Navy in April 1966 and renamed Pueblo. Initially designated a light cargo ship (AKL-44), she soon began conversion to a research ship and was redesignated AGER-2 shortly before commissioning in May 1967. Following training operations off the U.S. west coast, in November 1967 Pueblo departed for the Far East to undertake electronic intelligence collection and other duties.


The Pueblo, a tiny World War II-vintage supply ship newly reconditioned for spy service, sailed out of its home port of Yokosuka, Japan, on Jan. 5, 1968. After a brief stop at Sasebo Naval Base, Japan, the ship braved frigid temperatures and stormy seas for its maiden mission in the Sea of Japan, in international water about 15 miles off the coast of North Korea.


The USS Pueblo was part of Operation Clickbeetle, the code-name for electronic and radio intelligence gathering by small non-combatant naval ships that operated close to potential enemies. The USS Pueblo had been tasked to collect signals intelligence in the Sea of Japan using the “cover” of conducting hydrographic research.

Shortly after the operation got under way, the North Korean navy reacted with surprise and precision. On 23 January 1968, while off Wonsan, North Korea, Pueblo was attacked by local forces and seized. Four North Korean torpedo boats circled the Pueblo and ordered it to follow them into port. Commander Lloyd "Pete" Bucher, the Pueblo's commanding officer tried to steer the ship farther out to sea, but the North Koreans opened fire, killing one crew member.


Commander Bucher, armed only with a few .50-caliber machine guns aboard his slow vessel, surrendered the Pueblo after stalling his pursuers for sixty-five minutes. Inadequate destruction equipment and too much unnecessary classified material on board led to an intelligence coup for North Korea.


The defensive cover that was to have been provided by the Navy and the Air Force in response to calls from the Pueblo never came. The Navy and the Johnson administration missed all the indications and warnings that such a fate could befall the Pueblo, even after recognizing that the Pyongyang regime had violated the demilitarized zone more than fifty times, ambushed U.S and allied ground forces, attempted to assassinate the president of the Republic of Korea (with a secondary target to be the American embassy), and in the preceding nine months seized twenty South Korean fishing vessels for "entering North Korean territorial waters."

The other eighty-two men on board were taken prisoner. The North Koreans contended that the ship had violated their territorial waters, a claim vigorously denied by the United States. After eleven months in captivity, often under inhumane conditions, Pueblo's crew were repatriated on 23 December 1968. The ship was retained by North Korea, though she is still the property of the U.S. Navy.

[Skid Row Joe]

She was exhibited at Wonsan and Hungham for three decades and before becoming a museum in the Taedong River near Ssuk Islet at Pyongyang, the North Korean capital city.

The location had been the site where the American trading ship, the General Sherman, has been set on fire by the local population in 1866.

[t walgamuth]

So you are saying Johnson was a limp wrist?

[Txjake]

Originally Posted by t walgamuth

So you are saying Johnson was a limp wrist?

LBJ was not a limp wrist, but it is well known that he wanted to focus on domestic issues like his war on poverty, but Vietnam and Korean issues distracted the nation from his agenda. LBJ escalated the war and then hamstrung it by insisting on having it micromanaged from DC, and without taking the war to North Vietnam. In essence, he constructed a no win situation, although most likely inadvertantly and through the council of the men who helped JFK get into the war.

LBJ had no stomach to do the right things: either withdraw or take the massive force of the US and destroy the north. He allowed the NVA and Chairman Ho Chi Minh pretty much kick his ass in the psyop war of the poitical press and popular opinion. We looked ineffective and brutish and they looked like the courageous defenders of the homeland, and it turned the tide of popular opinion in the US and Europe, when in effect, it was a shrewdly calculated ploy by the NV government to further their "liberation theology" and conquer the south. Ho was a master of the psyop rhetoric.

The psyop struggle also helped give rise to European groups like the Red Army Faction (Bader-Meinhoff) and other red groups who were swayed into self-righteous indignation regrading the "imperialist" aggression of the US. They neither understood or cared about the US "Domino Theory" of containment of Asian communism and assumed that we had nefarious agendas to peddle.

The world really was in a struggle between the communist and non communist sides then, and was supported by the US & USSR. The struggle continues but the communist side is diminished without the money and support of the USSR.

LBJ inherited a mess, he was on the wrong side of a no-win situation. By that time, using the boggy man of communism to defend ill-advised wars had worn very thin and it wasn't selling at home anymore. He made the error of increasing the size of the invading force instead of walking away. He couldn't afford both his domestic agenda and the war, so it was also a economic problem.

[t walgamuth]

Originally Posted by Txjake

LBJ was not a limp wrist, but it is well known that he wanted to focus on domestic issues like his war on poverty, but Vietnam and Korean issues distracted the nation from his agenda. LBJ escalated the war and then hamstrung it by insisting on having it micromanaged from DC, and without taking the war to North Vietnam. In essence, he constructed a no win situation, although most likely inadvertantly and through the council of the men who helped JFK get into the war.

LBJ had no stomach to do the right things: either withdraw or take the massive force of the US and destroy the north. He allowed the NVA and Chairman Ho Chi Minh pretty much kick his ass in the psyop war of the poitical press and popular opinion. We looked ineffective and brutish and they looked like the courageous defenders of the homeland, and it turned the tide of popular opinion in the US and Europe, when in effect, it was a shrewdly calculated ploy by the NV government to further their "liberation theology" and conquer the south. Ho was a master of the psyop rhetoric.

The psyop struggle also helped give rise to European groups like the Red Army Faction (Bader-Meinhoff) and other red groups who were swayed into self-righteous indignation regrading the "imperialist" aggression of the US. They neither understood or cared about the US "Domino Theory" of containment of Asian communism and assumed that we had nefarious agendas to peddle.

The world really was in a struggle between the communist and non communist sides then, and was supported by the US & USSR. The struggle continues but the communist side is diminished without the money and support of the USSR.

You're right, it was a no win situation. JFK inherited it from Eisenhower, Eisenhower took it over from the French, LBJ inherited it from JFK and Nixon inherited it from LBJ.

All I am sad to say thought they would be thought poorly of by the voters if they walked away from it. I can still hear Nixon saying that to pull out would make all those boys who died before have died in vain, so another 15,000 had to die in vain.

It's easy to say we should have nuked the North or leveled it but if we had done that China would have come in (It's just like if China invaded Mexico or Canada). So we fought this limited war for political reasons and it could not be successful. But all out war would not have succeeded either.

The only way to win would have been to stay home in the first place.

Like we probably should have done in Iraq and Afganistan.

Originally Posted by t walgamuth

You're right, it was a no win situation. JFK inherited it from Eisenhower, Eisenhower took it over from the French, LBJ inherited it from JFK and Nixon inherited it from LBJ.

All I am sad to say thought they would be thought poorly of by the voters if they walked away from it. I can still hear Nixon saying that to pull out would make all those boys who died before have died in vain, so another 15,000 had to die in vain.

It's easy to say we should have nuked the North or leveled it but if we had done that China would have come in (It's just like if China invaded Mexico or Canada). So we fought this limited war for political reasons and it could not be successful. But all out war would not have succeeded either.

The only way to win would have been to stay home in the first place.

Like we probably should have done in Iraq and Afganistan.

Well said.

[MS Fowler]

So how does that impact the Korean situation? Do we ignore our promises of defense and just stay home?

[Skid Row Joe]

Originally Posted by MS Fowler

So how does that impact the Korean situation? Do we ignore our promises of defense and just stay home?

It certainly looks like the answer is absolutely for certain when under demovrat rule.

[Skid Row Joe]

Originally Posted by Txjake

LBJ was not a limp wrist, but it is well known that he wanted to focus on domestic issues like his war on poverty, but Vietnam and Korean issues distracted the nation from his agenda. LBJ escalated the war and then hamstrung it by insisting on having it micromanaged from DC, and without taking the war to North Vietnam. In essence, he constructed a no win situation, although most likely inadvertantly and through the council of the men who helped JFK get into the war.

LBJ had no stomach to do the right things: either withdraw or take the massive force of the US and destroy the north. He allowed the NVA and Chairman Ho Chi Minh pretty much kick his ass in the psyop war of the poitical press and popular opinion. We looked ineffective and brutish and they looked like the courageous defenders of the homeland, and it turned the tide of popular opinion in the US and Europe, when in effect, it was a shrewdly calculated ploy by the NV government to further their "liberation theology" and conquer the south. Ho was a master of the psyop rhetoric.

The psyop struggle also helped give rise to European groups like the Red Army Faction (Bader-Meinhoff) and other red groups who were swayed into self-righteous indignation regrading the "imperialist" aggression of the US. They neither understood or cared about the US "Domino Theory" of containment of Asian communism and assumed that we had nefarious agendas to peddle.

The world really was in a struggle between the communist and non communist sides then, and was supported by the US & USSR. The struggle continues but the communist side is diminished without the money and support of the USSR.

So far, democvrats like Johnson have cost us over $44 trillion dollars since 1965. Johnson singlehandedly invented permanent, high-dollar welfare under his regime.

[Wodnek]

Originally Posted by MS Fowler

So how does that impact the Korean situation? Do we ignore our promises of defense and just stay home?

Damned if we do, even more damned if we don't.

It is called a no win scenario either way. It would be worse though, if we did nothing.