All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

When you have steak at home...

jjohn on 2003-02-06T14:42:04

If Bush wants a good, "just" war, North Korea's has all but dared us to combat. Is Iraq really more clearly a present danger than the confessed A-bomb makers in Pyongyang? I'm going out on a limb and say "no." But disarming North Korea would be bloody and difficult with no upside of oil or defending regional allies (although Japan might feel differently about that). If Saddham would simply "act like Jong-Il," certainly the UN and the US public would fall lockstep into an Iraqi "police action." No one will shed a tear at Saddham's ouster but without an explicit "evil act," like invading Kuwait, a US-led war is only going to make the US look bad. That could well damage the US's reputation for future, more justified, military actions.

Crazily, I think the answer is not war. The US has a whole host of domestic problems that would take several presidential administrations to solve. Wars, traditionally, come to us. There's no need to provoke them.

China

pudge on 2003-02-06T14:59:02

China is one of the big reasons military action is likely not the answer in N. Korea. China doesn't want nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula any more than we do, and they have more ability to prevent it than we do.

As to Iraq, I am open to ideas. But we ended the Gulf War last time around with two options: remove Hussein from power and forcibly disarm the country, or allow them to disarm themselves. We've followed the latter course for a decade and it has clearly failed -- even France recognized this yesterday, though they still want more time -- so we are going back to plan A, which we should have done in the first place.

You say we are provoking a war, but that simply isn't true. We are attempting to resolve something the UN has been working on for a decade: the disarmament of a recognized threat. No, we don't need evidence they are a threat; the UN has already decided this matter, and what was left was only what to do about it. We chose the wrong path in allowing them to disarm themselves, so now we are taking the other one. Iraq has violated the terms of the end of the hostilities; it's not a new war, it's finishing up the old one.

I wish there were another way, but if wishes were horses, those dorks in the Levi's commercial would have been trampled.

And of course

belg4mit on 2003-02-06T17:28:52

China would rather not have a US build up in the area ;-)

Historical data

jdavidb on 2003-02-06T17:59:27

Yes, but look at past performance. Did we win the last war in Korea? Did we win the last war in Iraq? Which one are we most likely to win now? (Only joking. By that argument we should be attacking Britain, Spain, and Mexico.)

On a side note, a pet peeve of mine. You're not the only one who does it, but I'll choose to pick on you because I don't like your politics :P and also because you're the kind of person for whom it's likely only a typo. "Lead" is a heavy metal. Past tense of the verb "to lead" is "led." That one is winding up second on my list under "affect/effect." Particularly annoying because I've started making the same mistake myself.

Re:Historical data

jjohn on 2003-02-07T16:07:09

Oops. Sadly, I do know that. I'm not particularly good at vetting my blog entries. Through the magic of Soviet-style revisionism, that mistake will never have occurred. ;-)

isreal is why the US is going to war with iraq

TeeJay on 2003-02-11T12:51:10

Iraq/saddam was given all its weapons to fight Iran, now that Iran is a leading example of Islamic Moderate democracy in the middle east, iraq/saddam has outlived its use.

The USA fears that Iraq could eventually attack isreal or kuwait - both of which are worse in some areas of human rights, democracy, war crimes and breaches of un resolutions than Iraq.

The UK is along for the ride because its good for votes and good for the defence industry.

The UN does not have any evidence that there are weapons of mass destruction, or links to terrorism.

Most of NATO has more links to and nationals that aer part of terrorism than Iraq.

If this was about peace in the middle east then the UN would have a peace keepers seperating isreal and palestine - as has been proven to work in cyprus.

but its not about peace - its about vested interested in isreal and kuwait.