NEWS: US Prepares for Nuclear Standoff With North Korea

Zip,
I understood your responses even if the board-HTML wasn't working properly.

Everything you said, I could tell was educated and well thought out. I'm sorry, in my excitement I was a little overreactive.

As for nuclear development, I agree that other countries were on the verge of nuclear capability though I doubt very much that Germany's program would have ever gotten off the ground. They simply did not have the time our resources to complete their project before Germany, in all senses of the word, fell.

Of course, there were no good predictions of when Germany would be sent back to the dark ages or even that they would definately lose the war. That being said (and assumedly agreed upon), I still think that it was irresponsible to try to develop the things in the first place. My argument is, however hypothetical, that if the steps were never taken to create such a weapon (on the part of the U.S.) the technology (and science) would not exist today. The fact that the weapon (and this is another of my amateur psychological analyses) was first built and used in war by the U.S., I believe, provided precedent or at least a giant leap in nuclear science for other nations.

Again, I try to make it clear that my opinion is more that it was naive of us to think that we could make such a weapon without risking its use on us. This is all very off topic, however. As long as we can agree to disagree on all of the "what if's" that date back half a century (and well before I was born), I will try to get back to the main point of the thread.

I think Subz's analogy works like this. The hostage taker is NK. The hostages are all of NK's potential nuclear victims (or victims period). The U.S. is the police on the scene. The sanctions would be like saying "We are not going to give you, the hostage taker, food and water in the hopes that you'll surrender to our will". And then NK's response would be, "if you deny us food and water, we will open fire on you and on our hostages". To which the police (U.S.) would undoubtedly respond by firing blankly in the general direction of the hostage taker, killing as many hostage takers as we do hostages (we have a poor definition of "precision" when it comes to collateral damage).

The point is is that instead of making silly demands that we can not enforce and would almost certainly lead to bloodshed, we should simply sit and wait, or better yet, realize that the hostages have their own means of fighting back and wait until we have an official invitation, or at least the ok of the people involved to try to make our move.

Like you said (though I don't think you were being entirely serious), to control the technology, we should have bombed the heck out of our enemy's nuclear testing facilities in order to make sure that we retain a monopoly on the world's nuclear weapons. But we didn't and now all of our enemy's have them (or at least want us to think they have them) and are using them as a bargaining chip to get what they want. Much as we used them in WWII. I think we might have accomplished the same thing if we were to have dropped a couple fat boys off of the coast of Japan and then threatened to use them against the island if Japan did not surrender. I think it's safe to say that at the time we used the bombs, Japan had already realized they were going to lose and were fighting an honor-war...

but no matter how you try to slice it, the weapon was used as a scare tactic, not as a war tactic. Yes, we "aimed" it at a military target... if you can consider a nuclear explosion as something which could be aimed, but it leveled two cities and caused death in the form of radioactive fallout for years afterwards (and unless the areas are kept well quarantined will continue to cause deadly cancers in people who linger for another 2 or 3 thousand years).

All in all, I think there is an argument that could possibly justify its use way back when, but I see no argument that justifies its existance today.

Back to the original point, I don't think there's any justification for the U.S. (especially if acting alone), to try to impose or suggest sanctions against Korea. I think it just goes back to the Commie scare and Cold War which is too recent in our history to forget. We don't like Communists or tyrants to have WMD's because we fear that they'll use them to spread the "disease" of Communism (a topic for another thread).

So far NK's been a lot of talk. Why not wait to see if they're getting under anyone else's skin first... or see if they'll declare war on anyone else first. This way, if we go to war with Korea we can be true heros actually saving people from harm as opposed to bullies who would kill people out of fear. This method would also save us from being Korea's first target and also raise the world's opinion of America (and hey, might even help out the economy in the long run).

In the best case scenario, I'd like to see a war (now I don't mean I ever wish a war to happen) where the two countries involved duke it out by themselves without the U.S. barging in and making it our problem and making the opposition our enemy.

You see, until we're invited to take military action, we're seen as bullies and warmongers. Sometimes it's important to take a look at other government's opinions about things to at least have a point of reference by which to analyse whether we're doing the right thing.
-S

lol Zipdot, you got me

I also agree with what you said about the difference between America's official name calling and what the lay person says about America.

[edit on 27/4/05 by subz]

ServoHahn's very long post explains in detail why drugs are bad...they mess up your mind.

But honestly, your post is rediculous, I DONT think the world would be a better place without nukes, without nukes there would be several wars going on at all times, with out a stand off weapon there would be nothing fom stoping "X-County" from going to War with "Y-Country".

Originally posted by Murcielago
ServoHahn's very long post explains in detail why drugs are bad...they mess up your mind.

But honestly, your post is rediculous, I DONT think the world would be a better place without nukes, without nukes there would be several wars going on at all times, with out a stand off weapon there would be nothing fom stoping "X-County" from going to War with "Y-Country".

Ouch. Well I must say that I'm hurt.

Anyway, I guess there's no point in arguing it, you seem pretty steadfast in your opinion.
-S