Politico Ponders War With North Korea
Maybe it’s just me, but it does seem to me that if Politico wants to run an article hyping a dubious poll indicating that a majority of the public favors starting a war with North Korea that they might want to devote some coverage to the issue of the possible consequences of such a war.
After all, insofar as people do favor such a step, it’s almost certainly because they don’t understand what it might entail. But a war could easily involve the deaths of millions of people and the destruction of one of the world’s largest cities. South Korea, with American assistance, would undoubtedly prevail in such a conflict but the price paid in blood would be extremely high and the impact on the global economy could be extremely grave. Meanwhile, the world would be left with the very thorny question of what to do with the post-war DPRK. In some very narrow sense of what a “politico” might care about, these issues don’t matter. But even in pretty crass political terms, public opinion would clearly be much more impacted by reaction to the actual consequences of military action than to whatever kind of weird push polling Rasmussen wants to do.
31 Responses to “Politico Ponders War With North Korea”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
April 6th, 2009 at 10:16 am
War is good, always. It creates jobs. War is Peace.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Hell, if you take this dumbass push poll in tandem with Gingrich’s bizarre comment that as President he would have “disabled the missile”, the picture of the 2012 election is emerging. It isn’t the economy, it’s “why won’t Obama go to war with North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, Russia, China, and Russia?” I guess the GOP feels that Iraq and Afghanistan went so well, that we really ought to start more wars.
Listen, GOP fucktards: If we attack North Korea, China will either declare war on us or simply stop loaning us money. Your choice.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:26 am
…before slapping the host on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, did you know that I supported the invasion of Iraq, and wanted to expand that war into Syria and Iran?”
April 6th, 2009 at 10:35 am
That would go in Consequencico, which wouldn’t get as many hits.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:35 am
I’m not really sure why Politico is wrong to run an article on the poll. Benen’s post doesn’t really address the methodology of the poll; it’s more along the lines of aren’t-respondents-stupid, which is fair, but applies even to polls whose results we agree with.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Jesus Christ on a crutch. Defense Secretary Gates is going to announce the cancellation of major strategic military programs today and Politico is promoting War?
Don’t the dumbfucks realize that George W Bush and the Republican Congresses buttfucked the US Treasury?
We didn’t do all that fucking well in Korea back in the 1950s –when our relative military and economic advantages were a HELL of a lot higher than they are today.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Re massive oncoming military budget cuts, see http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Ahead-of-the-Bell-Defense-apf-14855348.html
We’ll be fucking lucky if we don’t have to surrender California and Arizona to the fucking Mexican drug cartels — and fall back to defensive lines on the Rocky Mountains.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:38 am
“South Korea, with American assistance, would undoubtedly prevail in such a conflict”.
Like they did last time?
April 6th, 2009 at 10:43 am
ete Says:
April 6th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Hell, if you take this dumbass push poll in tandem with Gingrich’s bizarre comment that as President he would have “disabled the missile”, the picture of the 2012 election is emerging. It isn’t the economy, it’s “why won’t Obama go to war with North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, Russia, China, and Russia?” I guess the GOP feels that Iraq and Afghanistan went so well, that we really ought to start more wars.
Listen, GOP fucktards: If we attack North Korea, China will either declare war on us or simply stop loaning us money. Your choice.
This says it all for me, thanks Pete.The last time we were over there we lost and the F&%#ktards are still wanting to win , at all cost just like I(f&^%king)RAQ.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:52 am
No, we did not lose last time. It was, and still remains, a draw. North Korea’s initial push handily defeated the South Korean army and nearly defeated the rump American forces. MacArthur’s counterattack routed the North Korean Army until he got too aggressive and eventually drew in Communist China (with Soviet assistance). That fighting led to the stalemate we have today as both sides ended up back at the original territorial boundaries.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Ah, Matt. but you linked and wrote about it. That’s the only real Politico criterion for putting up a post.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Saying it doesn’t make it so.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Last time, North Korea wanted to conquer the south, and South Korea wanted to fight them off.
So…how’d that work out again?
April 6th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Though experiment:
South Korea = the Confederacy.
North Korea = the Union.
The Union invaded the South, with the aim of ending the war in full military and political control of the entire United State of America. Let’s say the South fought them off, maintained its independence, but didn’t capture any territory in the north.
Who would have been the winner of that war – the South, which achieved its goal of being independent and driving out the Federals, or the Union?
April 6th, 2009 at 11:23 am
I just heard John Bolton — yes the no “appeasement” to North Korea John Bolton — say on BBC that it’s unrealistic for the U.S. to start a military confrontation with North Korea, given the vulnerability of South Korea. Bolton, the ne plus ultra Hawk, said the way for change in North Korea was through the leverage China has there.
So does this make Politico more bellicose than John Bolton? A rather extraordinary feat….
April 6th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Big, important mistake here Matt:
The comments were over a “missile test”, not a “missile attack”. I think bombing would be perfectly justified in the event of a missile attack from North Korea.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:44 am
The updated statement is also pretty dumb. Of course, if North Korea made a missile attack on any of our allies, the smart response would be to bomb North Korea. Its sort of the expected thing when another nation engages in an act of war against your nation or your allies.
Come on Matt, be better than that. Self defense is always justified. This isn’t the Israeli’s vs the Palestinians, this is a situation where neither side has signed a peace treaty ending their previous war.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:46 am
It went badly. N. Korea, with material assistance from the Soviet Union, nearly accomplished its goals. South Korea had to depend on a powerful, wealthy, advanced country to bail them out. Then, China joined the fighting, and the USSR sent N. Korea specialists and fighter pilots to assist.
Now South Korea has become a wealthy, advanced country, there is no Soviet Union and China won’t intervene if N. Korea starts hostilities. The only question is how much N. Korea destroys before losing the capacity to fight. There may be some lingering loyalty to the old regime, but without complete control of the media, that won’t last.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:53 am
If you follow the links, it becomes clear that Matt’s mistake was typing “attack” instead of “test”. While it’s possible that Matt really believes that we should not bomb in response to a missile attack, I doubt it.
This actually exemplifies the problem with Matt’s lack of proofreading. Usually it is readily apparent what he really means, and the errors are just humorous or momentarily confusing. This one isn’t. It just makes Matt look like a naive idiot. Now people can cut and paste his remarks, eliminate the html code so the link is not easily accessible, and ridicule him.
Matt, at least proofread the important posts.
April 6th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Who made the photograph?
April 6th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
“But a war could easily involve the deaths of millions of people”
would
For example, Seoul is in artillery range of the DPRK. The Korean People’s Army has had had decades to dig their guns into hardened firing positions — they wouldn’t be instantly taken out by smart bombs. The Seoul National Capital Area holds 24.5 million people, and large parts of it could be reduced to rubble with conventional weapons in a very short period of time.
April 6th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
It’s highly unlikely that Kim – would – launch an attack on South Korea, because that would inevitably lead to the fall of his regime, and maintaining control over North Korea is Dear Leader’s only policy goal.
Having it known that he – could – launch an attack on South Korea, one that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives even if it – doesn’t – go nuclear, is what’s keeping him on his throne.
So, there’s not a lot going to happen on that front until Kim dies. Which sucks, but there you go.
April 6th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
True. The DPRK can drop about half a million artillery shells on the DMZ and Seoul in an hour – every hour.]
Whether they really would try to destroy Seoul is not certain, but they definitely would blow the crap out of any US and South Korean troops in the vicinity.
I suspect they wouldn’t be stopped until well south of Seoul and pushing them back north of the DMZ would take months. pentagon war games estimate fifty thousand US casualties in the first ninety days, much of that the 20-30K troops we have there now.
The DPRK is not a pushover like Iraq.
April 6th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
N.Korea is seriously weak right now. All weapons require maintenance, and I bet many of the guns facing Seoul do not work anymore. I don’t think people should focus on military consequences. I’m pretty sure we can win a war with little damage. The people in the know just pretend that the artillery batteries are serious because it’s a good stand-in as an easily understandable issue in place of the intricate diplomatic and economic mess that conquering NK and assuming responsibility would mean.
April 6th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I’m pretty sure we can win a war with little damage
“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed…”
April 6th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Anybody in favor of the United States armed forces fighting those of North Korea, should really enlist before taking our troops lives for granted. It’s easy to be patriotic when you’re miles away from the front line.
April 6th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I think everyone has covered Matt’s typos, so I’ll jump in to split hairs on “how that went” last time.
It’s true, the last war ended as a draw. After MacArthur was shown the door, Gen. Ridgeway had the task of pushing the Chinese “volunteers” back north. This he did, and was continuing to do by the time of the armistice. The US/UN forces had the military ability to continue pushing north. I was a bit surprised to see a recent US Army publication suggesting that the UN forces had a slight numerical advantage on the PRC/DPRK.
However, constituents back home were getting really tired of the war, so once the front lines were more or less back to the starting line, it seemed like a good place to call the game. In retrospect, it woulda been neat if they had given Seoul a bit more breathing room, but tell that to those who didn’t have to die to give it.
April 6th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
i wouldn’t want to fight a war with obama as the leader. as bad as bush was in that role, obamas worse. his sissy talk won’t scare the north koreans, hell, his sissy talk doesn’t scare monte carlo. no sir, we are on a ‘losing streak’ as far as presidents go, at least 3 bad ones in a row.sorta like the 3 boneheads we had before the civil war. if you don’t know who they were, look them up. besides, our military is a bit tired right now. if i was one of the ‘bad guys’ like russia or china or no.korea, this would be my moment.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
“Though experiment:
South Korea = the Confederacy.
North Korea = the Union.
The Union invaded the South, with the aim of ending the war in full military and political control of the entire United State of America. Let’s say the South fought them off, maintained its independence, but didn’t capture any territory in the north.
Who would have been the winner of that war – the South, which achieved its goal of being independent and driving out the Federals, or the Union?”
Hey Joe… try half a thought.
South Korea has no independence. It has had no functional democracy by international standards for most of that time. It also faced regular running street battles between disenfranchised protesters and riot police that behave like hired thugs.
So is independence having a foreign army permanently set up inside your country?
So in your thought experiment Mexico = USA. So the Mexican army is set up in military bases and in risk areas around your “Confederacy”, and have more firepower ready to aim at you than you have if you dare step out of line. Of course the Mexican military will be able to stop the citizens of the Confederacy from leaving for life in the Union, or even to visit family in the Union. You would also have to live with the fear of the Mexican population calling for their leaders to restart the war because they need to prove that they can beat the Union, no matter what the nuclear arsenal aimed at Dallas.
You do have a funny idea of independence.
April 7th, 2009 at 3:43 am
hey boxbunny, what the hell are you talking about? your analogy twists history around a bit. the south was indeed invaded by the north during our civil war but did not defeat the north. in fact, fot all intents and purposes the war was over after gettysburg, which was the south invading the north. the 13 southern generals killed in that battle could never be replaced. the armies of the south could have disbanded and fought a guerilla style war, but they didn’t. i know southerners like to call our civil war the war of northern agression but they can’t change the facts. ihave been stationed in korea, taiwan,vietnam,and the phillipines, all so called allies, and all pretty repressive governments. but they were all infinitely better then te alternative. lets stay in reality here, not wishful thinking.
April 7th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
@27: After MacArthur was shown the door, Gen. Ridgeway had the task of pushing the Chinese “volunteers” back north. This he did, and was continuing to do by the time of the armistice.
Minor quibble: General Ridgway was replaced prior to the armistice. Gen. Mark Clark was in command at the time of the armistice.