While they may not be insane in the psychiatric sense,
Thank you.
they share collective delusions which make them very dangerous.
I can agree with this to a certain degree. The word delusions should probably be explained a bit in terms of what they are that translate into making them dangerous, but I understand where you are headed and I agree. North Korea is very dangerous.
They have the most pervasive thought control system in the entire world and everybody is exposed to it, especially members of the government and armed forces. I'm sure there are a few within the regime (such as within the propaganda dept.) who have a firmer grasp on reality, but they are the minority and are likely very evil people.
Agreed.
I mean that their collective delusions have perverted their view of reality, especially the outside world.
Okay.
You're assuming that the DPRK has good intelligence and will act rationally. That's a big assumption for a regime as detached from reality as that of the DPRK. They've been acting irrationally since 1949.
North Korea has an active foreign intelligence agency, the Research Department for External Intelligence (RDEI). They focus on the South, Japan, and the U.S. Good intelligence in this case would require no more information than is readily available to you and I on the internet. A reasonable group of intelligence analysts could easily make the determination that possession of a handful of nuclear weapons would never insure their ability to operate offensively with impunity where the U.S. is concerned. I don't believe that the North thinks these weapons will guarantee them anything other than a seat at the big boy table and further insurance against invasion. They do believe, or at least they say they believe, the U.S. is pushing them towards conflict. This is one of those delusions I think we both agree on, as the North is pushing the conflict, not the U.S. Of course if we take offensive action and destroy this rocket on the pad then the shoe is on our foot.
They're also a license to kill.
Only if you are threatening to use them in support of an offensive operation and to gain your enemy's capitulation. That is not the case here, at least for now, nor has it been the case since we did it in World War II. Regardless nobody likes that Pyongyang now has nuclear weapons. Thanks China.
In order to defeat the DPRK in the event of an offensive, they would need to be invaded.
When you say defeat are you meaning "regime change" or just military defeat? There is a big difference and your statement only really applies to one of those situations.
Retarded? No. Delusional, yes.
The extent of the delusion is what is in question here.
Yep, S. Korea is going to "invade" N. Korea. Just like last time...
They are a military first nation, their mindset is centered around survival through military power. And we did invade them last time and nearly destroyed them. One look at this
map of our advance North will verify this. We went all the way to Kimchaek in the east and got close to the Yalu River in the West. That push was so successful that it triggered the Chinese intervention. If we are going to get into their heads about national defense concerns, let's really get into their heads. They were invaded and occupied by Japan and later were invaded by way of the U.S. counterattack during the Korean War. They have a legitimate basis for a strong national defense strategy even if we don't like them.
That didn't explain your disagreement over their military competency.
They have a large, ****ty military.
Well, the facts disagree with you when it comes to one of those descriptors.
There's reason to be concerned in that we don't have enough troops on the peninsula at the moment and with our commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan we might not be able to provide the rapid reinforcements that would be necessary to defend S. Korea. However, there are American military assets and while I haven't read the treaty, I think NATO might be obligated to help the US in the event of an attack.
I think the North would be suffer horrendous losses if they attempted an invasion of the South, however I do think they could very easily roll us back off the 38th. We would be in for the fight our life to hold them off. And NATO is not obligated to help in response to any conflict involving the U.S. in South Korea. The ROK is a Major Non-Nato Ally (MNNA). There is no NATO obligation to defend them or help us in their defense.
Whoopty ****. Welcome to the 1950's.
What?
All of this for "defense" against the meager S. Korea. Yeah right...
Who said this was for "defense against the meager south?" I may not be interpreting the flavor of your posts here correctly, but it seems you are inferring that I'm claiming the North's buildup is somehow only defensive in nature.
Do you know very much about the military profile of the DRPK? The KPA maintains an offensive orientation based around the doctrine of reunification by force. The DPRK militia has the primary role of defense of the homeland. The point of my post which you seem to just dismiss with little desire to actually debate, is that it counters this notion of yours that they are one of the worlds weakest and most unsophisticated armies. This is hardly the case.
Look at their Air Force. It'd be like shooting fish in a barrel. Mig-23's vs Raptors? What little C3 they have would be gone in under a week. They would be blind and in disarray in a week.
You didn't see me say anything about their air force. Few nations on this earth could compete with even limited U.S. airpower. But airpower alone does not win wars, airpower is primarily a support function for ground operations or an interdiction tool. To win a war you must take and hold ground. Planes cannot do that.
This is true, but when fighting a modern, mobile adversary you can't win by mass alone.
Of course not, you seem to think that KPA soldiers are weak and very poorly trained. This is not the case at all. They are very well trained, very motivated, and armed to the teeth.
If your commanders' C3 (and the commanders themselves, mind you) are destroyed your army becomes a helpless mass, unable to respond to changing situations. They'd get flanked, shanked, and cut into pieces.
You seem to think that this will be an easy task to accomplish. Why do you think this? Is it because we were able to accomplish this in the deserts of Iraq, against an already depleted, somewhat disloyal, and definitely unmotivated military force?
Many historians have warned that the U.S. military, while very good at what it does, should not in any way gauge future conflicts against the relative ease of victory they experienced in the two war against Iraq. The Korean peninsula is entirely different terrain than Iraq and the KPA is an entirely different monster that the Iraqi Army.
For sure. That's what this is all about. It has nothing to do with the satellite, supposing it is a satellite.
The rocket is the catalyst. It's a test. And I was thinking about this last night. This could very well be an attempt to suck us in to a shooting war deliberately because the North knows we are in a state of vulnerability with regard to our defensive commitments. We could not effectively support another major military conflict right now. Blowing this thing up on the launch pad would give the DPRK all the justification they think they need to come South. They've mobilized their forces and reinforced them on the 38th already in response to US/ROK joint military exercises, the stage is set.
I've said nothing about their ideology. The allusion to Kim-Il Sung was to demonstrate how delusional North Korea is as a society. If you believe that Kim Il-Sung, who was born in the 1900's "created the world," what the hell else would you believe?
Well you didn't have to say anything about their political ideology, it's an obvious factor here. There is a difference between peasants raised under the Juche ideology and professional military leaders who are educated. Are they an unstable military threat? Certainly. Are they a politically volatile government centered around a cult of personality? Absolutely. Does this mean they are militarily incompetent strategists? Not at all.
They are liars, historically, internally and externally. They break promise after promise. They are state scam artists.
Agreed.
Well, this situation is markedly different from that of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ideally, the missile wont be fired.
I agree.
Therefore, it would be silly to reveal the intelligence and risk assets when the rocket might not be fired in the first place. Everyone's trying to prevent this launch. Hu said Beijing would be trying to convince them not to launch "up to the last minute."
Not silly at all. The DPRK has mobilized it's military and openly stated if we destroy the rocket it means war. We can reasonably assume they mean to make good on their threat. The goal is to use every means necessary to avoid war, not avoid the rocket launch. If we strike first and trigger a ground war, China will not back the U.S. They will support North Korea and immediately begin squeezing us. China will not let North Korea fall to U.S. forces, nor will they simply allow us to devastate their infrastructure. Therefore you employ everything you can to scrap this launch. If you have evidence it's not a satellite, you expose them. If you have evidence it's a weapon, you expose them. You put the pressure on the rest of the world to lobby Pyongyang to stand down. If you deliberately withhold information that is relevant to averting war and war results, you are guilty.
To be continued....
Stop the personal attacks, now, GottaHurt.
