As for someone succumbing to “swine flu”, that thought may be at the heart of this, and the outside world may not be involved.
They continue to test missiles and are making threats about their border again, so something is definitely happening in the capital that is behind this latest spasm. The military may have rejected Kim’s son on the military committee.
]]>As for China and NK… I suspect that if Kimmy pushes China too far, someone close will have a sudden, fatal, accident (The major difference between China and the company, is that China is actually good at not being caught, like the Belgians). đ
]]>My Mother visited my younger brother when he was working out of Hong Kong and she was somewhat stunned about how openly hostile everyone was toward the Japanese.
]]>Of course, we could have Japan invade the place again :-). (That, BTW, was a joke. If there was ever anything that would unite China, North Korea, and South Korea into a united front, it would be the prospect of a single Japanese soldier *ever* setting foot anywhere in Korea or the Chinese mainland, they have *long* memories there and remember exactly how the Japanese behaved last time they invaded the neighborhood).
– Badtux the Geopolitical Penguin
Badtux´s last blog post..The economy in a nutshell
]]>Before China invades North Korea, there will be an invasion of China by Korean refugees, which the officials don’t want because they already have too many people.
The Chinese now have the problem of looking weak because they can’t do anything about Korea. If they have an ambitious Korean general on their payroll they might go for regime change, but they don’t particularly like that sort of precedent, look at how long they tolerated the Khmer Rouge without doing anything.
I know I don’t want it, or anything to do with it.
]]>Of course, the Chinese could invade. It isn’t as if the NK army is capable of doing a whole lot, they have no fuel or parts for their tanks, their air farce can’t fly for lack of fuel or parts, and there are a helluva lot of Chinese. And that million-man NK army knows a helluva lot more about planting rice and harvesting rice (what they spend their spring and fall doing) than they know about, like, actual war-fighting. They’re basically a mob armed with AK-47’s, RPG’s, and mortars, not a serious threat to anybody other than their own toes. (Well, they also have a helluva lot of arty tubes aimed at Seoul, but presumably that would not come into play if the Chinese invade).
But the problem is, you invade it, you own it. And what you own is a medieval hell-hole where the entire population has been brainwashed and indoctrinated into some weird-ass cult shit, and the economy relies on having a million soldiers planting rice in the spring and harvesting rice in the fall and that’s the million soldiers you just crushed, remember? Meaning, economic collapse, meaning, you’re gonna have to send in a whole shitload of food aid or else have your name dragged through the mud as the country that just starved a few million Koreans to death, and then you own the place and it’s a money pit for the next thirty years until you can get the infrastructure rebuilt and the population indoctrinated into the ways of the modern world. Ain’t *nobody* in a hurry to invade North Korea — not South Korea, not China, crap, probably not even Dubya was dumb enough even if he’d had the troops to do it after invading Afghanistan and Iraq. So the problem just gets punted down the road in hopes someone else will solve it, year after year, because who the hell wants the place, anyhow?
– Badtux the Cynical Penguin
]]>That said, you have selected two to the egregious disasters of the Bush administration that have nothing at all to do with Obama.
The Clinton administration had North Korea in check and acting relatively normally, but then Bush decided to renege on the agreements made with North Korea and started calling the country names, apparently having no understanding of how insane the leadership was. The presence of nuclear weapons in North Korea is a wholly owned problem of the administration of George W. Bush.
You might want to read this article by Baktybek Abdrisaev, Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador to the United States and Canada from 1997 to 2005, which explains how the administration of George W. Bush lost the Manas AB by failing to follow through on its promises to the Kyrgyz regarding economic development that were part of the leasing agreement.
The Russians, who were totally misread by the Bush administration, filled the void the US left. They didn’t force the Kyrgyz to do anything. The Kyrgys told the US to leave before Obama was even nominated, so it is hard to see how it is in any way an Obama problem.
As for your choice of Reagan as a guide, that mealy-mouthed SOB cost me take home pay every month he was in office. My taxes went through the roof thanks to him. His tax policies resulted in net losses for me after two promotions, so he is one of my least favorite Presidents ever. He supported Saddam Hussein and provided the weapons of mass destruction that everyone got into such a lather about; he sold weapons to Khomeini’s government to finance death squads in Central America; he got hundreds of Marines killed for no reason in Lebanon; he is responsible for the creation of al Qaeda to oppose the Soviets in Afghanistan. I have no good memories at all of Ronald Reagan. We are still cleaning up after the mess he created.
]]>This is the same Obama that was apparently busy with his puppy-vetting process or playing basketball while the Russians where nabbing our Afghan supply air-base in Kyrgizstan.
Obama is endangering our national security, a failure of his most primary duty as president⌠maybe we should draw a line here?
Living in a celebrity-driven/liberal/MSM fantasy world is not a right of Obama supporters to cling-to indefinitely, as itâs both the voters and the pressâ duty to make informed, good-faith decisions⌠not waste power making a hollow fashion statement instead.
Itâs rapidly getting to the point where this kind of willfully-ignorant âthinkingâ is not just irresponsible, but dangerous. Obamaniaâs sheeple are deeply delusional, and as Obamaâs enablers, these fools are going to get us killed.
]]>