Asymmetrical Information

To understand what's going on in North Korea, a great book to read is Hungry Ghosts, by Jasper Becker. It's about the famine during China's Great Leap Forward, but the foreword points out the eerie similarities with North Korea's current famine (and both trace their roots back to the Ukraine famine, all thanks to communism).

The book is very readable, and is something we should all know about. You can't understand the Cultural Revolution without first knowing about the Great Leap. People in Hong Kong long knew that something horrible had happened in China in those years, but in the West we were all talking about how wonderful it was that Mao had eliminated famine in China. Meanwhile, up to 30 million people were starving to death for no particular reason except that Mao found it convenient. It has only been in the last decade that the Chinese Communist Party (partially) opened up the records to allow estimates of just how much of the population was missing by the end of the Great Leap.

If you want to understand communism - why it doesn't work, and why it inevitably leads to brutaility - then read "Hungry Ghosts" by Jasper Becker. Or if you want to know more about what's happening in North Korea today - cannibalism, eating the bark off trees, gnawing leather belts and shoes, "special meat" in the marketplace, and most of all why they don't leave or revolt even though whole families are dying in slow motion in front of them - then read Hungry Ghosts! It doesn't have all of the answers but it's a truly incredible book.

I've always been rather surprised at liberals and basically isolationist libertarians who concede World War II, but offer Korea as an example of a morally questionable war

Um, are these the same magical "liberals" that appear to tell you that Dems were against invading Afghanistan? Dems tend to make two points about Iraq (it relates, wait): (1) have a real point to a war, or (2) spread your risk with a UN sanction and allies. Korea arguably fits both points (containment, UN sanction).

BTW - I like the use of the word "concede". As if Dems hate to admit that. IIRC, we got in the war under a Dem (FRD, monster) who wanted to intervene. The non-interventionists were...wait, wait ...Republicans.

"Yeah, I guess maybe we were wrong about that." I doubt it, though.

No doubt because, as you said just one paragraph above, the relevant referent for them would have been Vietnam, not North Korea. So is your point ...yeah, I've got nothing?

More generally, is this the open admission that Republicans really are the new hippies? Is your point that our new military mission is to walk the earth, having adventures and doing good deeds with the help of our trusty dog Russ? Or did you just wake up grumpy this morning?

I can't say I have ever met a liberal who offered Korea as a morally questionable war. For one, a lot of people don't even talk about it. It's not called the Forgotten War for nothing. Usually, the source of liberal ire against a "morally questionable war" is Vietnam or now, Iraq. Liberals are unlikely to say too much against the Korean war since it was a great Democratic icon, Harry Truman, who decided to fight it. Unlike LBJ, his stock never fell much with the liberal wing of the Democratic party.

Come now, SCMTim: An extended metaphor like M*A*S*H ought to be accurate on its face, not JUST as metaphor, shouldn't it?

And I think the difference between Republican do-gooders and Democrat do-gooders is that Republicans don't fear to seek and acknowledge US national interest in our do-gooding, whereas it appears that if there IS a positive consequence for the US in a conflict, that automatically makes it an "unjust war" in the Dem anti-war crowd. (Please note that I don't tar all Democrats with the reflexively anti-war brush.) Plus our dog is named Booger. Oops, Blogger.

I remember hearing that MASH (the movie) was supposed to be about the Vietnam war but that was thought to be too controversial so they moved it to Korea.

I believe it because of the use of helicopters to evacuate wounded. We didn't do that very much, if at all, in Korea while it was very prevalent in Vietnam.

Helicopters probably did not do much rescue work in the Korean ground war, although they were fairly common for navy and air force pilot rescue. My dad was on Air Force crash boats,and tells me much of their work was landing partisans, spys, and supplies along the North Korean coast.

http://www.geocities.com/rms19612001/crashboatindex.html

SCMT,

I don't think it was Megan's intention to tar ALL democrats; only those isolationist anti-war ones (liberals and libertarians both, as you'll note) who are quite often wrong about the morality of war (both in general and in specific cases).

My experience has been that both parties have people who misunderstand the part that war plays in modern politics. As Clauswitz recognized, war is properly defined as politics by force. That is, you impose your political will by the use of force. A corollary is that before you commit the troops, you should have an identifiable political goal that the use of military force will help you achieve. The debates can then be over (1) the political goal, (2) whether military force will help achieve that identified goal, and (3) whether or not military force should actually be employed.

If you think back on it, you will realize that the debates over these questions rarely occur, and when they do occur, they tend to focus on #3.

My personal belief, based on putting myself in harm's way for 28 years and having my son now in harm's way for 8 years now, is that the political goal should directly relate to U.S. national security before the lives of those in the military should be risked. WW II clearly qualifies, as does the Korean War. Vietnam is a little fuzzier since the powers that be (PTB) never clearly articulated our national security interest in Vietnam other than as a stand against creeping Communism. GW I also clearly qualifies. Bosnia? No way. Kosovo? No way. What about the "presence" in the Persian Gulf (USS Stark and the airbus shot down by the USS Vincennes)? The political goal itself was fuzzy (show the might and power of the U.S., sure, but to what end? That's where it gets fuzzy), and we weren't actually imposing military force as much as demonstrating that we had it, but again, to what end?

It's clear to me why we went into Iraq. The political goals are aptly described by Stephen Den Beste at http://denbeste.nu/essays/strategic_overview.shtml, so I won't repeat them here. I know people of good will (Hello, Kate!) don't agree with them; at any rate, these are still being debated. Military force will definitely achieve the political goals, so there isn't any debate over this prong of the analysis. However, we are still debating the third prong, even after committing the troops. While debate is essential in our society, I have a hard time listening to anyone who wants to pull the troops out NOW, thus making a mockery of the heroic sacrifices already made by our troops. Our troops are committed and want to win; the rantings of the Ted Kennedys of the world offend them and me.

Okay, how about North Korea and/or Iran? Now that we've shown we mean business (i.e., Iraq), we have much more credibility when using diplomacy. If you (or anyone) can identify and articulate political goals that can be achieved through the use of military force, without causing even more complications (e.g., Chinese reaction to U.S. forces on Chinese border), let's hear them. I am not even going to begin speculating on invading Korea unless and until political goals are articulated which could be achieved through the use of force. I think that the current diplomatic effort involving North Korea's neighbors is the right way to go.

The first use of choppers to evacuate the wounded was in Korea. I don't know how extensive it was, but that's when it started.

I remember hearing that MASH (the movie) was supposed to be about the Vietnam war but that was thought to be too controversial so they moved it to Korea.

M*A*S*H the movie was based on M*A*S*H the book, which was definitely set in Korea, its author having served in a M*A*S*H unit there. I suspect that the TV series was produced and did so well in part because it addressed Vietnam without actually addressing Vietnam.

(By the way, after M*A*S*H the book came fifteen sequels, which started to go seriously weird after the second one (when William E. Butterworth was added as co-author). I have eight of these books. When they came out, when I was in high school, I thought they were a scream. They do not stand up to re-reading after all these years, in my opinion.)

I can't say I have ever met a liberal who offered Korea as a morally questionable war.

Do half the scripts for M*A*S*H count? I guess a measure of the justice of a war may be in how many people deny, afterwards, that it was controversial. For example, I was reading in the newspaper a while back about how all Democrats supported the Cold War. And I read constantly in blogs about how the Afghan war was 110% right (in contrast to Iraq), yet somehow I remember a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

MASH (both book and movie) were based on the novel of the same name by 'Richard Hooker', fictionalized memoirs of the Korean experiences of a MASH surgeon.

[A great read, by the way]

Nothing that I've seen indicates a purposeful Vietnam subtext in either the movie or the TV show - though both were probably influenced by it in some ways, I don't think that an the ax being ground.

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/korea50/k50-8.htm

The method of evacuating sick and wounded troops changed radically during the Korean War. Even though air transport of wounded was used in World War II, it had not been developed to the scale used in Korea. As a result of these changes, thousands of lives were saved.

Medical evacuation at the beginning of the Korean War was based on ground and sea transport. Upon his arrival in August 1950, Brigadier General Tunner directed his staff to study the possibility of aeromedical evacuation as a standard procedure for transporting wounded and sick troops.

By October, Combat Cargo transports began returning injured personnel to Japan or airfields in South Korea according to a centralized control plan, and the Air Force's Military Air Transport System (MATS) assumed responsibility for airlifting patients from Japan back to the United States. Along the way, the sick and wounded were cared for by in-flight Air Force nurses and medical specialists. By the end 1950, transport by air became the standard form of casualty movement.

The Air Force's aeromedical evacuation system, along with the use of antibiotics, helicopter evacuation, and new surgical techniques, cut the death rate from wounds to half the rate of World War II. These advances greatly improved the morale and lowered the suffering of wounded and sick soldiers.

By the end of the war, Combat Cargo moved 311,673 wounded and sick personnel (some individuals were counted more than once in this figure because of more than one move). In addition to the impressive record of Combat Cargo evacuation, MATS transported 43,196 casualties back home to the United States. The heart of the system set up during the Korean War still exists today, with the US Air Force fully responsible for all aspects of military aeromedical evacuation, including care during flight and at staging posts, from behind the front line all the way back to the United States.

When I began writing a comment to this post, I soon realized that I was using too many words. I decided instead to blog about it at my own place. Anyone interested can read at Hootsbuddy's Place.

Sorry bout that. I messed up the permalink.
http://hootsbuddy.blogspot.com/2005/01/reply-to-jane-galt-post.html
Still learning about these tags...
Time permitting, maybe you can clean up my mess and delete the tracks of ignorance I left.

Mash the movie and Mash the TV show were rather different politically. The TV show was quite politically-correct by Vietnam-era standards. The movie, now looks as if some highly prescient writer set out to grossly violate nearly every standard of political-correctness while it was still possible:

- Racism: A black football player is called "Spearchucker".

- Homophobia: The unit's dentist fails sexually just once and wants to commit suicide because he thinks he's gay.

- Outrageous and criminal sexual harassment: The treatment of Hot Lips in the TV show looks bad by 1990's standards, but in the 70's that was nothing. In the movie, they made bets as to whether she was naturally blonde, and settled the question by rigging the shower tent to fall completely apart while she was in it. With the entire camp watching.

I often wonder if Alan Alda ... ever looks at the news coming out of North Korea and thinks "Yeah, I guess maybe we were wrong about that."

"I often wonder why the Bay of Pigs action is now regarded as a fiasco when Castro is clearly such a bad guy."

The movie, now looks as if some highly prescient writer set out to grossly violate nearly every standard of political-correctness while it was still possible...

The very early episodes of the TV series had a bit of that, too, with Hawkeye and Trapper as shameless wolves. They were still wolves later in the series, but the sort of wolves who could spend the night with a girl and still respect her in the morning, treating her professionally in the surgical tent. It wasn't so much that way in the beginning. I remember seeing an early episode a while back, and being shocked at the difference in Hawkeye.

"It's clear to me why we went into Iraq. The political goals are aptly described by Stephen Den Beste"

And just what position does Mr. Den Beste hold with the Bush administration? Just how much of what he writes has been publicly spoken by W Bush?

I'm sure that had he been around, Mr. Den Beste could have written lengthy articles on what US goals in Vietnam were, that wouldn't have changed the fact that the government had confused/conflicting/no goals there.

Do half the scripts for M*A*S*H count? I guess a measure of the justice of a war may be in how many people deny, afterwards, that it was controversial. For example, I was reading in the newspaper a while back about how all Democrats supported the Cold War. And I read constantly in blogs about how the Afghan war was 110% right (in contrast to Iraq), yet somehow I remember a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Aside from Vietnam, I can't think of a single war that was seen as controversial in retrospect. In the War of 1812, for example, the Northeast was on the verge of mutiny yet today that is forgotten about. Even the Civil War, it is often forgotten there was a lot of internal dissention on both sides.

M*A*S*H was clearly in the line of literature of pacifists...not opposition to a particular war. Another example would be _Johnny got his gun_ which was more against war itself rather than WWI. If you had to pin a war protest to the show, though, it would certainly be Vietnam.

N. Korea had a lot of controversy, remember Truman had to fire McCarther in the middle of it! Yet I'm unaware of any serious liberal challenge to either North Korea or Afghanistan. I imagine this is just more of Jane's 'creative history' that she sometimes pulls on us.

BTW, if you know a bit of history you'll know that it was the Republicans who used to accuse the Democrats of being the warmongers. It was a common tactic to note something like 'the last three wars started under Democratic administrations'. Bob Dole actually got in trouble for this in the '76 VP debates where he asserted that World War II, North Korea and Vietnam were 'Democratic Wars'.

The very early episodes of the TV series had a bit of that, too, with Hawkeye and Trapper as shameless wolves. They were still wolves later in the series, but the sort of wolves who could spend the night with a girl and still respect her in the morning, treating her professionally in the surgical tent. It wasn't so much that way in the beginning. I remember seeing an early episode a while back, and being shocked at the difference in Hawkeye.

I think you’re right about Hawkeye but it seems to me that there was an overall growth and improvement in characters in the latter years of the show. Frank Burns was replaced with Charles Winchester III who despite his stuffiness showed nobility and class that seemed missing from the prior episodes. Colonel Potter was an improvement as the new CO in that it showed someone who was “regular army” in a positive light as well as a much needed “father figure” in the family of characters. Major Houlihan dropped the “hot lips” moniker when Burns left and went from a snobbish adultress to showing a better side as a noble officer who cared about the welfare and dignity of her nurses and their patients. Klinger quit being a two-dimensional transvestite goofball that was trying to get out of the military and showed a true compassion for the Korean civilians who were caught up in the war (even marrying one) and becoming a sort of surrogate “son” to Colonel Potter. Even Father O’Malley managed to show some growth in a character that already seemed well-grounded when he lost his hearing and had to deal with questions about his faith in a time of war.

"...a fellow who had been in Naval Intelligence, stationed in North Korea...."

I'm extremely curious about this, Megan. You say this so casually, but, of course, we have no official personnel stationed in North Korea, as we have no relations with North Korea, so it is utterly impossible for someone from NI to be there either officially, or under typical official cover as an embassy attache, allegedly with the State Department.

And the idea that Naval Intelligence has people in North Korea as Non-Official Cover, aka NOC, aka undercover, is significant news; the idea that someone who had served in such a job would casually chat about it later, well, you get locked up for doing that, you know?

So are you sure this person was "stationed in North Korea"? Can you explain how this might be? Is it possible the person was in South Korea, perhaps? Or am I missing something?

Gary,

>So are you sure this person was "stationed in North Korea"? Can you explain how this might be?

Angie, if you're putting forth "half the scripts of M*A*S*H" as an example, does that mean Jane is basing her surprise at something "liberals" offered 25 years ago? Does that really seem like a relevant comment to you? I assumed she was referring to someone writing or talking today, perhaps someone she came across on the Internet or met at a party.

I can't speak for all liberals (and neither could the screenwriter for M*A*S*H, but at least I have the benefit of commenting in 2005 and not 1978) but I can't say that I've ever given much thought to Korea as a bad war. I suspect there's a bit of straw-manning going on. "Are liberals reeeeeeeally foolish enough to support Kim Jong-Il? Maybe so!" Etc.

I have to agree with Angie, I sure do remember quite the firestorm on the net and the blogs back during the Afghan war. I remember:

1. "stop the bombing!";
2. "stop the bombing during Ramadan!";
3. predictions of 5 million Afghan refugees;
4. a humanitarian catastrophe;
5. a silent genocide;
6. the brutal Afghan winter;
7. the graveyard of empires;
8. "when God wants to punish a country, he makes them invade Afghanistan";
9. southern Afghanistan will rise up;
10. quagmire!;
11. this shows why we should have approved the ICC;
12. this needs to be a law enforcement operation;
13. there's no proof Bin Laden had anything to do with it;
14. even if he did, the Taliban and Bin Laden are two different things;
15. cluster bombs kill children and other living things!;
16. we need to use diplomatic pressure;
17. we need to use economic sanctions;
18. Bin Laden should be turned over to a Muslim country for trial by a Muslim court;
19. we need to build daycare centers in Afghanistan;
20. what good is it for the richest country in the world to bomb the poorest country in the world?;
21. violence doesn't solve anything;
22. war crimes!;
23. stop the cycle of violence;
24. Unocal pipeline!;
25. no blood for oil;
26. American imperialism;

and much, much more.

I have no idea where all those people making all those arguments went, but hell if you can find them today. Seems everyone supported the Afghan war nowadays.

There was a saying about the French Resistance in WWII: if all the people who claimed to be part of the Resistance actually were, there would have been no one left to collaborate.

Seems everyone supported the Afghan war nowadays.

Almost everyone did. Of course the radical anti war ANSWER types did't, and a few nutty professors, but the American public was overwhelmingly behind it, including most Democrats. Only one person in Congress, Barbara Lee, voted against the resolution which allowed force. To make it sound like there was a mass anti war movement or that the republicans were some lonely little band of happy warriors flies in the face of reality.

Correct, opposition to the Afghan war was trivial...even Barbara Lee in Congress (if I remember correctly) stated that she feared authorizing the war would let Bush think he was being given a blank check...not exactly Vietnam level opposition by any normal means. I observed the big ANSWR rally in NYC against the Afghan War. It was made up of just a few dozen radicals...I'd be shocked if there was even 100.

Jane's just rewriting history again guys.

Of course the liberals supported the Korean War. Our side of it was sponsored by the UN! This was possible because the Soviets threw a temper tantrum and walked out - leaving their Security Council veto unexercised.

Of course, even aside from the Soviets it wasn't the same UN. The Chinese seat (and SC veto) was held by Chiang Kai Shek in Taiwan. Germany and Japan had to spend a few years atoning for WWII before they could get in. Most of those tin-horn thuggocracies that have since turned the General Assembly into an example of unbridled corruption were still colonies then. And the French and other European colonial powers voted with us - after all, it was only about 4 years after we saved them from the Germans, and we were just getting started on rebuilding their cities and industry for them.

Jane's just rewriting history again guys.

In all fairness, I don't think Jane is advancing this theory with respect to Afghanistan.

More contemporaneous subtle but clear anti-war views on Afghanistan, from "Time":

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,182745,00.html

At the risk of running Orwell into the ground, I point out that perception of truth can be more important than truth itself, when your aim is to persuade. Public support for war in Afghanistan was in the high 80%'s, I believe, yet it's easy to find examples in the MSM of naysaying, doomsaying, comparisons with the USSR's Afhan experience, coverage of antiwar protests however hard to find they might *actually* have been, and so forth.

Public support for war in Afghanistan was in the high 80%'s, I believe, yet it's easy to find examples in the MSM of naysaying, doomsaying, comparisons with the USSR's Afhan experience, coverage of antiwar protests however hard to find they might *actually* have been, and so forth.

You are going to find naysaying about just about everything in the MSM,especially a war where a lot can go wrong. Of course you can find examples of people protesting the war, especially on the internet. You can also find people who believe in leprechauns. These folks don't represent mainstream opinion, not even mainstream Democratic party opinion. (I'm not real sure about the leprechaun part). The point is, it is dishonest to suggest that the folks who opposed the Afghan war were somehow this massive group that dominated the left and now are too scared to speak their minds on it. Those who really opposed that war still do. They tend to oppose all force. I just take issue with the attempt by a couple of posters to suggest that this was more than a small group of very vocal people with strong, but in my opinion, wrong opinions.

Um, "Jane"? I see that you've changed "North Korea" to "South Korea," in regard to your citing your Naval Intelligence friend. I realize that every blogger has their own policy on this sort of thing, and far be it for me to tell you what your policy should be, but have you considered acknowledging changing a post, rather than doing so deliberately? It's considerably more clear what happened that way.

And from a purely selfish point of view, which I realize may not move you, if someone now reads this thread as it stands, I'm going to look like an idiot who was hallucinating when I made my comment, rather than having questioned what now appears to be a trivial, if confusing, error you've chosen to revise and correct.

Thanks for whatever consideration you give to this point.

On your original point, which I previously chose not to discuss, when you refer to "...liberals and basically isolationist libertarians who concede World War II, but offer Korea as an example of a morally questionable war," I would note that it would be useful to provide a cite or two to such people. Are there any prominent liberal bloggers or columnists or spokespeople who hold such views, for instance? Have you noticed any saying anything on the subject in recent times? Cite?

It's difficult to discuss the merits or demerits of something with no citations of specifics, I find, but perhaps you disagree?

Oh, and just another suggestion: "I went to school with a fellow who had been in Naval Intelligence, stationed in South Korea, before matriculating. He didn't tell me anything classified or anything, but he did offer horrifying reports of what was going on in the provinces, including cannibalism, as the regime not only produced a horrifying famine, but used the distribution of food to crack down on provinces it considered troublesome."

Since you changed "North" to "South" in this paragraph, it now reads pretty oddly, since I imagine many people would want more details on the cannibalism going on in South Korean provinces your paragraph now, standing alone, suggests exists. I'd suggest adding a further reference specifying "North Korea" to the second sentences, clearing up that now erroneous antecedent problem you left hanging. But that's just the editor in me speaking, I'm afraid, and perhaps being fussy about grammar and meaning isn't worth your bother in such a trivial case, in which case carry on, as I'm sure you will.

Angie, if you're putting forth "half the scripts of M*A*S*H" as an example, does that mean Jane is basing her surprise at something "liberals" offered 25 years ago?

Dunno. Go ask her. Eamon said he hadn't ever met a liberal who thought the Korean War was morally questionable. I brought up the various M*A*S*H scripts that did just that. I don't know why the hell you drag Jane into it. She didn't make the comment about liberals, nor answer it.

(Surely you can do better with that. Why don't you spring out with "Ah-HA! but Eamon has never met any of the writers of M*A*S*H! Gotcha!")

I can't speak for all liberals...

Apparently, no one can speak for any liberals -- that is to say, any stupid thing a liberal says is immediately brushed off as being not representative of liberals. To be sure, this happens with conservatives as well, but there you have a small cadre of usual suspects (Falwell, Robertson, Buchanan, Gingrich), whereas the parade of nutty liberals seems to be unending.

You see it in Sir Hosis's comment, where he dismisses DRB's list because, of all Congress, only Barbara Lee actually voted against the Afghan war. Oh, well then. My mistake.

The point is, it is dishonest to suggest that the folks who opposed the Afghan war were somehow this massive group that dominated the left and now are too scared to speak their minds on it.

Scared? Scared?? I've never heard of anything so absurd. They're not scared, they were just wrong, and they'd like to keep quiet about it. (On second thought, maybe they are scared: after all, these are largely the same people who said that their dissent was being crushed because people disagreed with them.)

Note that not everyone who disagreed with the war was a liberal -- see Buchanan. I, on the other hand, had always considered myself a liberal, until September 11th demonstrated that you had to be a lot crazier than I am to be a liberal in these days.

You are going to find naysaying about just about everything in the MSM...

So any names I might turn up (Lewis Lapham Barbara Kingsolver Katha Pollitt Susan Sontag Noam Chomsky Dennis Kucinich Al Sharpton Gloria Steinem Edward Said Michael Moore Cynthia McKinney Gore Vidal Barbara Ehrenreich) are just going to be random "naysayers". OK, then.

This is probably obvious to the rest of you. But, if there was and is little opposition to the Korean war, then why is the Vietnam War so different? It's conventional wisdom that we should have given up on Vietnam much earlier, but surely the Vietnamese (and Cambodian) people today would be far better off if we had succeeded.

If we could go back and do it all over again, would it be better to surrender early in Vietnam, or to fight harder and not give up? Is communism such an attractive lie that we had to let the Vietnamese learn for themselves? Or is it a purely personal calculation - we could have saved many others, but the cost to ourselves would have been too great?

At the time, there could have been an objection made that the ROK regime we supported was a fairly nasty dictatorship. In some ways, it certainly was. However, it liberalized and became a truly free country in the '80s, much like Taiwan.

This of course has only increased its value as a piece of evidence to point to for all sides. (See, engagement works eventually! See, we can make them democratize without penalty! Etc.)

The comments about Afghanistan and elsewhere reminds me of when I've had to discuss popular, educated opinion on the Left about the Soviet Union in the '80s and before. People have repeatedly denied to my face that so many prominent experts on the Left (John Kenneth Galbraith and others) thought that the USSR was so strong, etc.

Everybody likes a winner. With success comes everybody claiming that they supported it all along, no matter what the issue.

Certainly more Democrats supported war with Afghanistan than with Iraq, but not all. Some were very grudging about; some groups who had been blasting the Taliban then refused to want to do anything about them. The more on the Left, the more people were opposed, in general. So it goes.

Boy are you dumb. Mash was a movie. Alan Alda was an actor. It was all fiction. It was not a statement of their political positions, it was entertainment.

A better question would be to ask if the US soldiers who fought in Korea and got out alive are wishing they stayed and fought longer. Somehow I don't think they would give up the lives they enjoyed after Korea just to free the North Koreans if it meant their possibe death or injury.

By now they are retired and have children and grandchildren to enjoy. Do you honestly think that a free North Korea is worth taking all this away from them?

Even though no one is still reading this, I have a point to make.

In the 2nd comment, Some Call Me Tim made this comment.

"(1) have a real point to a war, or (2) spread your risk with a UN sanction and allies. Korea arguably fits both points (containment, UN sanction)."

This is exactly the type of thing that Jane is complaining about. Tim thinks it would be better if we went with the UN and used sanctions and containment on Iraq, and cites North Korea as a success. North Korea, where the people are eating moss, tree bark, leather, and each other.

Some Call Me Tim, you are an Amoral Idiot.

Period.

Byna, (Capitilization Intentional)

Certainly more Democrats supported war with Afghanistan than with Iraq, but not all. Some were very grudging about; some groups who had been blasting the Taliban then refused to want to do anything about them. The more on the Left, the more people were opposed, in general. So it goes.

Well, Duh. No one is claiming all democrats backed Afghanistan, but the overwhelming majority did. It's simply not true to claim that there was substantial opposition to the war within the Democractic party. Also, you appear to be confusing "left" with "Democratic". Many of those on the left who opposed the war weren't democrats, but were even futher left. People like Greens, Peace & Freedom, Socialist Workers Party etc. Only one elected democrat in Congress opposed the resolution and as someone noted above, it was more because it appeared to be giving Bush a "blank check".

Byna:

Tim thinks it would be better if we went with the UN and used sanctions and containment on Iraq, and cites North Korea as a success....Some Call Me Tim, you are an Amoral Idiot.

"Sanction \Sanc"tion\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Sanctioned; p. pr. &
vb. n. Sanctioning.]
To give sanction to; to ratify; to confirm; to approve."

In Korea we had a war. That's why we called it "the Korean War." It was at least nominally (that means "in name") a UN action. This (I would think obviously, but best to be sure here) means that the UN approved of the action. This is equivalent to saying that the UN "sanctioned" the action.

Byrna, you are an Illiterate Idiot. Next time, before you make a point, try having read one whole book, on any subject, aaalll the way through.

Well done, Tim. But remember, she has a point to make!

John Thacker,

It was actualy much of the Right that thought the USSR was strong.

The thing that I took from MASH was that war was never a glorious undertaking.

It causes enormous damage to the soul and body of the individuals involved. OTOH it inspires astounding acts of bravery and sacrifice. It brutalizes societies and causes deprviation to entire populations. Good can come from wars but not without a price.

Beyond that:

Human beings fail to recognize and truly understand the costs sometimes. Worse, we delude ourselves at times with jingoist fervor about the reality of war, the morality of war and those same costs.

IMO if you fall too far into that delusion you dishonor the men and women who have died in the prosecution of our wars. You dishonor or outright ignore the sacrifice of the enemy's general public who have suffered when it was the leadership that brought them to the war.

Dunno. Go ask her. Eamon said he hadn't ever met a liberal who thought the Korean War was morally questionable. I brought up the various M*A*S*H scripts that did just that.

Really? Which MASH scripts asserted that the Korean War was specifically morally questionable (by this I do not mean your general all-purpose 'war is bad' or 'there's lots of silly military regulations' types of scripts).

Let's look at Jane's writing again:

That's why I've always been rather surprised at liberals and basically isolationist libertarians who concede World War II, but offer Korea as an example of a morally questionable war.

I cannot think of one person who ever presented Korea as an example of a morally questionable war. Of course some exist, maybe even some important peole like Gore Vidal did but I'm unaware of any serious attempt by liberals or even isolationist libertarians to attack Korea as morally questionable. Anyone????

SCMTim:

In reading Byna's post and then your response, I was moved to go back to your original comment, because I think you mischaracterized her(? I'll assume "her") understanding of what you were suggesting. I still think that's true: she correctly claimed that you draw a distinction between Iraq and Korea because Korea was UN-sanctioned but Iraq is not. She MAY have misunderstood the other usage of "sanction" and she may have incorrectly assigned "containment" to the wrong place in an English sentence diagram, but the point remains: if we had waited for the UN to carry out the "serious consequences" it had agreed that Iraq should be faced with in the event of Saddam's continued noncompliance with all the OTHER resolutions the UN had passed, we WOULD have been limited to sanctions (alternate usage) and containment. Not so? If pre-emption was not an option, if active UN involvement was a prerequisite, what else could we have done?

Anyway, I went back to your comment and reviewed your two criteria for war with Iraq: "1) have a real point to a war, or (2) spread your risk with a UN sanction and allies. Korea arguably fits both points (containment, UN sanction)." Iraq meets these two criteria - just not in your opinion.

1. "A real point" to war: from Belmont Club, today: "The strategic center of gravity of the American thrust into the Middle East was not Iraq the geographical entity, as so many have I believe, mistakenly put it, but the Iraqis. The war aim was access to an alliance with an unlimited pool of Arabic speakers, not a puddle of oil in the ground. The return of Iraqi security and intelligence forces will be a nightmare for regional dictators in the short term; but the advent of even a quasi-democratic Iraqi state will, without exaggeration, be their death-knell." Put in more philosophical, less strategerical terms, as Bush has been saying all along, free people tend not to become terrorists. When dealing with a terrible pest(ilence) problem, you can spray, or you can go after the nest and the conditions that allowed the nest to form.

2. "Spread your risk with a UN sanction and allies": We had UN sanction in the form of the resolution Powell presented to the Security Council in, what was it, Sept. 2002? - the UN just chose not to go the full distance and enforce its own resolution. We have allies. We do not have France, Germany, Spain (any more), Belgium (surprise), Russia, Greece, China, some others. We might ask ourselves - or more to the point, I might ask YOU, what is sacrosanct about the participation of those who chose to sit it out in opposition? Why is their support so valuable that we may not succeed without it, or indeed even pursue our aim without it? Our risk isn't spread as thinly as we might like, it's true, but we also lost the most on 9/11; it's our fight, first. Things in Iraq may be, in fact, easier to handle with a force that's by far majority-American than a splintered international force that "looks like the world," to paraphrase a Democrat of recent years who also, lest we forget, made regime change in Iraq a top priority in 1998. We might be able to hide in the skirts of the UN and feel that no one could criticize us because, after all, Kofi Annan said it was OK for us to be there, but would the effort be as effective? UN Peacekeepers don't have all that great a rep...

When dealing with a terrible pest(ilence) problem, you can spray, or you can go after the nest and the conditions that allowed the nest to form.

Problem is, we are going after the wrong next. There isn't any evidence that Iraq had any connection to 9/11 or any other terrorism directed against us in a long time. Attacking Iraq, without sufficient provaction helps create more pests. It's a wonderul recruiting tool for terrorists and allows them to claim that we are hell bent on invading Muslim nations, with some credibility.

Problem is, we are going after the wrong next. There isn't any evidence that Iraq had any connection to 9/11 or any other terrorism directed against us in a long time. Attacking Iraq, without sufficient provaction helps create more pests. It's a wonderul recruiting tool for terrorists and allows them to claim that we are hell bent on invading Muslim nations, with some credibility.

"Going after the nest" is a metaphorical term. Anyone with a map handy may have noticed that with Israel being situated where it is, and the US involved in both Afghanistan and Iraq, every single potential troublemaker in the Middle East (or South-Central Asia, if you prefer) now has US or US-friendly pressure on it from one, and frequently two, sides.

Mister Jones wrote:

Problem is, we are going after the wrong next. There isn't any evidence that Iraq had any connection to 9/11 or any other terrorism directed against us in a long time. Attacking Iraq, without sufficient provaction helps create more pests. It's a wonderul recruiting tool for terrorists and allows them to claim that we are hell bent on invading Muslim nations, with some credibility.

I’ll see your “recruiting tool” and raise you one finger (times eight million new voters).

I’ll see your “recruiting tool” and raise you one finger (times eight million new voters).

You aren't playing a very strong hand. Those who voted weren't the problem. They weren't the ones killing our troops. Those who are fighting us are still there and the fact that the others voted, while it is good for them, does little or nothing about the insurgency and the foreign thugs. My prediction is that the violence won't change a bit.

Jamie:
Byna is an idiot. It's not that bad, we've all been one at some point. On to you points.

1. A real point to the war. I take you to be saying that the point is that once democracy is established in the Middle East, everything will be better because (i) repressive regimes will have to change, and (ii) free people tend not to become terrorists.

(a) As to free people and terrorism, off the top of my head I'd note that the following are generally considered terrorists: Timothy McViegh, the KKK, (I think)the Weathermen (USA), the IRA (UK), the Red Brigade (Italy), ETA (Spain), the Red Army Faction (West Germany). Free people become terrorists. It's relatively satisfied (and there's a wide range here) people don't become terrorists.

(b) I have a lot of problems with the “Democracy Now!” justification for the war, of which I'll list a few. First, the war wasn't sold to us that way; that was a relatively minor point, behind WMD (itself silly) and an Al-Qaeda connection. If you honestly believe that the public would have supported the war if Bush had said, “Iraq's not a threat, and isn't connected to 9/11. But I believe that if we go to war and change Iraq to a democracy, the rest of the region will follow, and we'll be safer in the long run,” then we're probably at an impasse, because it's inconceivable to me.

Second, I'm suspicious of the claim that everyone else would rush to democracy once they saw it in Iraq. I note that Pakistan has been, at various times, a democracy, and it sits next to the largest democracy on earth. But it still had a military coup. Note also that Pakistan has real ties to (i) terrorists, (ii) Al Qaeda, and (iii) the exportation of the only thing we really worry about – nukes.

Finally, making Iraq into a democracy was always going to be a real problem. AFAIK, that's why GHWB didn't go in after Hussein, and why many from his administration opposed this war. If we are going to do it despite these problems, then we're back to my original claim that our new military policy is to walk the world, doing good deeds with our trusty dog Russ.

2. Allies. First, the UN is useful as a place in which to take everyone's temperature. I don't really care so much about resolutions, except as they make it easier to sell the plan generally to the public, both before and after the mission. That no one wanted to enforce it the resolution is a pretty good indication that no one wanted to go into Iraq no matter what the resolution said. Second, the allies that matter are the (relative) world powers and regional powers – we didn't get them. Even those we got, we got over the plurality of opposition to their entrance into war (e.g., UK). We care about the world powers, etc., b/c their interests are closest to ours, and/or they have the greatest ability to help us stablize the world (now and in the future).

Also, I should note that the risks I was talking about spreading are primarily blame and failure. No one points fingers when everyone's implicated.

SCMTim:

I'd not go so far as to say, as you say you thought I was saying, that "everything will be better because (i) repressive regimes will have to change, and (ii) free people tend not to become terrorists." (BTW, I'll accept your reformulation that it's "relatively satisfied" people who become terrorists; but is there an argument that most Iraqis NOT under Saddam are less or more likely to be "relatively satisfied"?) I'd say instead that there's a far greater chance of significant change in the Middle East if the citizenry of the region are free to choose their various leadership. Not a magic bullet, but a fighting chance they (in this case, the Iraqis) wouldn't have gotten under Saddam or his sons, by all accounts.

"Democracy Now!" was the Clinton doctrine too... He just didn't feel he had the pretext to further it. WMDs were indeed one reason for going to war in Iraq, but not the only - you know what? I'm so tired of repeating this that I'm going to skip it. You know what I'm going to say; you don't believe it or accept it; I think it's disingenuous of your side of the argument continually to discount it, even despite the six MONTHS we spent dinking around waiting for the UN to get off the dime that made it perfectly reasonable that any stockpiles of WMDs that may already have existed were carted off elsewhere, not to mention Saddam's continuing capability to retool with extreme rapidity as soon as he was under less scrutiny, cf. Duelfer... Dang it, I said it anyway. Oh well. It doesn't change anything, does it? Those who still believe Bush "sold" the war by "lying" about WMDs are not about to un-believe it no matter what my little ol' fingers rattle out.

Democracy in a "backward region": hard. True. But our other choices, such as continued lack of diplomatic engagement with Iraq, keeping our troops in the No Fly Zone indefinitely, waiting out Saddam in the hopes that he was bluffing (which NO ONE thought was the case in 2003), had even less chance of success as defined by improving our overall security. Deposing Saddam and providing support and security for a nascent democracy in Iraq has, at least, the benefit of giving millions of people a taste of what they've been hungering for (quite apparently they HAVE been hungering for it), which will make it that much harder for them to give it up again in the event of the rise of another Saddam.

Allies and the UN: The problem with the UN's being a "thermometer" for the world is that most countries in it just... don't... matter in the decision-making process. Poland, who we will surely remember after their contribution these few years, has effectively no say. Sweden, defying its own constitution to provide war materiel, has effectively no say. Italy: oops, wrong side of WWII, no say. Romania: no say. Japan: no say. Because of the UNSC veto. We took the temperature of the world in 2002 and the world was hot for Saddam to comply; but France stated its intention to exercise its veto against any resolution calling for armed conflict in Iraq in spite of the regime's continued failure to carry out its disarmament and transparency obligation adequately. So we at least knew France's temperature at that juncture; later we discovered the possible cause of their rapid cooling.

Enough of this nonsense... sorry. Point being that we DID and DO have allies with us in Iraq, the Iraqi people seem explicitly to have considered voting an alternative to - even an attack on - the terrorists, and so by my lights your conditions have been met.

As for blame and failure, heck, sometimes you have to do what you feel is necessary even if you end up standing alone at the end of it. In this case, if we're successful (I'm entirely optimistic but I'll give you the "if"), we won't stand alone... but we'll sure remember who stood with us.

Dude, I already told you the dog goes by "Booger," not "Russ." And he's our dog now! [cue maniacal laughter]

SCMTim et al.:

I want to apologize for descending into snarkiness at times in my last post... I offer in extenuation but not excuse that geez, I'm tired. One kid teething, one insomniac, one scared of the dark, and my husband's out of town. NObody got enough sleep around here last night. [yaaaaawn]

Please know that I eagerly anticipate your posts and the opportunity to learn and to engage in debate, even if it's only at my humble level, with opponents as thoughtful and courteous as yourself, sir.

May I note for the record that Sec. Rice is going to have to do something about Hugo Chavez pretty soon here.

SCMTim,

Regarding "sanctions," I apologize for using shorthand and leaving out the word "against."

You said Korea, not South Korea. There are two of them, and the term Korea covers both. If you meant to only include the Korean War as good, while Iraq war was bad, then you should have used the correct terms (Korean War/South Korea). You opened yourself up for misinterpretation.

What I understood you as saying is this:
Korean War (UN approved) = good
North Korean containment and sanctions = good

This compares to modern times this way
Korean War = Desert Storm (UN approved) = good
Korean sanctions = Iraqi sanctions = good
Gulf War 2 (no UN approval) = bad

From this I concluded that you want Iraq to be the same way that North Korea is currently.

And now, if you are still reading and not steaming due to my idiocy, I'd like to point out 1 final thing (like any internet arguement ever has 1 final thing! :)

In January 2003, there were 5 options regarding Iraq:
1. Remove the sanctions (against) Iraq
2. Maintain the sanctions (indefinetely)
3. Regime change through internal coup (with outside support?)
4. Regime change through outside action (war)
5. Nuclear annihilation

I reject 5. The US did 4. You appear to be rejecting 4. 3 failed miserably previously, and no president wants another Bay of Pigs. This leaves 1 and 2. 2 leads to either modern North Korea, or effectively to 1 (See UN Oil for Food Scam). 1 leads to a nuclear armed Iraq.

So, did I misunderstand you, and your original point merely covered the Korean War and not the subsequent actions against North Korea?

And of the 5 options (or any other reasonable options you can come up with), which do you support now, to do in January 2003?

Byna, realizes that no one actually reads long comments all the way through.

Sir Hosis of the Liver wrote:

You aren't playing a very strong hand. Those who voted weren't the problem. They weren't the ones killing our troops. Those who are fighting us are still there and the fact that the others voted, while it is good for them, does little or nothing about the insurgency and the foreign thugs. My prediction is that the violence won't change a bit.

Then you miss the point entirely. Even if one accepts the BAF’s premise that we somehow “created” 30,000 new terrorists by liberating Iraq, the recent elections show then that we also liberated some 8,000,000 voters who have demonstrated by their participation in the elections that they don’t want what the insurgents are offering and were willing to risk their lives to say so. “Creating” 8,000,000 voters who want freedom and republican government and are willing to risk their lives for it is a lot more important than “creating” 30,000 terrorists.

But one can look at the first few decades of communist regimes in nearby countries to see that even if the regime hadn't lasted so long, the time it did last would have been plenty horrible enough

Lots of people seem to have a problem with understanding that just because something is how it is now, doesn't mean that it was that way forever. In the immediate aftermath of the Korean War, the two Koreas were about as authoritarian as each other, and North Korea was the stronger of the two economically. Lots of Koreans of the generation above mine remember receiving food parcels from relatives in the North. Things started going bad toward the end of the 1970s, for reasons that are poorly understood, and have now obviously reached appalling levels.

"Things started going bad toward the end of the 1970s, for reasons that are poorly understood"

Huh??? What's not to understand? The reason is

...(drumroll)...

Communism

Exactly! The reasons why things started going wrong in North Korea are very well understood. South Korea and Taiwan (and, to a lesser extent, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc.) were repressive but capitalist regimes that gradually became more open and democratic, as well as wealthier. North Korea, Vietnam and China, on the other hand, fell apart (although China has been improving in some ways since it began its flirtation with repressive capitalism).

As I said at the beginning of this thread, if you want to understand what's happening to North Korea's economy today, read the book Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker.

The North Koreans are taking sensible steps to resolve their problems. For example, the new law commanding men to cut their hair to a neat, "socialist style" length.

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