Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Here’s What Korean War Number II Would Look Like, Donald Trump

America, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Military, War

How insane is it to threaten Korean War Number II! Unlike Chucky Krauthammer and Ivanka, the great, grizzled journalist Eric Margolis knows what it’ll look like. Why he’s even been to North Korea. Come to think of it, Dennis Rodman may know more about Pyongyang and its potentate than Donald Trump and his military mad dogs.

And unlike the idiots surrounding the president, Margolis’ visits to South and North Korea have shown him “that soldiers of both nations are amazingly tough, patriotic and ready to fight. I’ve also been under the Demilitarized Zone in some of the warren of secret tunnels built by North Korea under South Korean fortifications. Hundreds of North Korean long-range 170mm guns and rocket batteries are buried into the hills facing the DMZ, all within range of the northern half of South Korea’s capital, Seoul. North Korea is unlikely to be a pushover in a war”:

… [I]f heavily attacked, a fight-to-the-end North Korea may fire off a number of nuclear-armed medium-range missiles at Tokyo, Osaka, Okinawa and South Korea. These missiles are hidden in caves in the mountains on wheeled transporters and hard to identify and knock out.

This is a huge risk. Such a nuclear exchange would expose about a third of the world’s economy to nuclear contamination, not to mention spreading nuclear winter around the globe.

US analysts have in the past estimated a US invasion of North Korea would cost some 250,000 American casualties and at least $10 billion, though I believe such a war would cost four times that much today. The Army, Air Force and Marines would have to mobilize reserves to wage a war in Korea. Already overstretched US forces would have to be withdrawn from Europe and the Mideast. Military conscription might have to be re-introduced.

US war planners believe that an attempt to assassinate or isolate North Korean leader Kim Jung-un – known in the military as ‘decapitation’- would cause the North Korean armed forces to scatter and give up. I don’t think so.

… Even after US/South Korean forces occupy Pyongyang, the North has prepared for a long guerilla war in the mountains that could last for decades. They have been practicing for 30 years. Chaos in North Korea will invite Chinese military intervention, but not necessarily to the advantage of the US and its allies. …

READ “What Would Korean War II Look Like?”

The Great Negotiator Promised To Get Americans Good Deals, Not Get Us Blown Up

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism

After months of “America First,” neoconservatism is enjoying a come-back, thanks to the president.

Sean Hannity’s radio show returned to these roots. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Mr. Hannity debated the North Korean crisis with glee over Mr. Trump’s bellicosity. Mr. Gingrich was once again helping run the world. Making sure Seoul, South Korea, was safe, was an imperative. The two also nattered about working with NATO, if I recall. (Other than courtesy to a friend, why would Mr. Hannity fill his shows with Gingrich?)

Threaten a desperate and patriotic people enough and they and their leader will take desperate measures. It’s not only Americans that get hot for war. Other people experience the same atavistic sentiments.

Not a word did our ex-America Firsters say about, let’s say, Seattle being in North Korea’s line of fire.

The great negotiator promised to get Americans good deals, not get us blown up. President Trump’s gunboat diplomacy will push the mad-hatter of Pyongyang over the edge.

“America First” means looking out for Seattle, not Seoul, POTUS.

TWEETS:

Regime change: Anyone who still thinks that way is a danger to the republic.

Cuban missile crisis redux:

Diplomacy, please.

RELATED: “17 Rules for Foreign Interventions.”

Not All Politicians Buy The Blame-Assad Bull

America, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Middle East, War

A few independent-minded, mainstream politicians are questioning “whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was responsible for last week’s chemical weapons attack on civilians that prompted US missile strikes.” Like Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, they actually want evidence other than Nikki Haley waving a picture of a kid and Ivanka weeping.

One is Independent Australian MP Andrew Wilkie, also a former senior intelligence analyst. Wilkie “was ‘skeptical’ about who was responsible for the April 4 attack. ‘I’m actually skeptical about some of these claims,’ he told ABC radio on Tuesday. His comments come after US Defence Secretary James Mattis said ‘there is no doubt’ the Assad regime was responsible for planning and orchestrating the deadly attack.”

Wilkie has a history of showing good sense. Via ABC.Net.Au: He “resigned from the intelligence agency Office of National Assessments in 2003 in protest over Australia’s role in the Iraq War, said the Federal Government should have ‘learned from the past.'”

“I think we should be very cautious in Australia and not be too quick to automatically endorse what the US is saying,” said Wilkie.

You’d think!

Hard to believe that after Iraq, against which I railed in columns for years (“Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Culture”), starting in September of 2002, American leaders are back to doing the same.

When you quote truth disgorged by a liberal, GOPers pounce. But truth is truth no matter who says it.

Princeton’s Joyce Carol Oates captured the US’s appetite for destruction:

“[T]ravel to any foreign country,” Oates wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in November 2007, “and the consensus is: The American idea has become a cruel joke, a blustery and bellicose bodybuilder luridly bulked up on steroids … deranged and myopic, dangerous.”

World-Class Idiot Nikki Haley On How To Make Syria Great Again

Democracy, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, UN, War

Nikki Haley is no longer a provincial idiot, but a world-class idiot who speaks for Donald Trump when she pontificates on how to make Syria great again:

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST, STATE OF THE UNION: Is regime change in Syria now the official policy of the United States?

NIKKI HALEY, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: So, there’s multiple priorities. It’s — getting Assad is not the only priority. So, what we are trying to do is, obviously, defeat ISIS. Secondly, we don’t see a peaceful Syria with Assad in there. Thirdly, get the Iranian influence out. And then, finally, move towards a political solution because at the end of the day, this is a complicated situation. There are no easy answers and a political solution is going to have to happen.

But we know that it is not going to be — there is not any sort of option where political solution is going to happen with Assad at the head of the regime. It just — if you look at his actions, if you look at the situations, it’s going to be hard to see a government that’s peaceful and stable with Assad.

TAPPER: Well, of course, it’s hard to. Is it the position of the Trump administration that he cannot be ruler of Syria any more? Regime change is the policy?

HALEY: Well, regime change is something that we think is going to happen because all of the parties are going to see that Assad is not the leader that needs to be taking place for Syria.

Haley also told CNN last week the — rather last week the strike could be followed by more action if necessary.

HALEY: He won’t stop here. If he needs to do more, he will do more. So, really, now, what happens depends on how everyone responds to what happened in Syria and make sure that we start moving towards a political solution and we start finding peace in that area.