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From NBC News:
U.S. to end large-scale military drills with South Korea
The move is part of the Trump administration’s effort to ease tensions with North Korea, U.S. officials said.
March 1, 2019, 9:30 AM PST
By Courtney Kube, Dan De Luce and Stella KimThe U.S. military is preparing to announce that annual large-scale joint exercises conducted with South Korea every spring will no longer be held, according to two U.S. defense officials.
The major U.S.-South Korea exercises are being curtailed as part of the Trump administration’s effort to ease tensions with North Korea, the officials said. The exercises — known as Key Resolve and Foal Eagle — will be replaced with smaller, mission-specific training, according to the officials.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has repeatedly complained about the large-scale exercises, saying they’re too costly and the U.S. bears too much of the financial burden.
The military has carried out the major exercises as much for deterring the North Korean regime as maintaining troop readiness, according to senior defense officials.
Word of the planned announcement comes less than 48 hours after a summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un came to an abrupt end with no agreement. Trump said afterward that the annual military drills with South Korea were “very, very expensive” and the government in Seoul should pay more for them.
U.S. officials said the decision is not related to the summit in Hanoi but has been under consideration for some time. …
Military planners have long considered March to be the most likely time for any potential North Korean invasion, when the ground is still hard from winter to allow tanks to roll through rice fields and North Koreans troops have just completed their annual winter training cycle, Bennett said.
Of course, if you look at it from the Norks’ perspective, March is also the most likely time for a US-South Korea tank invasion of North Korea. But that’s unmentioned in the article, nor in most coverage in recent decades of the U.S. military. (My vague impression is that the Pentagon has gotten quite good, much like 1990s movie stars, at practicing “access journalism.”)
From the Nork point of view, massive training exercises are the standard way to cover up a mobilization for an attack: “We’re not massing troops to invade you, we’re just massing troops for our annual training at stopping you from invading us.”
Of course, the great majority of the time that is true, and the South Korean leadership today seems particularly pacific.
But military intelligence is about capabilities not intentions. And big war games greatly increase the capability for a surprise attack.
For example, Georgia’s invasion of Russian-allied South Ossetia on August 7-8, 2008 was preceded by a joint US-Georgia war game, Immediate Response 2008, from July 15-30, 2008, with 1,000 U.S. troops flying in to Georgia to participate.
I was pretty interested in that weird little war at the time it happened, but I never heard about the US involvement in the training exercise that preceded it until years later. And I’ve never seen any discussion in the U.S. media of whether U.S. officials knew what the Georgians, whom the Bush Administration had recently sponsored for NATO membership, were going to do a week and a half later.
After all, why would that be an interesting question? Who cares about what led to something as minor as a tank war with Russia and a subsequent decade of bad blood between Moscow and Washington? Anyway, everybody knows that this land war in Asia between a NATO candidate and Russia couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the Kremlin’s subsequent suspicions of the U.S. Instead, the real cause was Putin’s homophobia.
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Still waiting for the US to remove its 27000 troops from South Korea (most along the DMZ) and return them home. The US has no business there.
Viewed from the perspective of the 2000s and 2010s, it was probably a mistake to ever intervene in Korea in 1950. Almost seventy years of entanglement, for what U.S. advantage?Replies: @Mike Tre, @William Badwhite
South Korea and Japan should have nuclear weapons in their arsenals.
Germany should have nuclear weapons too. Italians might get some nukes to keep the bankers at bay when the Italians default on their government debt and other nations and bankers start threatening them.
The Dutch shouldn’t ever have nukes. Same with the Scottish wackos.
Sneaky Japanese most likely have a few hidden here or there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM-_XaBVneEReplies: @J.Ross
I doubt that North Korea really has the resources to mount a successful surprise attack against S. Korea at this point. They don’t even have a plane that Kim could use to fly to Vietnam – he had to take an ancient train across China. On paper they have a lot of tanks but they are mostly ancient (1950s) Russian and Chinese designs (T-54 variants) and who know whether they even work anymore. And however well they work now, it wouldn’t be so hot after they were hit by modern anti-tank weapons since they lack depleted uranium armor and other modern defenses (and any effective air cover). They would do a little better than Saddam’s tanks but it would still be grim. Nor could he expect to be re-supplied by the Chinese. It pays for the Pentagon to overestimate the Norks capabilities.
And that doesn’t seem to be where Kim’s head is at – I think he is trying to figure out some way to catch up with the Vietnamese and Chinese model – maintain the his dictatorship but modernize the economy. Of course conquering S. Korea would be one way to get a lot of access to technology (at least whatever didn’t get smashed in the invasion) but he must understand that his chances of pulling this off are slim to none.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heads_of_government_and_state_who_died_in_aviation_accidents_and_incidentsReplies: @Steve Sailer, @anon1
As for aircraft capable of such a flight, their national carrier, Air Koryo, has a couple of somewhat modern Tu-204 airliners that should have been OK to use.Replies: @Jack D, @jim jones
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/north-korea-cant-destroy-seoul-artillery-23964Replies: @Jack D, @Jim Don Bob
They are there as hostages to fortune and that makes them safe. Kim MIGHT take a chance on invading S. Korea but he knows that he is in no position to trigger a war with the United States.
SO WHAT? How is that America's problem anymore then Mexico or Canada?
Germany should have nuclear weapons too. Italians might get some nukes to keep the bankers at bay when the Italians default on their government debt and other nations and bankers start threatening them.
The Dutch shouldn't ever have nukes. Same with the Scottish wackos.
Sneaky Japanese most likely have a few hidden here or there.Replies: @Jack D, @Joe Stalin, @nebulafox, @Buzz Mohawk, @Mike Tre
I doubt that they do but if they really had the need for them, it wouldn’t take them very long to put some together – they certainly have the technology.
Remember Archduke Franz Ferdinand was in Sarajevo to watch war games.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Crisis
At this point there is probabally nothing that can be done to stop China dominating the world with its burgeoning economy, but by concentrating on trade Trump shows he understand better than the Pentagon where future military power comes from. If South Korea wants to be defended then it can pay for the privilege. Japan and Germany too.
How tough are South Koreans? The k-pop phenom makes them seem like sissies; it actually shows a very disciplined machine and is emblematic of their society.
How much do Us sanctions really matter when China is propping up NK so they don’t have US troops on the border? Seeing how the Norks were beat until the Chicoms entered the fight.
How long would NK last without Chinese support?
The irony is that a United Korea would be more a problem for Japan–remember memories of Japanese occupation and exploitation, than China. So it would likely further China’s geopolitical interests to see Korea united.
A dancer here has a seizure on stage; the other dancers simply carry on around her writhing body.
At 1' 30"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTFrd-ORDIkReplies: @ThreeCranes
I’m not sure why you felt the need to point out the obvious. It’s not relevant to my point. If North Korea wants to invade South Korea, it’s not the affair of the US. We have no business there.
How much do Us sanctions really matter when China is propping up NK so they don't have US troops on the border? Seeing how the Norks were beat until the Chicoms entered the fight.
How long would NK last without Chinese support?
The irony is that a United Korea would be more a problem for Japan--remember memories of Japanese occupation and exploitation, than China. So it would likely further China's geopolitical interests to see Korea united.Replies: @J.Ross, @nebulafox, @Bill B.
ROKs are like an eight year old kid’s idea of masculinity, taken totally seriously, and then followed through on into middle age. I was once near a ROK marine base where every evening you could hear them going through kata en masse, like in the island establishing shots in Enter the Dragon (doesn’t every base emit similar noise during physical training? Well, this was evening martial arts stuff on top of morning exercises, and it was a ways away). The detachment they offered to help us fight in Vietnam had to be held back because it kept winning. I would say that their general toughness is fine and unrelated to heavily overdesigned mass media acts.
And that doesn't seem to be where Kim's head is at - I think he is trying to figure out some way to catch up with the Vietnamese and Chinese model - maintain the his dictatorship but modernize the economy. Of course conquering S. Korea would be one way to get a lot of access to technology (at least whatever didn't get smashed in the invasion) but he must understand that his chances of pulling this off are slim to none.Replies: @Louis Renault, @istevefan, @dvorak
I never heard of a country’s President dying in a train derailment. Plain crashes however,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heads_of_government_and_state_who_died_in_aviation_accidents_and_incidents
This is wrong. They’re a long-established ally with unique technological importance and every square inch claimed by Norks falls under the ultimate control of Beijing. Within years after China controls that peninsula, there will be no smartphones outside their control: you will choose between a smartphone that includes ChiCom censorship and monitoring, an iffy experiment from the EFF, or no smartphone (which by the way is still an option).
Seriously though, your position is based on a premise that isn't established. You'll have to do a better job convincing me NK could defeat SK head to head, or that half the NK army wouldn't defect as soon as they had the chance, or that China is willing to risk intervening on the behalf of a country who's leader is known by most of the world as a clownish despot. Or that leaving a half dozen nukes behind for the SouK's wouldn't make the entire discussion mute anyway.
I have long since grown tired of sacrificing our young (and purposely deceived) patriotic stock, as well as trillions of dollars, on endless imperialism and foreign warfare/occupation. Enough.Replies: @J.Ross
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heads_of_government_and_state_who_died_in_aviation_accidents_and_incidentsReplies: @Steve Sailer, @anon1
The most powerful man in Poland thinks Putin engineered his identical twin brother’s death in that terrible plane crash on the way to Katyn Forest.
But all the independent investigations pointed to (Polish) pilot error. This was a classic case of controlled flight into terrain - the pilots lost situational awareness and flew a perfectly good airplane (and the Tu-154 was actually a good plane - the crash that killed the Red Army choir was also due to pilot error and lost situational awareness) into the ground. This is very easy to do (see JFK, Jr.) unless you do everything right, which is why good pilots train like crazy and follow rigorous procedures in order to reduce the chance of human error as much as possible. But the Polish Air Force unit flying the plane was found to have significant training deficiencies. For a Polish nationalist, that his brother's death was caused by the deficiencies of his fellow Poles must be doubly hard to accept.Replies: @The Alarmist, @Diversity Heretic
Germany should have nuclear weapons too. Italians might get some nukes to keep the bankers at bay when the Italians default on their government debt and other nations and bankers start threatening them.
The Dutch shouldn't ever have nukes. Same with the Scottish wackos.
Sneaky Japanese most likely have a few hidden here or there.Replies: @Jack D, @Joe Stalin, @nebulafox, @Buzz Mohawk, @Mike Tre
The USA could offer to lease Trident missiles and launchers to SK and Japan if they develop their own thermonuclear weapons. They could then base these cold launch systems in a fixed or mobile mode. We already do this with the UK, and certainly Japan is as important as the UK.
Germany should have nuclear weapons too. Italians might get some nukes to keep the bankers at bay when the Italians default on their government debt and other nations and bankers start threatening them.
The Dutch shouldn't ever have nukes. Same with the Scottish wackos.
Sneaky Japanese most likely have a few hidden here or there.Replies: @Jack D, @Joe Stalin, @nebulafox, @Buzz Mohawk, @Mike Tre
>Sneaky Japanese most likely have a few hidden here or there.
Ditto the South Koreans. It’s called “nuclear latency”. They’ve got the materials, tech and skilled work force to assemble a bomb within six months if they need to, and everybody knows it.
How much do Us sanctions really matter when China is propping up NK so they don't have US troops on the border? Seeing how the Norks were beat until the Chicoms entered the fight.
How long would NK last without Chinese support?
The irony is that a United Korea would be more a problem for Japan--remember memories of Japanese occupation and exploitation, than China. So it would likely further China's geopolitical interests to see Korea united.Replies: @J.Ross, @nebulafox, @Bill B.
>How tough are South Koreans?
Have you ever interacted with a ROKA non-com? Not to be messed with. It’s why all the Korean dudes my age were so eager to become katusas.
>How long would NK last without Chinese support?
China does not control North Korea. But I think part of the reason young Kim has been willing to talk to Trump is because long-term he knows they can’t have all their eggs in one basket as he tries to reconcile the family dictatorship and racial nationalism with Vietnamese style economic reforms in the long-haul.
US-DPRK Mutual Defense Treaty.
Are Korean soldiers standing guard in North Dakota to defend America from an attack from Canada? Are they deployed in Texas to repel an invasion from Mexico?
Where is the "mutual" aspect?Replies: @Diversity Heretic
Here’s a little trivia about the US invasion of Panama in December 1989. The US army had a base in Panama, Fort Sherman, that was used for jungle warfare training. So as part of the normal course of business US troops would regularly be flown to Panama for such training. Prior to the invasion units of soldiers were flown to Fort Sherman supposedly for such training. But they were never flown home. Instead new arrivals would come and bolster the number of troops at Fort Sherman. I don’t think the Panamanians realized the flights returning back to the USA were empty, and that the presence of US forces was increasing.
Anyway by the time of the invasion on December 20, 1989, those forces were able to drive their vehicles off the base and were a crucial part of the takeover of Panama. There were other troops who parachuted in, but the troops who just drove out of Fort Sherman were very important to the operation.
I suppose Panama was unique in that it hosted American bases which made the invasion that much easier. But I think the deception of flying in guys to “train”, but not flying them home was pretty sharp.
And that doesn't seem to be where Kim's head is at - I think he is trying to figure out some way to catch up with the Vietnamese and Chinese model - maintain the his dictatorship but modernize the economy. Of course conquering S. Korea would be one way to get a lot of access to technology (at least whatever didn't get smashed in the invasion) but he must understand that his chances of pulling this off are slim to none.Replies: @Louis Renault, @istevefan, @dvorak
Kim’s dad was afraid to fly, but little Kim seems to want to ride in his armored train.
As for aircraft capable of such a flight, their national carrier, Air Koryo, has a couple of somewhat modern Tu-204 airliners that should have been OK to use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g__aWSEGosI
Yes and Putin tricked the Poles into loading up that plane with as many high ranking officials as they could. He also tricked the pilots into ignoring the control tower’s instructions. Polish stubbornness had nothing to do with it.
Anyway by the time of the invasion on December 20, 1989, those forces were able to drive their vehicles off the base and were a crucial part of the takeover of Panama. There were other troops who parachuted in, but the troops who just drove out of Fort Sherman were very important to the operation.
I suppose Panama was unique in that it hosted American bases which made the invasion that much easier. But I think the deception of flying in guys to "train", but not flying them home was pretty sharp.Replies: @Cagey Beast, @Reg Cæsar, @Old Prude
It’s worth comparing the Russian operation in Crimea (2014) with the American one in Panama.
I can see why he believes that as a matter of emotion. And if you are going to believe conspiracy theories concerning Russians, you will be right more often than wrt most conspiracy theories.
But all the independent investigations pointed to (Polish) pilot error. This was a classic case of controlled flight into terrain – the pilots lost situational awareness and flew a perfectly good airplane (and the Tu-154 was actually a good plane – the crash that killed the Red Army choir was also due to pilot error and lost situational awareness) into the ground. This is very easy to do (see JFK, Jr.) unless you do everything right, which is why good pilots train like crazy and follow rigorous procedures in order to reduce the chance of human error as much as possible. But the Polish Air Force unit flying the plane was found to have significant training deficiencies. For a Polish nationalist, that his brother’s death was caused by the deficiencies of his fellow Poles must be doubly hard to accept.
FDR to Japan, 1940: “We’re not instituting a peacetime draft for the first time in our history to invade your empire. We’re just preparing in case you invade our empire.”
Anyway by the time of the invasion on December 20, 1989, those forces were able to drive their vehicles off the base and were a crucial part of the takeover of Panama. There were other troops who parachuted in, but the troops who just drove out of Fort Sherman were very important to the operation.
I suppose Panama was unique in that it hosted American bases which made the invasion that much easier. But I think the deception of flying in guys to "train", but not flying them home was pretty sharp.Replies: @Cagey Beast, @Reg Cæsar, @Old Prude
We’ve been a threat to Panama since Abraham Lincoln proposed releasing our entire African population there.
I lived in Venezuela in the 50’s I was 7-8 , the old man worked for Shell Oil . A blue five story apt. building all either Shell employees or contractors . The “road” in front was a dirt road . It seems odd now but I would just go and visit random adults , everybody knew everybody . I remember this white couple from Borneo , the husband was a joker , red hair . Doris Day on the stereo , but I remember this song :
I was the only American in my class , it was all Brits and Dutch kids . The teachers were all Brits . My main teacher was always nice enough and as I have mentioned before she had a magnificent full untrimmed bush that would have won a prize if they gave out prizes for that sort of thing , mesh panties too . The music teacher once told me in front of the class that I was the stupidest boy she had ever known . A fair enough assessment in hindsight but rather unprofessional I think . No TV so it was the songs of the times or reading . There was this series of English Children’s books and Comic Classics , does anybody remember those ? “Man without a Country” , “Robinson Crusoe” , “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” , that sort of thing . My classmates had the prejudices of their parents . We used to play Soccer in the morning before school . Once I kicked a goal and the Dutch kid playing goalie between two trash cans called me some name . I grabbed him and threw him on the ground and an English kid jumped on my back . The principal came out and pulled me out of the pile and dragged me to the office for a whacking .
There was this Italian American family living in the building . Real stereotypes with about 4-5 kids , the youngest was a toddler still in diapers , her ears were pierced , shocking . Her mother the irresponsible South Italian trash used to put her in a diaper and tell us to watch out for her . The kid used to take her diaper off first thing and wonder around wearing nothing but those little gold beads in her ears . One day this old local came down the drive holding the kid by her hand , naked except for her earrings , he had found her wandering about a half mile up the road , in a town with one traffic light , and gone door to door to find her home . At the bus stop in front of the building we would steal Mangoes from the tree where we waited , the Venezuelan family never complained .
The seasons were water balloon season , to throw at cars . I hit a local in a truck one time and he hit the brakes and chased us , threw a rock at us , scared the shit out of us . Kite season when the local kids would make hexagonal kites out of sticks . There was another season when they would find especially tortuous shaped branches strip the bark from them and catch butterflies and squish them on to the branches to make colorful blossoms . They hunted iguanas all year round with slingshots . Man they were deadly shots with those slingshots . We lived in an apt. building but a lot of the Americans were living large in BIG ole houses with a small staff . There was the Buena Vista Swimming Club , my old man gave me a Bolivar to dive off the high board my second time up . I saw an animated version of “Animal Farm” on the roof projected on an outdoor screen . One slow day at the pool there was a little girl floating face down at the bottom of the deep end . Someone spotted her and they pulled her out and strapped her to this contraption that was like a seesaw stretcher combo . They rocked her back and forth , water spewed from her mouth , she started coughing and she was okay .
The babysitter was a dusky local girl in her white uniform from work . Jet black hair .The poor girl just wanted to sleep but I wouldn’t let her . My folks would leave and I would come bounding out of my bedroom and jump on her on the sofa . Man I didn’t know what to do with it but I wanted to get close to it . The scent of her , her fragrance . I was ravenous , an intense , unbridled sexual desire , delicious . She made me go back to bed , despite my promises to be good .
Two doors down from the apt. driveway was a local family 4-5 kids . I only knew a few phrases of Spanish and they knew even less English but I felt as much at home there as I did with my folks . I would go over and knock on the door and walk in . Freddy was the oldest one of the kids , he was in the eighth grade . So about 4-5 years older than me and his siblings , He looked out for all the younger kids . He wasn’t an aggressive Alpha . He was like Gary Cooper , he wasn’t bad but the bad didn’t f**k with him . When my folks decided to split up my old man flew me up to Ohio to unload me on his parents . At the airport he left me in the car by myself (can you imagine that today?) while he went in to do something . I’m just sitting there in my usual state of carelessness when suddenly there is someone at the window , it was Freddy , he had made his way across town to say goodbye and give me a present , a top . You know one of those tops you wrap a string around and throw on the ground . More of a heartfelt send off than I got from either my sire or my dam .
That must be the reason I’m a NAZI at heart , if they were trying to kill Ramon they couldn’t have been all bad , you feel me ?
Dare I ask how you know this?Replies: @donut
Right, we’ve been occupying SK for almost 70 years in order to protect our cell phone interests. Who knew that South Korea is the key to taking over the entire world? Eisenhower had some foresight!
Seriously though, your position is based on a premise that isn’t established. You’ll have to do a better job convincing me NK could defeat SK head to head, or that half the NK army wouldn’t defect as soon as they had the chance, or that China is willing to risk intervening on the behalf of a country who’s leader is known by most of the world as a clownish despot. Or that leaving a half dozen nukes behind for the SouK’s wouldn’t make the entire discussion mute anyway.
I have long since grown tired of sacrificing our young (and purposely deceived) patriotic stock, as well as trillions of dollars, on endless imperialism and foreign warfare/occupation. Enough.
>but I'm tired of late stage imperialist adverturism
Me too. Was there a gigantic nonconsensual aliyah recently? No? Then adventurism is still firmly on the menu.Replies: @Mike Tre
There’s also people with nominally better intellectual qualifications and titles than “leader of the Poles” who still think Putin shot down that airliner which, alone in a tightly managed sky of jets, decided to take a shortcut over a warzone.
I don't understand why people here feel the gratuitous need to defend Putin. He's not really your friend.Replies: @Joe Stalin, @J.Ross, @anon1, @inertial, @Cagey Beast
As for aircraft capable of such a flight, their national carrier, Air Koryo, has a couple of somewhat modern Tu-204 airliners that should have been OK to use.Replies: @Jack D, @jim jones
For the Singapore summit he had to borrow one from China. Probably he didn’t feel the Tupelovs were safe enough. But the optics of him coming out of the plane with “Air China” written on it were not good and he didn’t want to repeat it.
Counted 38 Korean army divisions, 5 separate armored brigades, and 6 special forces brigades.
2 Korean marine divisions and 2 marine brigades.
We have 1 armored brigade that rotates in every 9 months.
I assume our troops train at home then get beat up at Fort Irwin and continue training on their own in Korea.
With air power, etc., you don't necessarily need large, standing garrisons to win a war. You do need some serious U.S. casualties to get people behind an immediate war, though.Replies: @William Badwhite
Germany should have nuclear weapons too. Italians might get some nukes to keep the bankers at bay when the Italians default on their government debt and other nations and bankers start threatening them.
The Dutch shouldn't ever have nukes. Same with the Scottish wackos.
Sneaky Japanese most likely have a few hidden here or there.Replies: @Jack D, @Joe Stalin, @nebulafox, @Buzz Mohawk, @Mike Tre
A purely maniacal reading of Amendment II would guarantee all 330 million of us ‘Murkins the right to bear nuclear weapons. Mutually Assured Destruction would keep us all from harming each other. Makes as much sense as anything else at this point. I say go for it and watch the mousetraps flip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM-_XaBVneEReplies: @J.Ross
You have this right. You (and Russell Seitz) do not have proper storage. So at this time you cannot exercise it.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was flying on a regular international flight path. It was shot down by Russian forces – there is little doubt. They were the only ones in the vicinity to have weapons of this type. This is all well documented. So you can say it was shot down on Putin’s orders. Now they did not intend to shoot down a plane full of civilians – not even the Russians are that evil. But they are stupid and trigger happy – shoot first and ask questions later is always the Russian way of warfare. They obviously mistook the plane for a Ukrainian military jet. Stuff happens in warfare although Russians were not really supposed to be at war with Ukraine or be in that spot, but that’s the Russian MO too – little green men and all that. I understand that too – to paraphrase Mao a war is not a dinner party.
I don’t understand why people here feel the gratuitous need to defend Putin. He’s not really your friend.
Not true at all. They were flying over what was essentially a war zone. An extremely retarded thing to do.
As for Putin he is neither a friend or an enemy.
So what's the Ukrainian and the Western official version of how MH17 was shot down? (Note that it's rarely explicitly spelled out in the West because it sounds retarded when you do.) Russian army smuggled a Buk and its crew into Ukraine without anyone noticing, deliberately shot down the plane, and then disappeared across the border. And why would the Russians do it? Because RussiaPutinKremlin; do you need any other explanation?
Incidentally, Ukrainian government refused to provide the radar data that could've shown where the missile came from. They claim that all the radar stations in the area were down for maintenance that day, which is totally not suspicious.Replies: @Jack D, @J.Ross
Apart from the Ukrainian military.
Now they did not intend to shoot down a plane full of civilians – not even the Russians are that evil. But they are stupid and trigger happy – shoot first and ask questions later is always the Russian way of warfare.
Says a patriotic American. Do you have any sense of how notorious your military is for:
A: Gratuitous use of force on civilians?
B: Friendly fire incidents?
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
I don’t understand why people here feel the gratuitous need to defend Putin. He’s not really your friend.
Putin and the rest of the Russian government don't want to abolish us as a people. The same cannot be said of our ruling class in the West.Replies: @Jack D
Good point.
I don't understand why people here feel the gratuitous need to defend Putin. He's not really your friend.Replies: @Joe Stalin, @J.Ross, @anon1, @inertial, @Cagey Beast
” Now they did not intend to shoot down a plane full of civilians – not even the Russians are that evil.”
Can i not care? Good, cause i don’t.
Seems like Trump has put more effort toward these useless dog-n-ponys with Kim III than with dealing with the single issue that actually matters to the sort of future my kids and their descendants will have–the flood of foreigners into the US. Which just happens to be the issue that got Trump the Republican nomination and won him the election.
I don't understand why people here feel the gratuitous need to defend Putin. He's not really your friend.Replies: @Joe Stalin, @J.Ross, @anon1, @inertial, @Cagey Beast
A “regular” path (a year prior?) which other flights were being told to avoid, and which they did avoid, what with there being a war there.
As for aircraft capable of such a flight, their national carrier, Air Koryo, has a couple of somewhat modern Tu-204 airliners that should have been OK to use.Replies: @Jack D, @jim jones
Air Koryo is generally regarded as the worst airline in the World:
Seriously though, your position is based on a premise that isn't established. You'll have to do a better job convincing me NK could defeat SK head to head, or that half the NK army wouldn't defect as soon as they had the chance, or that China is willing to risk intervening on the behalf of a country who's leader is known by most of the world as a clownish despot. Or that leaving a half dozen nukes behind for the SouK's wouldn't make the entire discussion mute anyway.
I have long since grown tired of sacrificing our young (and purposely deceived) patriotic stock, as well as trillions of dollars, on endless imperialism and foreign warfare/occupation. Enough.Replies: @J.Ross
Smartphones didn’t exist in the fifties, but they exist now. They’re important: countries at the edge of smartphone technology can spy on other countries more effectively, and RoK is at the cutting edge of that. Given the recent kerfluffle where even the Georgetown graduates who run our government managed to comprehend that Huawei is not just a way to look at music videos, Korean phone technology falling into Chinese hands would be a bad thing.
>but I’m tired of late stage imperialist adverturism
Me too. Was there a gigantic nonconsensual aliyah recently? No? Then adventurism is still firmly on the menu.
Thanks for the laugh. But yes I am aware of the difference between what is and what should be.
If the US ever found itself in a position to return its military forces home, I like to think it would have the ingenuity to properly address the cell phone issue you are concerned with, one way or another.
Trump should tell Kim, either denuclearize or we pull All troops out of South Korea. That would get his attention. Our options then would be greatly increased since there would be almost nothing he could do to hurt us.
Agree 100%. America should have left long ago.
“For example, Georgia’s invasion of Russian-allied South Ossetia on August 7-8, 2008 was preceded by a joint US-Georgia war game, Immediate Response 2008, from July 15-30, 2008, with 1,000 U.S. troops flying in to Georgia to participate.”
I agree with the point about the war game. However, South Ossetia isn’t some independent country. It’s part of Georgia in which Russia sponsored a secessionist movement in order to have a puppet on Georgian sovereign territory. Georgia can’t “invade” itself.
“Kim might take a chance on invading S. Korea…”
SO WHAT? How is that America’s problem anymore then Mexico or Canada?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heads_of_government_and_state_who_died_in_aviation_accidents_and_incidentsReplies: @Steve Sailer, @anon1
Joseph Stalin also hated flying in planes too and did so only one single time in his life. If anyone is interested in the fantatsic measures he took to protect himself see the book “Stalin’s secret wars”.
You lost any credibility you ever had with that ridiculous answer. That was quite possibly the stupidest thing i have ever read on the internet in all my life.
I think this is totally sound. I don't see this happening any time soon, but if the Chinese could pull it off I think they'd try. It's easier without the loud invasion (that is, using spies) and it could be avoided by having a modicum of nationalism and technical ability, but the Chinese pie in the sky goal is to be like we were in the aftermath of WWII: no need to conquer because you need and want their stuff.
“Mutual”?
Are Korean soldiers standing guard in North Dakota to defend America from an attack from Canada? Are they deployed in Texas to repel an invasion from Mexico?
Where is the “mutual” aspect?
I don't understand why people here feel the gratuitous need to defend Putin. He's not really your friend.Replies: @Joe Stalin, @J.Ross, @anon1, @inertial, @Cagey Beast
They were flying on a regular international flight path…
Not true at all. They were flying over what was essentially a war zone. An extremely retarded thing to do.
As for Putin he is neither a friend or an enemy.
I suspected for years that somebody in Washington had put Sakashvilli up to that stupid attack on S. Ossetia, but now I’m really suspicious. I had never heard that bit about our having conducted a ‘drill’ with them just before the attack. Figures …
To be fair, FDR was more concerned about Germany than Japan at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOAH9X7gIYQ
I was the only American in my class , it was all Brits and Dutch kids . The teachers were all Brits . My main teacher was always nice enough and as I have mentioned before she had a magnificent full untrimmed bush that would have won a prize if they gave out prizes for that sort of thing , mesh panties too . The music teacher once told me in front of the class that I was the stupidest boy she had ever known . A fair enough assessment in hindsight but rather unprofessional I think . No TV so it was the songs of the times or reading . There was this series of English Children's books and Comic Classics , does anybody remember those ? "Man without a Country" , "Robinson Crusoe" , "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" , that sort of thing . My classmates had the prejudices of their parents . We used to play Soccer in the morning before school . Once I kicked a goal and the Dutch kid playing goalie between two trash cans called me some name . I grabbed him and threw him on the ground and an English kid jumped on my back . The principal came out and pulled me out of the pile and dragged me to the office for a whacking .
There was this Italian American family living in the building . Real stereotypes with about 4-5 kids , the youngest was a toddler still in diapers , her ears were pierced , shocking . Her mother the irresponsible South Italian trash used to put her in a diaper and tell us to watch out for her . The kid used to take her diaper off first thing and wonder around wearing nothing but those little gold beads in her ears . One day this old local came down the drive holding the kid by her hand , naked except for her earrings , he had found her wandering about a half mile up the road , in a town with one traffic light , and gone door to door to find her home . At the bus stop in front of the building we would steal Mangoes from the tree where we waited , the Venezuelan family never complained .
The seasons were water balloon season , to throw at cars . I hit a local in a truck one time and he hit the brakes and chased us , threw a rock at us , scared the shit out of us . Kite season when the local kids would make hexagonal kites out of sticks . There was another season when they would find especially tortuous shaped branches strip the bark from them and catch butterflies and squish them on to the branches to make colorful blossoms . They hunted iguanas all year round with slingshots . Man they were deadly shots with those slingshots . We lived in an apt. building but a lot of the Americans were living large in BIG ole houses with a small staff . There was the Buena Vista Swimming Club , my old man gave me a Bolivar to dive off the high board my second time up . I saw an animated version of "Animal Farm" on the roof projected on an outdoor screen . One slow day at the pool there was a little girl floating face down at the bottom of the deep end . Someone spotted her and they pulled her out and strapped her to this contraption that was like a seesaw stretcher combo . They rocked her back and forth , water spewed from her mouth , she started coughing and she was okay .
The babysitter was a dusky local girl in her white uniform from work . Jet black hair .The poor girl just wanted to sleep but I wouldn't let her . My folks would leave and I would come bounding out of my bedroom and jump on her on the sofa . Man I didn't know what to do with it but I wanted to get close to it . The scent of her , her fragrance . I was ravenous , an intense , unbridled sexual desire , delicious . She made me go back to bed , despite my promises to be good .
Two doors down from the apt. driveway was a local family 4-5 kids . I only knew a few phrases of Spanish and they knew even less English but I felt as much at home there as I did with my folks . I would go over and knock on the door and walk in . Freddy was the oldest one of the kids , he was in the eighth grade . So about 4-5 years older than me and his siblings , He looked out for all the younger kids . He wasn't an aggressive Alpha . He was like Gary Cooper , he wasn't bad but the bad didn't f**k with him . When my folks decided to split up my old man flew me up to Ohio to unload me on his parents . At the airport he left me in the car by myself (can you imagine that today?) while he went in to do something . I'm just sitting there in my usual state of carelessness when suddenly there is someone at the window , it was Freddy , he had made his way across town to say goodbye and give me a present , a top . You know one of those tops you wrap a string around and throw on the ground . More of a heartfelt send off than I got from either my sire or my dam .
That must be the reason I'm a NAZI at heart , if they were trying to kill Ramon they couldn't have been all bad , you feel me ?Replies: @Old Prude, @Corn, @Kyle
Poor Donut. So lonely. It’s like there’s something missing…like he has an empty hole…right in the middle…
See you in Hell ,
your humble servant
donut .Replies: @Old Prude
Anyway by the time of the invasion on December 20, 1989, those forces were able to drive their vehicles off the base and were a crucial part of the takeover of Panama. There were other troops who parachuted in, but the troops who just drove out of Fort Sherman were very important to the operation.
I suppose Panama was unique in that it hosted American bases which made the invasion that much easier. But I think the deception of flying in guys to "train", but not flying them home was pretty sharp.Replies: @Cagey Beast, @Reg Cæsar, @Old Prude
Operation Just Cause. It went down when I was in Germany on Reforger. We called our activities “Operation Just Because”. Years later I was talking with a Maine game warden who was a Ranger during the event. He had a good story about dopes from the Seventh Infantry, shooting off a round accidentally into the dirt, and and all the legs panicking and jumping into ditches, screaming “Sniper!” One guy, probably the platoon leader, got a broken leg when someone jumped on top of him. Real life ain’t like the movies.
How much do Us sanctions really matter when China is propping up NK so they don't have US troops on the border? Seeing how the Norks were beat until the Chicoms entered the fight.
How long would NK last without Chinese support?
The irony is that a United Korea would be more a problem for Japan--remember memories of Japanese occupation and exploitation, than China. So it would likely further China's geopolitical interests to see Korea united.Replies: @J.Ross, @nebulafox, @Bill B.
k-pop is probably grounded in a tougher world than might be imagined at first glance.
A dancer here has a seizure on stage; the other dancers simply carry on around her writhing body.
At 1′ 30″
Seems like Trump has put more effort toward these useless dog-n-ponys with Kim III than with dealing with the single issue that actually matters to the sort of future my kids and their descendants will have--the flood of foreigners into the US. Which just happens to be the issue that got Trump the Republican nomination and won him the election.Replies: @Old Prude, @Diversity Heretic
Agree. (Blasted website won’t give me the buttons).
After all that deviousness, he had to have people walking around the wreckage to shoot the survivors.
But all the independent investigations pointed to (Polish) pilot error. This was a classic case of controlled flight into terrain - the pilots lost situational awareness and flew a perfectly good airplane (and the Tu-154 was actually a good plane - the crash that killed the Red Army choir was also due to pilot error and lost situational awareness) into the ground. This is very easy to do (see JFK, Jr.) unless you do everything right, which is why good pilots train like crazy and follow rigorous procedures in order to reduce the chance of human error as much as possible. But the Polish Air Force unit flying the plane was found to have significant training deficiencies. For a Polish nationalist, that his brother's death was caused by the deficiencies of his fellow Poles must be doubly hard to accept.Replies: @The Alarmist, @Diversity Heretic
My money is on Hillary and Mossad taking him down. John-John had enough time “under the hood” to make that flight with ease.
It was a typical summer day there - hazy. The combination of haze and being over water led to him not having a visible horizon to reference. Its very easy to become disoriented in such a situation, your inner ear lies to you, tells you you are descending or turning or climbing, etc when you are not and it's easy to have the urge to correct for what isn't happening and fairly soon you've departed controlled flight.
Fortunately for "John-John" virtually all airplanes have artificial horizons in the cockpit. Flying by reference to one is a basic part of primary flight training. It is not difficult at all. You just have to do it when the conditions warrant.
Unfortunately for him and for the women he killed (killing women while acting stupidly seems to be a Kennedy thing) he was incompetent. That also seems to be a Kennedy thing.
The real issue for the Norks is that these military drills coincide with planting and harvest season, the Norks have to call up their conscripts when they are needed in the fields.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/the-reason-behind-north-koreas-nuclear-program-and-its-offer-to-end-it.html
I watched Michael Palin visit North Korea recently, they are more advanced, as you would expect with their IQ, but there was a lot of drunkenness, I guess a common feature of Communism.
I agree with the point about the war game. However, South Ossetia isn't some independent country. It's part of Georgia in which Russia sponsored a secessionist movement in order to have a puppet on Georgian sovereign territory. Georgia can't "invade" itself.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Cagey Beast
I think it’s kind of like the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Did Egypt invade itself by crossing the Suez Canal into the Sinai which Israel had occupied since 1967? Did Syria invade itself by invading the Golan Heights?
Russia and Georgia signed a treaty in 1993 over South Ossetia setting up international observers on the South Ossetia-Georgia border. (Georgia withdrew from the treaty earlier in 2008). I think that gives Russia more international legitimacy in defending South Ossetia than Israel had in defending its 1967 conquests in 1973. But I also think Israel had the right to defend its conquests in 1973.
On the other hand, some Israeli leaders like Dayan panicked in 1973 and thought Israel itself was desperately threatened. (Sharon kept his head and improvised magnificently.) Russia proper was hardly threatened by Georgia, due to the size differential and the gigantic mountain range in the way. So you could argue it the other way too.
The Korean airliner in 1983 crossed Soviet airspace twice, and was shot down the second time.
Russians screw up a lot (I had a chance to fly back to America from Ireland in 1994 on Aeroflot when my Aer Lingus Irish aircrew had to cancel a 747 flight because they were still drunk from celebrating Ireland’s victory over Italy in the World Cup, but no way was I going to risk my neck in a semi-Soviet airline), so you have to be careful around them. The Koreans screwed up massively and their passengers paid the price.
“Joseph Stalin also hated flying in planes too and did so only one single time in his life.”
That’s interesting. Civilian flying in Stalin’s day, especially in Russia with its high accident rates, was really really dangerous by modern standards
I bet, in contrast, that Hitler liked to fly. Stalin was a worrywart, Hitler was a “What’s the worst that could happen?” kind of guy.
OTOH, Hitler had German planes and German pilots and Stalin had Russian planes and Russian pilots, so their attitude toward flying might have been rational.
On the third hand, the Russians have always been pretty good at aviation, even in Czarist times. We got some top talent after the revolution (Sikorsky) but many stayed. Russia is a funny place in that primitive conditions and cutting edge technology have always existed side by side. The Tu-154 was OTOH one of the fastest modern jetliners but OTOH it had features for landing on gravel runways.Replies: @Diversity Heretic, @res
>but I'm tired of late stage imperialist adverturism
Me too. Was there a gigantic nonconsensual aliyah recently? No? Then adventurism is still firmly on the menu.Replies: @Mike Tre
“Was there a gigantic nonconsensual aliyah recently? No? Then adventurism is still firmly on the menu.”
Thanks for the laugh. But yes I am aware of the difference between what is and what should be.
If the US ever found itself in a position to return its military forces home, I like to think it would have the ingenuity to properly address the cell phone issue you are concerned with, one way or another.
Germany should have nuclear weapons too. Italians might get some nukes to keep the bankers at bay when the Italians default on their government debt and other nations and bankers start threatening them.
The Dutch shouldn't ever have nukes. Same with the Scottish wackos.
Sneaky Japanese most likely have a few hidden here or there.Replies: @Jack D, @Joe Stalin, @nebulafox, @Buzz Mohawk, @Mike Tre
Can the Irish have nukes too? Pretty pretty please with a cherry on top???
I don't understand why people here feel the gratuitous need to defend Putin. He's not really your friend.Replies: @Joe Stalin, @J.Ross, @anon1, @inertial, @Cagey Beast
The opposite is true. There were several Ukrainian Buks in the vicinity. Plenty of photo and video evidence for that, and the Ukrainian government never denied it. The rebels managed to capture one Buk but it was non functioning, according to the Ukrainians.
So what’s the Ukrainian and the Western official version of how MH17 was shot down? (Note that it’s rarely explicitly spelled out in the West because it sounds retarded when you do.) Russian army smuggled a Buk and its crew into Ukraine without anyone noticing, deliberately shot down the plane, and then disappeared across the border. And why would the Russians do it? Because RussiaPutinKremlin; do you need any other explanation?
Incidentally, Ukrainian government refused to provide the radar data that could’ve shown where the missile came from. They claim that all the radar stations in the area were down for maintenance that day, which is totally not suspicious.
https://www.government.nl/topics/mh17-incident/achieving-justice/the-criminal-investigationReplies: @inertial
Ukraine right now is everything we hated about Central America in the eighties, but with much more powerful weapons.
A dancer here has a seizure on stage; the other dancers simply carry on around her writhing body.
At 1' 30"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTFrd-ORDIkReplies: @ThreeCranes
Probably the strobe lights did it. What modern cinema does to me. I like the way the stretcher bearers drag her body off the set. True professionalism. The show must go on!
Again with the conspiracy theories. No one gave a damn about John John. He was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Smarter pilots did not fly that day. There are old pilots and bold pilots but no old, bold pilots.
He took off into a twilight haze, lost the horizon, and landed in the drink. Every military pilot I knew said, "dumb f**k".
He'd had some instrument training. He might have lived if he'd turned them on and called the tower.
The Kennedy family reportedly paid $10 million for killing the sister in law.
That said, he seemed like a decent guy, for a Kennedy.Replies: @Jack D
Col. Osopovich is probably dead now – he would be past the average life expectancy of a Russian man and he clearly liked his vodka. Even Osopovich said that he didn’t think the plane was loaded with civilians, just that it was a civilian type on a spy mission. The next level of rationalization is to say that the evil capitalists PURPOSELY sent a plane loaded with civilians on a spy mission in order to make Russia look bad. Russians don’t need any help looking bad – they are very good at this on their own.
I don't understand why people here feel the gratuitous need to defend Putin. He's not really your friend.Replies: @Joe Stalin, @J.Ross, @anon1, @inertial, @Cagey Beast
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was flying on a regular international flight path. It was shot down by Russian forces – there is little doubt. They were the only ones in the vicinity to have weapons of this type.
Apart from the Ukrainian military.
Now they did not intend to shoot down a plane full of civilians – not even the Russians are that evil. But they are stupid and trigger happy – shoot first and ask questions later is always the Russian way of warfare.
Says a patriotic American. Do you have any sense of how notorious your military is for:
A: Gratuitous use of force on civilians?
B: Friendly fire incidents?
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
I don’t understand why people here feel the gratuitous need to defend Putin. He’s not really your friend.
Putin and the rest of the Russian government don’t want to abolish us as a people. The same cannot be said of our ruling class in the West.
It's ridiculous that people are buying into Russian disinformation. They are rejoicing in Moscow that their BS actually works (at least on some people). I can understand that if you are Russian you might have a psychological need to buy into this stuff (no one wants to believe that their revered leaders are monsters who shoot down civilian aircraft) but as Americans there's really nothing in it for you.Replies: @Vinteuil
I agree with the point about the war game. However, South Ossetia isn't some independent country. It's part of Georgia in which Russia sponsored a secessionist movement in order to have a puppet on Georgian sovereign territory. Georgia can't "invade" itself.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Cagey Beast
The Russian troops attacked in South Ossetia were there under treaty as peacekeepers.
And that doesn't seem to be where Kim's head is at - I think he is trying to figure out some way to catch up with the Vietnamese and Chinese model - maintain the his dictatorship but modernize the economy. Of course conquering S. Korea would be one way to get a lot of access to technology (at least whatever didn't get smashed in the invasion) but he must understand that his chances of pulling this off are slim to none.Replies: @Louis Renault, @istevefan, @dvorak
Don’t they have a thousand points of light (artillery and rockets within range of Seoul)? These can do some damage.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/north-korea-cant-destroy-seoul-artillery-23964
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGKqMi6ZatQ
Flying is unpleasant. When you are a dictator you don’t have to do things that are (physically) unpleasant.
In Triumph of the Will, it opens footage of Hitler descending from the clouds (on a plane) like a god. I don’t know how often he flew but I’ll bet you’re right.
OTOH, Hitler had German planes and German pilots and Stalin had Russian planes and Russian pilots, so their attitude toward flying might have been rational.
On the third hand, the Russians have always been pretty good at aviation, even in Czarist times. We got some top talent after the revolution (Sikorsky) but many stayed. Russia is a funny place in that primitive conditions and cutting edge technology have always existed side by side. The Tu-154 was OTOH one of the fastest modern jetliners but OTOH it had features for landing on gravel runways.
Gravel runway ability makes much more sense given that idea. The Tu-154 isn't military, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians kept dual use in mind.
The point they make in the wiki is probably more relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-154Replies: @Jack D, @Jim Don Bob
“America is great because America is good”
~ Hillary Clinton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOAH9X7gIYQ
I was the only American in my class , it was all Brits and Dutch kids . The teachers were all Brits . My main teacher was always nice enough and as I have mentioned before she had a magnificent full untrimmed bush that would have won a prize if they gave out prizes for that sort of thing , mesh panties too . The music teacher once told me in front of the class that I was the stupidest boy she had ever known . A fair enough assessment in hindsight but rather unprofessional I think . No TV so it was the songs of the times or reading . There was this series of English Children's books and Comic Classics , does anybody remember those ? "Man without a Country" , "Robinson Crusoe" , "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" , that sort of thing . My classmates had the prejudices of their parents . We used to play Soccer in the morning before school . Once I kicked a goal and the Dutch kid playing goalie between two trash cans called me some name . I grabbed him and threw him on the ground and an English kid jumped on my back . The principal came out and pulled me out of the pile and dragged me to the office for a whacking .
There was this Italian American family living in the building . Real stereotypes with about 4-5 kids , the youngest was a toddler still in diapers , her ears were pierced , shocking . Her mother the irresponsible South Italian trash used to put her in a diaper and tell us to watch out for her . The kid used to take her diaper off first thing and wonder around wearing nothing but those little gold beads in her ears . One day this old local came down the drive holding the kid by her hand , naked except for her earrings , he had found her wandering about a half mile up the road , in a town with one traffic light , and gone door to door to find her home . At the bus stop in front of the building we would steal Mangoes from the tree where we waited , the Venezuelan family never complained .
The seasons were water balloon season , to throw at cars . I hit a local in a truck one time and he hit the brakes and chased us , threw a rock at us , scared the shit out of us . Kite season when the local kids would make hexagonal kites out of sticks . There was another season when they would find especially tortuous shaped branches strip the bark from them and catch butterflies and squish them on to the branches to make colorful blossoms . They hunted iguanas all year round with slingshots . Man they were deadly shots with those slingshots . We lived in an apt. building but a lot of the Americans were living large in BIG ole houses with a small staff . There was the Buena Vista Swimming Club , my old man gave me a Bolivar to dive off the high board my second time up . I saw an animated version of "Animal Farm" on the roof projected on an outdoor screen . One slow day at the pool there was a little girl floating face down at the bottom of the deep end . Someone spotted her and they pulled her out and strapped her to this contraption that was like a seesaw stretcher combo . They rocked her back and forth , water spewed from her mouth , she started coughing and she was okay .
The babysitter was a dusky local girl in her white uniform from work . Jet black hair .The poor girl just wanted to sleep but I wouldn't let her . My folks would leave and I would come bounding out of my bedroom and jump on her on the sofa . Man I didn't know what to do with it but I wanted to get close to it . The scent of her , her fragrance . I was ravenous , an intense , unbridled sexual desire , delicious . She made me go back to bed , despite my promises to be good .
Two doors down from the apt. driveway was a local family 4-5 kids . I only knew a few phrases of Spanish and they knew even less English but I felt as much at home there as I did with my folks . I would go over and knock on the door and walk in . Freddy was the oldest one of the kids , he was in the eighth grade . So about 4-5 years older than me and his siblings , He looked out for all the younger kids . He wasn't an aggressive Alpha . He was like Gary Cooper , he wasn't bad but the bad didn't f**k with him . When my folks decided to split up my old man flew me up to Ohio to unload me on his parents . At the airport he left me in the car by myself (can you imagine that today?) while he went in to do something . I'm just sitting there in my usual state of carelessness when suddenly there is someone at the window , it was Freddy , he had made his way across town to say goodbye and give me a present , a top . You know one of those tops you wrap a string around and throw on the ground . More of a heartfelt send off than I got from either my sire or my dam .
That must be the reason I'm a NAZI at heart , if they were trying to kill Ramon they couldn't have been all bad , you feel me ?Replies: @Old Prude, @Corn, @Kyle
“My main teacher was always nice enough and as I have mentioned before she had a magnificent full untrimmed bush that would have won a prize”
Dare I ask how you know this?
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/the-reason-behind-north-koreas-nuclear-program-and-its-offer-to-end-it.htmlI watched Michael Palin visit North Korea recently, they are more advanced, as you would expect with their IQ, but there was a lot of drunkenness, I guess a common feature of Communism.Replies: @Joe Stalin
But South Korea must have a zillion NorK sympathizers as well as agents by virtue of family relationships. That would mean Nork must have a pretty good handle on what constitutes possible immanent threat. So my take is their reaction to SK/US maneuvers is political theater for internal consumption. In the run-up for Kuwait, the Pentagon didn’t even have enough smallarms ammunition, so had to get ammo from Israel to be replaced in kind. A successful invasion of Nork is going to take a whole lot munitions accumulation from SK & USA. Something that Congress is going to take notice of.
Back in the 90s, when I worked on Capitol Hill, a Department of Energy official told a group of us that the DOE estimate was that Japan could have a nuclear weapon within six weeks of a political decision to develop one.
But all the independent investigations pointed to (Polish) pilot error. This was a classic case of controlled flight into terrain - the pilots lost situational awareness and flew a perfectly good airplane (and the Tu-154 was actually a good plane - the crash that killed the Red Army choir was also due to pilot error and lost situational awareness) into the ground. This is very easy to do (see JFK, Jr.) unless you do everything right, which is why good pilots train like crazy and follow rigorous procedures in order to reduce the chance of human error as much as possible. But the Polish Air Force unit flying the plane was found to have significant training deficiencies. For a Polish nationalist, that his brother's death was caused by the deficiencies of his fellow Poles must be doubly hard to accept.Replies: @The Alarmist, @Diversity Heretic
John Kennedy Jr.’s crash was not controlled flight into terrain. It was continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, spatial disorientation, and loss of control. Twilight flight over water in haze should only be done by instruments–it’s very easy to lose the horizon.
http://www.aviationsafetymagazine.com/issues/36_6/features/Revisiting-JFK-Jr_11190-1.html
JFK Jr. was not "swift". It took him 3 tried to pass the NY Bar exam. He was the kind of a guy who might have been able to solve that puzzle if he had had another minute or two to figure it out, but he didn't . This is the kind of thing you are supposed to practice on the simulator and with an instructor at a safer altitude but I guess he didn't study enough and the consequences were worse than having to take the bar exam again.
Seems like Trump has put more effort toward these useless dog-n-ponys with Kim III than with dealing with the single issue that actually matters to the sort of future my kids and their descendants will have--the flood of foreigners into the US. Which just happens to be the issue that got Trump the Republican nomination and won him the election.Replies: @Old Prude, @Diversity Heretic
Agreed! And to top it off, the Trump Administration just extended “Temporary” Protected Status for another bunch of Third World oompah-loompahs. And I keep reading that Jared Kushner is working on some “compromise” to let the DACA criminal infiltrators stay. The Trump Administration is by this stage hopeless.
Are Korean soldiers standing guard in North Dakota to defend America from an attack from Canada? Are they deployed in Texas to repel an invasion from Mexico?
Where is the "mutual" aspect?Replies: @Diversity Heretic
Putting Koreans on the Mexican border has a real appeal to me.
OTOH, Hitler had German planes and German pilots and Stalin had Russian planes and Russian pilots, so their attitude toward flying might have been rational.
On the third hand, the Russians have always been pretty good at aviation, even in Czarist times. We got some top talent after the revolution (Sikorsky) but many stayed. Russia is a funny place in that primitive conditions and cutting edge technology have always existed side by side. The Tu-154 was OTOH one of the fastest modern jetliners but OTOH it had features for landing on gravel runways.Replies: @Diversity Heretic, @res
Benito Mussolini learned to fly an airplane, but I don’t know if he ever soloed and I’m certain he didn’t fly himself on official missions. He was rescued by Otto Skorzeny and flown out in a two-place Feisler Storch, which, given his knowledge of flying, must have been fairly psychologically stressful.
The correct statement of that phrase ends with “But there are few old bold pilots.” Take it from an old pilot.
So what's the Ukrainian and the Western official version of how MH17 was shot down? (Note that it's rarely explicitly spelled out in the West because it sounds retarded when you do.) Russian army smuggled a Buk and its crew into Ukraine without anyone noticing, deliberately shot down the plane, and then disappeared across the border. And why would the Russians do it? Because RussiaPutinKremlin; do you need any other explanation?
Incidentally, Ukrainian government refused to provide the radar data that could've shown where the missile came from. They claim that all the radar stations in the area were down for maintenance that day, which is totally not suspicious.Replies: @Jack D, @J.Ross
I believe the JIT and not the Russians.
https://www.government.nl/topics/mh17-incident/achieving-justice/the-criminal-investigation
JIT never even considered a possibility of Ukraine's guilt because Ukraine was one of the investigators. They just followed the pattern of every single investigation in recent years involving Russia - "sentence first verdict afterwards."
https://www.government.nl/topics/mh17-incident/achieving-justice/the-criminal-investigationReplies: @inertial
Nothing in what I wrote requires you to “believe Russians.”
JIT never even considered a possibility of Ukraine’s guilt because Ukraine was one of the investigators. They just followed the pattern of every single investigation in recent years involving Russia – “sentence first verdict afterwards.”
OTOH, Hitler had German planes and German pilots and Stalin had Russian planes and Russian pilots, so their attitude toward flying might have been rational.
On the third hand, the Russians have always been pretty good at aviation, even in Czarist times. We got some top talent after the revolution (Sikorsky) but many stayed. Russia is a funny place in that primitive conditions and cutting edge technology have always existed side by side. The Tu-154 was OTOH one of the fastest modern jetliners but OTOH it had features for landing on gravel runways.Replies: @Diversity Heretic, @res
I recently read a Time-Life book about military aviation and the author made a huge issue (to the point of seeming obsessed) about the importance of the ability to operate from short, relatively unimproved runways (he was a big Harrier fan). The point was that airstrips are an easy target (e.g. for ICBMs).
Gravel runway ability makes much more sense given that idea. The Tu-154 isn’t military, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Russians kept dual use in mind.
The point they make in the wiki is probably more relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-154
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-86#The_%22Luggage_at_hand%22_system
The Soviet Union had the same "military first" system that still prevails in N. Korea. Their GDP per capita was lower but they wanted to maintain military parity with the US so the solution was to allocate as much resources as necessary to the military and then the civilian sector got the crumbs that were left over.
Liam Neeson can have nukes; the Irish can’t have nukes. The Welsh can have nukes, as long as they stay sober and agreeable. Welsh nukes get taken away the second they become sauced and surly.
Reading further, it seems like for some reason his autopilot disengaged. At that moment he was taken by surprise. Suddenly the plane was banking 125 degrees right (i.e. beyond vertical, almost upside down) and nose down 30 degrees possibly because the plane was out of balance due to fuel but he was not oriented due to the haze and couldn’t figure out how to level it back out. At that point he was at 2,000 feet and less than a minute away from hitting the water.
http://www.aviationsafetymagazine.com/issues/36_6/features/Revisiting-JFK-Jr_11190-1.html
JFK Jr. was not “swift”. It took him 3 tried to pass the NY Bar exam. He was the kind of a guy who might have been able to solve that puzzle if he had had another minute or two to figure it out, but he didn’t . This is the kind of thing you are supposed to practice on the simulator and with an instructor at a safer altitude but I guess he didn’t study enough and the consequences were worse than having to take the bar exam again.
Apart from the Ukrainian military.
Now they did not intend to shoot down a plane full of civilians – not even the Russians are that evil. But they are stupid and trigger happy – shoot first and ask questions later is always the Russian way of warfare.
Says a patriotic American. Do you have any sense of how notorious your military is for:
A: Gratuitous use of force on civilians?
B: Friendly fire incidents?
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
I don’t understand why people here feel the gratuitous need to defend Putin. He’s not really your friend.
Putin and the rest of the Russian government don't want to abolish us as a people. The same cannot be said of our ruling class in the West.Replies: @Jack D
Putin would not hesitate to shoot you down individually or as a people any more that Col. Osipovich did – if you stay out of his way, he really doesn’t give a damn about whether you live or die but if he sees you as an obstacle to his interests (which he conflates with the interests of the Russian people) then he will want you dead. At best he is indifferent to your life.
It’s ridiculous that people are buying into Russian disinformation. They are rejoicing in Moscow that their BS actually works (at least on some people). I can understand that if you are Russian you might have a psychological need to buy into this stuff (no one wants to believe that their revered leaders are monsters who shoot down civilian aircraft) but as Americans there’s really nothing in it for you.
Gravel runway ability makes much more sense given that idea. The Tu-154 isn't military, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians kept dual use in mind.
The point they make in the wiki is probably more relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-154Replies: @Jack D, @Jim Don Bob
Russia is enormous. Some places are only reachable by air. Think Alaska but on an even more vast scale and with some big (but isolated) cities. And the Russians didn’t have (0r weren’t willing to devote) the resources needed to build paved runways (and otherwise decent civilian airport facilities) in each of these cities. The Il-86 was supposed to use a “luggage at hand” system for this reason – passengers were going to bring their own checked baggage on board and deposit it in underfloor compartments so no baggage handling systems would be needed at the airport. This proved impractical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-86#The_%22Luggage_at_hand%22_system
The Soviet Union had the same “military first” system that still prevails in N. Korea. Their GDP per capita was lower but they wanted to maintain military parity with the US so the solution was to allocate as much resources as necessary to the military and then the civilian sector got the crumbs that were left over.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/north-korea-cant-destroy-seoul-artillery-23964Replies: @Jack D, @Jim Don Bob
They could probably do a lot of damage to Seoul (not to the point of totally flattening it but still a lot of damage) but destroying the place is not the same thing as conquering it.
control-F “missile”.
aha! we got a hit!
that’s why there will never be serious action here. missiles. just like everywhere else.
those missiles that came into NK from ukraine have made the entire area much safer. wonder if swedish ‘researchers’ included that in their report.
there’s little reason to do conventional force exercises every year now, when it’s simply missiles pointing at each other from this point forward. just like with any other missile equipped opponent the US faces these days. they do a war game exercise against china or russia every couple years to stay in practice, and that’s good enough beyond regular training.
This is a wrong interpretation, but is exactly the self-serving propaganda line broadcast out by the Moon people (President Moon Jae-In).
The correct interpretation is that the Moon government is, at core, pro North Korean.
The examples are many, but one is that this whole push to scale way down (or call off) military exercises is entirely the initiative of the Moon government (Trump characteristically takes and gets credit by U.S. media on both sides). Moon was swept into power in a dubious palace coup in late 2016 to early 2017, in which the previous president was imprisoned for life for nothing amid a hysterical ]ly inflated scandal that amounted to little to nothing. Since coming into power in 2017, and beginning in earnest in Jan. 2018 with the Winter Olympics, he has done everything in his power to promote NK; an active co-participant in one of NK’s periodic Peace Offensives.
The correction interpretation: Moon and his base are ethnonationalists, not pacifists by principle (but the latter image is marketed successfully for U.S./Western consumption). This is not hard to figure out.
They are also savvy enough to keep milking the U.S. if possible, but will promote North Korean interests until the end.
None of this is ever covered in the U.S. media. Moon gets a pass, and in the U.S. press he is universally called by the water-muddying term “liberal.” Why?
People talk about Jews, motivated by a kind of ethnonationalism, doing this or that in the USA. Jews are hardly unique in this regard. The advantage for South Koreans (and North Koreans, in principle, if a U.S. President is willing to dive in and directly negotiate) is that their culture is so alien and their goings-on so distant-seeming that no one is able to figure out what’s going on. And so it is today.
Given perfect information, the U.S. would demand either an end to pro-NK policies from Moon, or an end to the U.S. alliance.
South Korea wants them there. Even the pro-NK Moon government wants them. There are lots of benefits they get.
Viewed from the perspective of the 2000s and 2010s, it was probably a mistake to ever intervene in Korea in 1950. Almost seventy years of entanglement, for what U.S. advantage?
No doubt. And as usual, the US gets nothing.
"Viewed from the perspective of the 2000s and 2010s, it was probably a mistake to ever intervene in Korea in 1950. Almost seventy years of entanglement, for what U.S. advantage?"
I get that the original intervention and subsequent occupation was related to Cold War stratagem, but it doesn't change my opinion that we should have never intervened in the first place. Like you say, to what advantage? If global military policing was really ever about stopping the spread of communism, then all of our forces world wide should have been returned home after the collapse of the Soviet Union.Replies: @Steve Sailer
2 Korean marine divisions and 2 marine brigades.
We have 1 armored brigade that rotates in every 9 months.
I assume our troops train at home then get beat up at Fort Irwin and continue training on their own in Korea.Replies: @Hail
A joke has long had it that the ‘task’ of the relatively small number of personnel in U.S. Forces Korea is “to die” (rather than to fight and win), their deaths thereby allowing the media to wave the bloody shirt and giving the President carte blanche as the rapid scale-up U.S. assets by a factor of at least 10 proceeds.
With air power, etc., you don’t necessarily need large, standing garrisons to win a war. You do need some serious U.S. casualties to get people behind an immediate war, though.
Is he still living as a stateless, homeless person somewhere in the Netherlands, or have I been misinformed?
So what's the Ukrainian and the Western official version of how MH17 was shot down? (Note that it's rarely explicitly spelled out in the West because it sounds retarded when you do.) Russian army smuggled a Buk and its crew into Ukraine without anyone noticing, deliberately shot down the plane, and then disappeared across the border. And why would the Russians do it? Because RussiaPutinKremlin; do you need any other explanation?
Incidentally, Ukrainian government refused to provide the radar data that could've shown where the missile came from. They claim that all the radar stations in the area were down for maintenance that day, which is totally not suspicious.Replies: @Jack D, @J.Ross
Even if it were granted that Russians made the decision to pull it, it’s still one hundred per cent not their fault. Where are all the other airliners they should have also mistaken for the Ukrainian Air Force that was heavily attacking at that time? Oh, right, they we redirected safely around that whole war zone thing.
Ukraine right now is everything we hated about Central America in the eighties, but with much more powerful weapons.
Thanks to Obama we do a lot of conventional stuff in Africa, and thanks to Trump we narrowly avoided doing more in Syria (although we are already doing too much); you can’t subvert a population or steal an asset with a missile. In fact, you could say that the CIA/NPR case against Assad consists of what happens when you fight sneaky humans with dumb distance weapons. But you are right that in this case Norks have leapfrogged their own technological backwardness with some long-reaching strength. There must be people in the DC area who would give both legs to be able to infiltrate un-missile-able individuals into the hermit kingdom like they blatantly do everywhere else.
He was briefly in New Goldmansachsland and talked seriously about becoming the next hetman.
If “Moon the Crypto-Nork” succeeds, and we extricated ourselves, I think most Americans would accept that as resolution.
Dare I ask how you know this?Replies: @donut
Occasionally we would have story time when we would sit on the floor at her feet as she read to us . Since it was the 50’s I can’t say she knew what she was doing but the view was unobstructed .
Right. He, his wife, and his sister-in-law were late taking off because his ditz wife couldn’t make up her mind about what color of nail polish she wanted.
He took off into a twilight haze, lost the horizon, and landed in the drink. Every military pilot I knew said, “dumb f**k”.
He’d had some instrument training. He might have lived if he’d turned them on and called the tower.
The Kennedy family reportedly paid $10 million for killing the sister in law.
That said, he seemed like a decent guy, for a Kennedy.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/north-korea-cant-destroy-seoul-artillery-23964Replies: @Jack D, @Jim Don Bob
This guy says most of the Norks artillery is old, of short range, and would be quickly annihilated by aircraft or counter battery fire.
I worked with a guy who flew helo SAR off carriers. He said if you don’t trust your instruments when you’re out there at night, you will end up dead. Your mind plays tricks on you as it tries to orient itself.
Gravel runway ability makes much more sense given that idea. The Tu-154 isn't military, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians kept dual use in mind.
The point they make in the wiki is probably more relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-154Replies: @Jack D, @Jim Don Bob
Planes are in hardened shelters at most US bases, and runways can be repaired. A guy I worked with at a war game said the way to knock out a US base is to target the pilot’s quarters.
It's ridiculous that people are buying into Russian disinformation. They are rejoicing in Moscow that their BS actually works (at least on some people). I can understand that if you are Russian you might have a psychological need to buy into this stuff (no one wants to believe that their revered leaders are monsters who shoot down civilian aircraft) but as Americans there's really nothing in it for you.Replies: @Vinteuil
I don’t think Putin is my friend – but I respect him, just as I respect Bibi – because, however imperfect, however corrupt they may be, they don’t side with outsiders against their own people.
I just reread my post . I don’t know why you would think or say that . The time we lived in Venezuela is really one of the happiest memories I have . Although “like he has an empty hole…right in the middle…” while an obvious shot , it was a good one , you should have saved it . Maybe being an Old Prude you were offended by the bits about my teacher’s (I can’t help it) magnificent , prize winning , full untrimmed bush (oh , God I’ll have to take a moment) , or perhaps the bits about the dusky , fragrant baby sitter that after more than seven decades still revives in me three of the seven deadly sins , to wit : lust , greed and gluttony . If it will give you any comfort I also have sloth and wrath checked off as well .
See you in Hell ,
your humble servant
donut .
Well at least somebody’s resisting the urge to keep up with the Duck.
I think this is totally sound. I don’t see this happening any time soon, but if the Chinese could pull it off I think they’d try. It’s easier without the loud invasion (that is, using spies) and it could be avoided by having a modicum of nationalism and technical ability, but the Chinese pie in the sky goal is to be like we were in the aftermath of WWII: no need to conquer because you need and want their stuff.
He took off into a twilight haze, lost the horizon, and landed in the drink. Every military pilot I knew said, "dumb f**k".
He'd had some instrument training. He might have lived if he'd turned them on and called the tower.
The Kennedy family reportedly paid $10 million for killing the sister in law.
That said, he seemed like a decent guy, for a Kennedy.Replies: @Jack D
See #86. There is a little more to it than that – if the plane had just stayed in level flight he might not have lost orientation. He did have some instrument training (and others that night reported that it was possible to see the stars). But usually in these tragedies there is more than 1 thing that goes wrong. The autopilot snapped off unexpectedly for some reason. The plane was perhaps out of balance due to uneven amounts of fuel in the wing tanks. A second before he is daydreaming but now suddenly it is his airplane and it’s almost upside down and diving for the sea and it’s only 2,000 feet before the water and you have less than a minute to orient yourself and execute the correct control inputs to level the wings and pull the plane out of the dive and the sky is below you and the ocean is above. What do you do? You only have a few seconds formulate a plan and execute it or your are dead. It was not unrecoverable for a better pilot but he was not that pilot.
We are seeing these situations now with self driving cars – supposedly (since they are in test mode) the backup drivers are supposed to be ready to take over at a moment’s notice when the self driving system flakes out. But in practice, when the automated system bugs out they are not ready to take over instantly.
Putin’s policy record is more complex than many of the alt-right crowd here thinks. It is true that he’s got a lot of social and “how the world works” views that would fit in quite nicely here, but he’s no white nationalist, or even an extreme Russian ethno-nationalist. He has allowed mass Muslim migration, albeit from highly secularized former Soviet states, throughout his tenure. He’s on great terms with half-Russians or non-ethnic Russians like Shoygu and Gareev. He is also on quite good terms with what is left of Russia’s Jewish community. This is why Russia’s own hardcore ethno-nationalists have little use for him. And this is fully reciprocated: they’ve often found themselves in jail under Putin because of their potential to set off ethnic conflicts.
That said, it should be pretty obvious that this bears little resemblance to Western immigration policies where assimilation has become thought of as an immoral concept. Russia’s minorities are allowed to keep their religions and traditions, but they are expected to toe the line, support the state, and assimilate to a reasonable level. This kind of “hard multiculturalism” under explicit Russian domination also has a long-standing basis in Russian culture: they’ve been dealing with Muslims since the conquest of Kazan, for example. It’s not a blood and soil thing: many non-ethnic Russians have identified as Russian while serving the empire, from Germans-who made up a good percentage of the royal family-to Central Asians. It’s just a very different history from Western Europe.
(You could say the same of Israel, to an extent, once you get past the fact that Israel is a democracy and has to work within those parameters. Often forgotten here is that Israel is a highly multicultural place, receiving people from France to Ethiopia.)
Stalin didn’t like to travel, period. Most of his traveling done before the Revolution was simply because he was an outlaw working for an underground terrorist movement. Moment he had the choice, he holed up in Moscow and only left for an occasional private dacha break, or when he absolutely had to, such as to meet Roosevelt and Churchill.
>Hitler was a “What’s the worst that could happen?” kind of guy.
I think Hitler was the first guy to understand the propaganda value of using a plane to fly around the country and appear to great fanfare. Worked well in 1932 because he could give multiple speeches within a day. But don’t forget, public oratory was his MO, unlike Stalin.
Personality-wise, I agree that Hitler was more relaxed and *way* less conscientious, but Hitler was pretty paranoid about someone bumping him or him croaking (both of his parents died young, and he genuinely believed he would, too) before his “great mission” could be embarked on. From his diet choices to his security regime, that’s pretty apparent.
It was at the Tehran conference at the end of 1943. Stalin only flew because there was no rail line to take him there. Stalin then played FDR and Churchill like a violin.
See you in Hell ,
your humble servant
donut .Replies: @Old Prude
Just one lonely old man feeling it for another lonely old man pining for a lost world. The bush and the babysitter didn’t bother me a bit. Glad to know how you knew.
Dezinformatsia.
Viewed from the perspective of the 2000s and 2010s, it was probably a mistake to ever intervene in Korea in 1950. Almost seventy years of entanglement, for what U.S. advantage?Replies: @Mike Tre, @William Badwhite
“South Korea wants them there. Even the pro-NK Moon government wants them. There are lots of benefits they get.”
No doubt. And as usual, the US gets nothing.
“Viewed from the perspective of the 2000s and 2010s, it was probably a mistake to ever intervene in Korea in 1950. Almost seventy years of entanglement, for what U.S. advantage?”
I get that the original intervention and subsequent occupation was related to Cold War stratagem, but it doesn’t change my opinion that we should have never intervened in the first place. Like you say, to what advantage? If global military policing was really ever about stopping the spread of communism, then all of our forces world wide should have been returned home after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Citation needed – how much time did he have “under the hood”, and how recently?
It was a typical summer day there – hazy. The combination of haze and being over water led to him not having a visible horizon to reference. Its very easy to become disoriented in such a situation, your inner ear lies to you, tells you you are descending or turning or climbing, etc when you are not and it’s easy to have the urge to correct for what isn’t happening and fairly soon you’ve departed controlled flight.
Fortunately for “John-John” virtually all airplanes have artificial horizons in the cockpit. Flying by reference to one is a basic part of primary flight training. It is not difficult at all. You just have to do it when the conditions warrant.
Unfortunately for him and for the women he killed (killing women while acting stupidly seems to be a Kennedy thing) he was incompetent. That also seems to be a Kennedy thing.
The lack of flying skills among Koreans is well known in the professional pilot community (witness the Asiana clown landing short of the field in San Francisco a few years back). Until fairly recently, KAL was not allowed to fly into the United States without a western pilot in the cockpit. Such common sense is unthinkable today because racist.
My guess it stems from a combination of their education system emphasizing memorization over understanding and their often astounding arrogance.
See this post from a western pilot that worked in Korea as an instructor:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3041469/posts
Viewed from the perspective of the 2000s and 2010s, it was probably a mistake to ever intervene in Korea in 1950. Almost seventy years of entanglement, for what U.S. advantage?Replies: @Mike Tre, @William Badwhite
At the time the issue was having a communist country only about 100 miles from Japan. Agree that we shouldn’t still be there.
With air power, etc., you don't necessarily need large, standing garrisons to win a war. You do need some serious U.S. casualties to get people behind an immediate war, though.Replies: @William Badwhite
I know a guy who was stationed at Kunsan in the ’80s, flying F-16’s. The assumption was the South would be overrun. Their role in the event of a Nork invasion was to fling tactical nukes onto the invading forces, then take the jets to Japan and the Philippines.
He didn’t play Churchill, who was a dedicated anti-Bolshevik going back to 1918 and had few illusions about the nature of the Soviet regime. Though wholeheartedly endorsing the anti-Nazi alliance, he always tried to keep a sense of unsentimental distance with the USSR in a way he didn’t the USA.
FDR was a different story. It didn’t help that a lot of the people surrounding him like Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss were in Uncle Joe’s employ. And by 1943, it was clear that the UK simply was in no position to challenge the US. Old Europe was finally killed in WWII, its two last hurrahs were Churchill and Hitler. The future was going to be about the two massive pseudo-European centaurs lurking outside.
(Churchill also fundamentally *got* Adolf Hitler as a human being and why he was so scary in a way that FDR and Stalin, for opposite reasons, never did. Churchill was nothing if not an old school anti-universalist realist-you know, what right-wingers are supposed to be and historically have been-in foreign policy and when it came to dealing with foreign cultures in general. Leave the universalist ideals up to the libbies, folks, that’s their societal function, their job. When they try to do ours or we try to do theirs, the results are pretty nasty.)
Nobody wants Putin to take over the US, or to live under Russia’s Chinese-style legal system (a situation in which it is not possible for the State to be wrong, even if it contradicts itself). The “love” of Putin is only noteworthy because it is exagerrated as scapegoating and because our brainless ruling elite have decided to paint Putin as Hitler. Putin’s not Hitler, so any reasonable assessment of him looks like love in this hystrical scale. Mark Ames hates Putin and lost a good newspaper to Putinist censorship. When Israel and the State Department nudged Saakashviki to anger the bear, Ames pointed out that this was not Putin aggressing or expanding, and was called a Putin fanboy for it.
No doubt. And as usual, the US gets nothing.
"Viewed from the perspective of the 2000s and 2010s, it was probably a mistake to ever intervene in Korea in 1950. Almost seventy years of entanglement, for what U.S. advantage?"
I get that the original intervention and subsequent occupation was related to Cold War stratagem, but it doesn't change my opinion that we should have never intervened in the first place. Like you say, to what advantage? If global military policing was really ever about stopping the spread of communism, then all of our forces world wide should have been returned home after the collapse of the Soviet Union.Replies: @Steve Sailer
It was probably a mistake for the US to grab half of Korea in 1945. The history of how the US decided to take half of Korea is obscure enough that I’ve never managed to track it down, although it’s probably not hidden or anything, just obscure.
Interestingly, Britain and France offered Armenia to the US in 1919 at Versaille. I bet we would have had a lot of adventures if we’d taken up that offer.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n10/bruce-cumings/a-murderous-history-of-korea
Max Hastings discusses it (relatively briefly) in his excellent history of the Korean War. Basically, in 1945 the US was really eager to get the Soviets to fight the Japanese in East Asia. But then, the Soviets got around to it, the Japanese surrendered and the US realized that it actually wasn’t too crazy about the Red Army swallowing up East Asia.
The interesting part is that Red Army forces were advancing through China to Korea when the US demanded a partition of the peninsula—before any US troops had set foot in Korea. Stalin agreed and halted the advance of USSR forces in Korea. Which I think goes to show that he was actually quite willing to reach an accommodation with the US after WW2; if he had simply wanted to grab any advantage and escalate conflict at any opportunity, he could have easily ignored US wishes and occupied all of Korea.
I also think that the US’ occupation of South Korea was a mistake. The US had massive naval and aerial superiority with which it could have easily defended Japan (or the Phillippines, or Australia, etc.) Getting involved in Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam probably delayed the Sino-Soviet split and Sino-US rapprochement.
So US thinking in January 1945: We really need Stalin’s help for our upcoming land war in Asia. Then in August 1945, it was: We’ve got the A-bomb and Hirohito folded, so we don’t need the Soviets as much.
I’m guessing that in 1945 practically nobody in the US government knew much of anything about Korea. There had been American missionaries in Korea but then the Japanese colonized Korea. Did the Japanese throw the Americans out of Korea in the early 1900s?
The Americans had a hard time figuring out what was going on in China, but the US had more continual
>Nobody wants Putin to take over the US, or to live under Russia’s Chinese-style legal system (a situation in which it is not possible for the State to be wrong, even if it contradicts itself).
China and Russia are very different places. They are both authoritarian states. That’s all they have in common. Even at the height of Communist brotherhood, the cultural and institutional gaps were very hard to patch over.
I’d actually feel more comfortable in China, because I’d at least know what the rules are.
>The “love” of Putin is only noteworthy because it is exagerrated as scapegoating and because our brainless ruling elite have decided to paint Putin as Hitler. Putin’s not Hitler, so any reasonable assessment of him looks like love in this hystrical scale.
I wholly, 100% agree. I think the more intelligent commentators here can take that for granted. I’m just pointing out that Putin is not some ideological alt-right model. If you ask me, Israel under Likud and the parties further to the right is a much more feasible ideological template.
Comparing Putin to Hitler, like so many other Hitler comparisons, reveals more about the person doing the comparing than anything else. Hitler was the returning primal being, as per Otto Hinze. He was innately destructive in a way the overwhelming majority of dictators-let alone political leaders-are not. Putin is a very, very normal man by comparison.
(And considering that Putin’s home-city came very close to being razed to the ground and genocided by the Nazis…)
Not on this point.
It got even better: The US agreed at the UN to peninsula-wide elections, and only when they later realised the Communists would likely win those elections did they make South Korea a thing.
Elucidate us on what really happened. We are all ears.
>China and Russia are very different
Not on this point.
Bruce Cumings is a left-leaning Korea specialist who has turned out some readable books, including North Korea: Another Country. He is interesting because his perspective is now unique (during the actual Korean War, commie sympathizers like IF Stone “broke” stories criticizing the US that were straight from the other side) and actively seeking to find blind spots. This is from a piece he wrote for the London Review of Books:
*Cumings doesn’t give a reason here but I have heard this story multiple times, and usually near-comic emphasis is placed on the “dartboard” nature of the decision: that parallel was arrived at because it pretty much divides the peninsula in half, and not for any strategic reason. The idea was that the Soviets wouldn’t accept, say, the imbalance seen in the division of Germany, which they put up with there because of the circumstances of the end of the war.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n10/bruce-cumings/a-murderous-history-of-korea
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOAH9X7gIYQ
I was the only American in my class , it was all Brits and Dutch kids . The teachers were all Brits . My main teacher was always nice enough and as I have mentioned before she had a magnificent full untrimmed bush that would have won a prize if they gave out prizes for that sort of thing , mesh panties too . The music teacher once told me in front of the class that I was the stupidest boy she had ever known . A fair enough assessment in hindsight but rather unprofessional I think . No TV so it was the songs of the times or reading . There was this series of English Children's books and Comic Classics , does anybody remember those ? "Man without a Country" , "Robinson Crusoe" , "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" , that sort of thing . My classmates had the prejudices of their parents . We used to play Soccer in the morning before school . Once I kicked a goal and the Dutch kid playing goalie between two trash cans called me some name . I grabbed him and threw him on the ground and an English kid jumped on my back . The principal came out and pulled me out of the pile and dragged me to the office for a whacking .
There was this Italian American family living in the building . Real stereotypes with about 4-5 kids , the youngest was a toddler still in diapers , her ears were pierced , shocking . Her mother the irresponsible South Italian trash used to put her in a diaper and tell us to watch out for her . The kid used to take her diaper off first thing and wonder around wearing nothing but those little gold beads in her ears . One day this old local came down the drive holding the kid by her hand , naked except for her earrings , he had found her wandering about a half mile up the road , in a town with one traffic light , and gone door to door to find her home . At the bus stop in front of the building we would steal Mangoes from the tree where we waited , the Venezuelan family never complained .
The seasons were water balloon season , to throw at cars . I hit a local in a truck one time and he hit the brakes and chased us , threw a rock at us , scared the shit out of us . Kite season when the local kids would make hexagonal kites out of sticks . There was another season when they would find especially tortuous shaped branches strip the bark from them and catch butterflies and squish them on to the branches to make colorful blossoms . They hunted iguanas all year round with slingshots . Man they were deadly shots with those slingshots . We lived in an apt. building but a lot of the Americans were living large in BIG ole houses with a small staff . There was the Buena Vista Swimming Club , my old man gave me a Bolivar to dive off the high board my second time up . I saw an animated version of "Animal Farm" on the roof projected on an outdoor screen . One slow day at the pool there was a little girl floating face down at the bottom of the deep end . Someone spotted her and they pulled her out and strapped her to this contraption that was like a seesaw stretcher combo . They rocked her back and forth , water spewed from her mouth , she started coughing and she was okay .
The babysitter was a dusky local girl in her white uniform from work . Jet black hair .The poor girl just wanted to sleep but I wouldn't let her . My folks would leave and I would come bounding out of my bedroom and jump on her on the sofa . Man I didn't know what to do with it but I wanted to get close to it . The scent of her , her fragrance . I was ravenous , an intense , unbridled sexual desire , delicious . She made me go back to bed , despite my promises to be good .
Two doors down from the apt. driveway was a local family 4-5 kids . I only knew a few phrases of Spanish and they knew even less English but I felt as much at home there as I did with my folks . I would go over and knock on the door and walk in . Freddy was the oldest one of the kids , he was in the eighth grade . So about 4-5 years older than me and his siblings , He looked out for all the younger kids . He wasn't an aggressive Alpha . He was like Gary Cooper , he wasn't bad but the bad didn't f**k with him . When my folks decided to split up my old man flew me up to Ohio to unload me on his parents . At the airport he left me in the car by myself (can you imagine that today?) while he went in to do something . I'm just sitting there in my usual state of carelessness when suddenly there is someone at the window , it was Freddy , he had made his way across town to say goodbye and give me a present , a top . You know one of those tops you wrap a string around and throw on the ground . More of a heartfelt send off than I got from either my sire or my dam .
That must be the reason I'm a NAZI at heart , if they were trying to kill Ramon they couldn't have been all bad , you feel me ?Replies: @Old Prude, @Corn, @Kyle
That’s a fantastic story. Were you looking up the teachers skirt? How did you know that?