DISQUS

DELETED - Not Following Commenting Policy

I'm sorry, In the second to last paragraph I write the "'93 agreement", I clearly meant the '94 agreement. My bad.

"One thing I don’t hear people saying, here or in the news and think tanks, is how NK and other nations want nukes as a deterrent - yes - but to use such deterrents to give them a room to maneuver in their regions."

"With nukes, the North has less to fear from a US military threat, and it can increase its use of brinkmanship to try to gain more concessions."

Alright, USinKorea, let's grant for a moment your contention here. If this is the North's true intention then why are they doing all this right now? Why not have not signed on to the NPT, develop the capabilities, and start projecting and maneuvering in their region back 10, 20, even 30 years ago?

Let me answer for you. Because back 10, 20, 30 years ago, the US maintained a deterrence posture not a compellence posture towards the North. The North had little to fear from a US strike, plus they had superpower patronage. Regime secure from external threat=no need for nukes.

You cite the instance of Iran and it's desire to develop nuclear weapons. How it's doing this simply to have greater projection ability in the region. Again, the question that must be asked is why now and not before? Why not have made a serious attempt to develop a nuclear capability when it was engaged in a serious conflict with the US backed Saddam Hussein? Why not in the years immediately preceeding the '79 revolution so as to have ironclad insurance against any possible internal or external threat?

In the case of Pakistan, you seem to think that recent actions it has taken are solely a function of it's nuclear capability. Fact is, Pakistan, particularly its ISI has been engaged in the sort aggressive behavior you cite long before its detonation of a nuclear device. Furthermore, it's difficult to say that "Pakistan" or the "Pakistani gov't" is engaging in or coordinating the sort of activities you're talking about. There is a clear difference between "Pakistan", "Pakistani gov't", and the Pakistani ISI. The aggressive actions your seeing being taken right now in South Asia are probably elements of the ISI that are under little control from central authority. That's why they act so aggressive. Not because of some nuclear capability that they have no control over, it's because there is so little oversight of them, their contacts, and funding.

To your historical example of countries acting irrationally, namely that of Japan in 1941: Think about why they attacked USinKorea and I don't think you'd being saying the Japanese were so misguided: In the 1930's and 1940's, Japan is expanding it's empire in order to achieve autarky and hence is in need of natural resources. The US does not like this hence began to impose imbargos on Japan. Seeing the imbargos as a threat to its national security let alone its autarky, Japan does what any country facing a similar situation would do: it attacks the very source that is preventing it from getting the necessary resources it needs to maintain its national security. The Israelis did it when Arab nations attempted to cut off the Straits of Tiran during the Six Day's War, the Americans did it under Bush I when Saddam invaded Kuwait.

I fail to see how when Japan does it it's "irrational" but when the US and her allies do the same exact thing in very similar circumstances it's called "acting in the national interest".

Getting back to North Korea, the same logic applies: The US makes promises with the North under the '93 agreement, fails on its part to live up to certain parts of the agreement, the US makes bellicose statements about how the North is part of the "Axis-of-Evil", goes and invades the Arab third of that axis and then acts flabbergasted that the other two-thirds would be developing capabilities in the ensuing seconds.

The hypocrisy displayed is truly astounding.

"I suppose that we should dole out nukes to every country in the world so that we are all on an even keel when it comes to deterring and compelling one (sic) another, eh? Gee, wouldn’t that be just swell?"

Well that's one way to go about it. Impractical and silly to be sure, but one way nevertheless.

I've got a better solution however. If the US is really serious about stopping the proliferation of nuclear capabilities then perhaps it should be the one to draw down significantly its own nuclear capabilities. I mean think about it: What credibility does the US really have to tell other countries they can't have but a single or few nuclear weapons when the United States itself maintains a nuclear arsenal literally unmatched or unsurpassed by any combination of nations throughout the world? Such an act would be the first step towards the sort of confidence building measures (another IR concept you should probably bone up on Rob) that would help ameliorate this problem.

Furthermore, why this visceral distaste for an "even keel" dynamic when it come to security relations? What the hell makes you think that the US has this special prerogative to have unipolar military dominance throughout the globe? You seem to forget that countries attempting to develop nuclear capabilities are sovereign countries just like the US and have no desire to have that sovereignty sacrificed on the altar of some DOD Klingon's ideological fantasies. There not going to collapse their right to national self-defense in order to make the United States feel that it's still the big dog in the alley.

For those of you who are still convinced that the torture of detainees were "isolated incidents", cases of a "few bad apples" acting rogue, or find the recent Senate Armed Services Committee's report lacking, I suggest you read Prof. Philip Zimbardo's excellent books "The Lucifer Effect". It's an excellent explanation of what happened at Abu Ghraib from a social psychology perspective.

However, if you don't feel like reading the whole book because you're too busy I suggest having a look at a talk Zimbardo gave concerning his book.

http://fora.tv/2008/01/24/Genocide_to_Abu_Ghrai...

Before you go and make any further comments Rob, I'd suggest you go back and bone up on some international relations theory 101.

In particular, I suggest getting a better grasp of the difference between 'deterrence' and 'compellence'. Perhaps this will be the first step on your road towards de-rubification.

I think that it would behoove Rob to provide me with these historical case studies concerning desperate regimes acting out irrationally.

Provide them Rob, and I'll show you that in fact they weren't desperate.

And no, nukes aren't a totally different ball game. India acquired them, Pakistan acquired them, the US initially shunned them and then eventually came back to making deals with them. The issue of North Korea and nuclear weapons only puts into stark relief the hypocrisy of the United States in regards to proliferation.

No Rob, English is not my second language. I've gone through and re-read my comments and all I could find was two small instance of the mistake you highlighted.

However, this is a pretty pathetic form of bean counting if you ask me. Something tells me that you read through my comments and couldn't find any real argument to make so you went ahead and picked the most obvious choice: faulting me on some technicality.

Pretty rube-ish behavior if you ask me. From your sign-off, however, it's clear that your coming to accept your intellectual malady. That's a good thing. Acknowledgment is the first step towards a cure my dear rube.

"I think the statement about North Korea having nuclear bombs isn’t really anything earth shattering; what would be earth shattering is if Secretary Gates said North Korea has weaponized their nuclear bombs..."

Frankly, I don't think that the North's weaponization of of its nuclear stockpile would be all the worrisome either. So what if they weaponize them? Do you really think that they're actually got to fire them at someone?

Say what you want about the DPRK regime; but don't sit there and tell me that a regime so bent on its own survival is going to act irrationally by launching some sort of preemptive attack with its weaponized nuclear stockpile. If they do weaponize it's probably to have a more effective deterrent capability. Nothing more, nothing less.

GI once said concerning the American abuse of detainees:

"However, things such as the harsh interrogation tactics (ie-waterboarding) and minor abuse incidents where people were reprimanded did happen in extremely isolated cases..." In other words, GI is arguing that this was the case of a "few bad apples".

I argued before that this was flat out not true and now we have even further proof that GI's attempt to whitewash and argue away the fact of American abusive treatment of prisoners is patently false.

The Washington Post reports the a BIPARTISAN Senate investigation has concluded that:

"...former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials are directly responsible for abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and charges that decisions by those officials led to serious offenses against prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere.

"The Senate Armed Services Committee report accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the principal architects of the plan to use harsh interrogation techniques on captured fighters and terrorism suspects, rejecting the Bush administration's contention that the policies originated lower down the command chain."

The article further goes on to quote from the study by noting:

"'The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own,' the panel concludes. 'The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.'"

Read the rest on your own http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar...

It'll be interesting to see how GI attempts to squirm out of this one. It sure is a pickle that he's gotten himself into by making his previous statement back on November 6.

I must apologize though. It's clear that I've dominated this thread for too long. Consider my part in this tale through.

I'll be back at another date and time to puncture other cherished shibboleths that individuals held dear on this blog.

Good night and good luck (sort of).

No, they're asinine and confused because-like I said before-you provide absolutely no concrete evidence to prove your contention that Woo-Cumings is some sort of Manchurian candidate. To reiterate again, where are the writing or statements that would belie any of my arguments let alone advance yours?

And please, don't give me some fecal laced history lesson explaining North Korean infiltration into South Korean society. One, I'm well aware of it. Two, you haven't-and most likely won't be able to prove-that Woo-Cumings had any associations with such entities.

As for calling you a rube, I call it the way I see it. If it thinks like a rube and talks like a rube, what is one to conclude? Moreover, there's no shame in being a rube. The world is a big and diverse place. Room enough for everybody. But too bad for you, there isn't room among the reasonable minded of this big and diverse world for a rube such as yourself.

Fine, if this is what a critical mass of commentators truly believes then it is not my place to try and dislodge such asinine conclusions from such confused minds.

Never mind that none of you have provided any sort of writings or comments that explicitly indicates that Woo-Cumings harbors unalloyed love and attachment to North Korea.

The late historian Richard Hostadter once exposited on the "paranoid style in American politics". The work was written almost half a decade ago. It's ironic, yet also a testament to his intellectual abilities, that a bunch of rubes such as "Mark" and "Rob" would give Hofstadter's work much salience for the present day.

Mark-

So the University of Virginia is in cahoots with this whole thing? When she was appointed to a gov't position by Clinton, how is it that this glaring aspect was so cavalierly overlooked?

Again, educated yourself by perusing the link.

Listen, the sort of things that Hanley talks about clearly are in history books and documentaries. I think though that what's different about his works is that he is unearthing specific gov't documents and memorandums that show the US gov't was clearly aware of the actions ROK as well as US forces were engaging in. In other words, he's making the memories of the events more granular and specific.

So no, it's nowhere near dishonest to provide actual material from the archives that flesh out better events that have been chronicled elsewhere. Let me ask, if some enterprising journalist came out and wrote about never before seen German gov't documents pertaining to the Holocaust does that make him a dishonest journalist for "rehashing" events that everybody is well aware of?

Finally, I did have the unfortunate experience of reading your puerile observations on Cumings' treatment of the US bombing campaign against North Korea. All I can say is that I guess some like their history well-done (you) while some like it a little more rare (me).

Mark-There's no possible way that Meredith Woo-Cumings was educated at North Korean schools in Japan. Her father was a member of the ROK's diplomatic corps. I find it hard to believe that he or the South Korean gov't would have allowed such a thing. Read through this link:

http://www.virginia.edu/uvatoday/newsRelease.ph...

Not even a mention of her being educated in North Korean schools. As for not wanting to read the Cumings book, it doesn't surprise me. Given the utterly ignorant statement you made it's probably way above your head anyways.

USinKorea-I thought you were going to keep it brief? Oh well, consistency in statement and action was never a strong suit of yours anyways.

Hanley writes the stories he does in order to reach out to a broader American audience that probably doesn't care or want to know about what the United States did in Korea. That's why his works appear in major American publications. Having all these incidents buried in obscure publications and documentaries that consumers rarely peruse does no good for the general publics awareness. Bringing something to light that the public-at-large wasn't previously aware is the exact opposite of your "irresponsible journalism".

Second, as for those who read Cumings' treatment of the US bombing campaign against the North, I don't believe that reasonable people will came away with the conclusion that you did. That's because not that many people filter everything about the North through exacting, myopic ideological standards that you do. Simply attempting to show nuance and complexity to a given narrative is nowhere near the realm of apolegetics. If anything its responsible inquiry.

Finally, I don't think that I've done any clouding of the issue. Simply because I'm not towing the sort of self-comforting tropes you tell yourself hardly makes me some sort of troll or gadfly.

"I recommend people read Cumings’ North Korea: Another Country to see his BS once he fully dropped the mask. He goes into detail about how atrocious the bombings were against the North. Into how poor little Kim Jong-Il was frightened into a manic state by watching US bombers do trial runs for dropping an atomic bomb. Poor North Korea. If only they had had an air force of their own to use, if only they could have dropped napalm all over the South, well, that would have been war - and a war for unification at that - just part of Korea’s civil war - which the US interfered in."

This quote is rather telling. So by attempting to depict US actions against North Korea Cumings has "dropped the mask"? Tell me, after dropping his dastardly disguise what was revealed to you USinKorea? Let me guess, probably that Cumings is an unreconstructed North Korea apologist.

Well, if this is the standard then perhaps an esteemed historian such as Niall Ferguson is an apologist for Nazi Germany when he says in his book "The War of the World" that the US bombing campaigns were as equally criminal. Perhaps someone like Richard Minear is a right-wing revisionist for calling Hiroshima and Nagasaki "nuclear holocaust(s)".

"But —- just so we can keep this clear — the whole point of the post was that Hanley is doing nothing more than re-hashing old news."

This is interesting. If all these claims are indeed "old news", why not attempt to seriously incorporate them into your assessments of past historical events. Why be so reactionary and immediately brand anybody who dares air contradictory views "dishonest" or "conniving"?

And yes, I also recommend you limit you comments to a simple one line comment. After all, it would suit nicely with your truncated intellectual abilities. Lord knows how many traps you set for yourself with every sentence you punch out.

I agree, attempting to reduce second-had smoke in South Korea will probably have little effect.

If the South Korean gov't want to address a public health issue, it is perhaps best to take preventive measures against obesity. While it is true at the moment that South Korea is not experiencing adipose augmentation amongst its populace such as the US, it is nevertheless a problem that looms on the horizon.

The basis for my conjecture you ask? US service personnel and in particular the obese spouses that they haul in with them (Oye! That's one back breaking task!!!) If public health studies are correct, obesity is in many ways a contagious element:

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070725175419.htm]

Having shamelessly gluttonous individuals roaming (nay, rolling) around Korea doesn't bode well for the current trimness of Korean citizens. I suggest that the Korean gov't take two possible steps: 1) Do not allow service personnel to bring their spouses or other chubby family members with them. Or 2) force service personnel's spouses to maintain a reasonable weight.

I think taking these simple precautions will do more for the overall public health of Korean citizens than any quixotic attempts at reducing second-hand smoke.

"Bottom line is that the ROK military authorities and Syngman Rhee found themselves in desperate circumstances and implemented desperate measures to include executing an undetermined number of innocent civilians intermingled with actual communist guerrillas who were themselves responsible for the killing of their own unknown number of civilians."

The question then arises why was the ROK military and Pres. Rhee put in such dire circumstances? Frankly, GI doesn't provide many convincing explanations as to why an insurgency erupted. I'm sure he'll say that it was Communists from the North doing all the string pulling.

Fact is the "communist" insurgency that erupted can in large part be traced to the reactionary policies that US occupation forces implemented in South Korea. From reinstalling colonial era bureaucrats and police officials to stifling attempts at land reform, it was American policies that set the stage for discontentment and it would be Americans and ROK forces that would have to reap what the sowed. More often than not in a bloody and cruel fashion.

Yes, unfortunately Mark "Here we go" indeed.

As is typically the case whenever another one of these historical issues arise, it's usually a drill in attempting to salvage a particular narrative of America's role in post-1945 Korean history. The narrative goes something like this: 1)America is the shining beacon of liberty, freedom, and hope. 2) And because of all the above, it is inconceivable that America acted in or can act in morally compromised manners. Ego because of factors one and two, America's role in Korea was that of a messianic savior.

Any attempts to complicate this narrative are seen as conniving revisionism. Frankly, adherents to this line of thinking are more akin to religious cult members rather than individuals attempting serious inquiry over serious matters.

As for specific examples of US atrocities in Korea, I really suggest you read Bruce Cumings' treatment of the South's brief occupation of the North (an occupation whose actions were clearly countenanced by US forces), the bombing campaign by US forces against the North, and finally the actions of Gen. Hodge.

Oh and please don't dish out some cheap response about how I'm relying on your bete-noir Bruce Cumings. Unless you can show that his use of documents or methodology is seriously flawed in addressing the above examples I enumerated for you about US actions in Korea then don't waste your time. Lord knows you do enough of that already.

"What does it say about the AP that they keep the guy and keep running his stuff - the same stuff?"

That's a really good question USinKorea. So excellent in fact that it begs an even better one: What does it say about soldiers and expats that keep attempting to spin, mitigate, or even downright whitewash what are well documented crimes committed by America?

By the way, another point I wanted to make about the private donations.

In statistics attempting to show the generosity of private US contributions to foreign aid, there gets lumped in the outward remittance flows of foreign nationals working in the US.

Now it's nice that the US allows foreign nationals working in the US to send money back to their home countries, but to conflate these remittances with that of US generosity to that that of the world at large strikes me as a chip of the old block of sly bean counting.

The inclusion of foreign national remittance isn't a testament to American largesse but rather a testament to the charitableness of the immigrants to their home communities.

Sorry GI, but the stats provided for the "Gov't Aid per Capita" is very relevant.

Even when you factor in the the private donations, the US still comes in 19th place out of the 21 countries cited in the Center for Global Development graph you provided.
[Check out this link: http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001805.html]

Furthermore, you have to keep in mind that those countries who allot more aid per capita also have more domestic social welfare obligations than the US. With that taken in to consideration, its clear that the US has much more latitude to give more in terms of foreign aid but doesn't for a litany of reasons.

Finally, as you more or less admitted, the aid numbers are being exaggerated. If that's so, it still doesn't explain why the US is coming out at the bottom of the pack in respects to foreign aid per capita.

I completely disagree with Reinhard though can obviously only speak from experience.

Live.com has a long long long way to go.

Live will almost always give you a page of relevant results, but Googles page will contain more *relevant* relevant results if you get what I am saying.