North Korea says, "sanctions means war."

False. Partial repression works well, too. Many Latin and South American countries suffer under partial repression and their regimes remain firmly in control. The Mafia in Sicily partially represses the people and nobody revolts against them. Yassir Arafat kills his domestic opponents, even hangs their beaten bodies in public, and nobody is revolting against him. The basic strategy is to come in the middle of the night and kill your opponents in their homes. It works. You don't even have to be particularly dilligent about doing your opponents in. Just a few now and then does the trick.

The fact is that revolutions usually occur under weak but not particularly evil regimes or when life takes a turn for the better. For example, the French king was not particularly bad nor brutal when the French Revolution broke out. He fell because he refused to take aggressive military action against the rioters. The Russian Tsar was not a particularly bad nor brutal ruler when the Bolsheviks killed him.

Take a look at the US. When things were at their worst during the Depression, you didn't have any serious talk of revolution. However, during the 1960s when America was an unparalleled success, the air was full of wild talk of revolution, man, and killing the pigs, the fascist insects who prey upon the people, man. Good times and liberty are better incubators for revolution than hard times or repression. You need leisure and freedom to revolt.

Tantor

Your next question should be, "How did Tantor know that neither I nor anyone I know serves in the military?"

Tantor

Tantor





You can if you convince people that they have a common enemy. Especially if you have a closed society. I should remind you that Hitler did it based on nationalism.
That is what makes NK such a dangerous foe. The danger is not that they can defeat the US it the catastrophic consequences of a conflict with an enemy that feels they have nothing to lose that is the proud possessor of nuclear weaponry. No matter how few.
I should add the inflammatory rhetoric emanating from the White House only adds fuel to the fire.

South Korea has been complaining about American troops on their soil for some time.

My advance is to pull our troops out of the country and let South Korea defend themselves. They might just then appreciate our soldiers!

The idea certainly has emotional appeal, New Haven.

"when you got nothing, you go nothing to lose"

Very true.

That's why the homeless never have to pay property taxes.

Anyone who thinks that a million people turned out to express their personal opinion in a public square located in Pyong-Yang, I have a bridge to sell you. Who says there were a million? Probably the secret police who rounded those folks up, bussed them to the square and provided them with appropriate signs. Free expression is NOT a characteristic of any Communist state, much less the Stalinist version existing in the DPRK.

Kim and company can threaten war, but that's BS. The war already exists and has existed for fifty years since Kim's daddy invaded the South with the blessings of Uncle Joe. The DPRK has continually been the aggressor and root cause that the Korean War wasn't resolved years ago. Kim wants the UN/US out of the penninsula so that he can forcibly destroy ROK and rule the entire country. Only the presence of UN/US troops has forstalled war these long years. Our leaving would guarantee war, and enhance the probabilities that the North would be successful.

If you want to negotiate with the DPRK, experience has repeatedly shown that only the credible threat of force will be effective. You want peace, then prepare for war and mean it. Anything less, Kim will regard as further proof that Americans are easy pushovers unable to stand the thought of blood, and he will up his ante again, and again until he is stopped. The longer you wait, the more appeasement your offer, the bloodier and more certain the war will be.

No, actually you can't without force. The Nazis had the same system of informers and block captains that all the other socialist societies had. If you did not say Heil Hitler when you greeted somebody or grumbled about the Nazis, your block captain or neighbors would report you to the Gestapo.

The Gestapo would send you a letter to report to their office and explain yourself. The first letter terrified most people enough to get with the Nazi program. The Gestapo would ask your neighbors and block captain to keep a close eye on you. If they reported more bad things about you, the Gestapo sent you a second letter for another appointment.

You didn't come back from the second appointment. The Gestapo kept excellent records of their appointments. You can see the photos of terrified people taken during their interrogations, neatly affixed to their documentation. Many of them end with the annotation that they have been shipped to somewhere like Ravensbruck or Dachau.




Actually, the North Koreans have everything to lose and they know it. If they go to war, they lose power. That means the end of their good life, drinking imported liquor, screwing imported women, and taking trips to Tokyo Disneyland. In those rare occassions where we called their bluff, the North Koreans backed down in a cloud of vituperation. They have even allowed foreigners and imports in to keep power, even though it violates their long held policy of juche, self-reliance.



I thought folks like you believed in speaking truth to power. North Korea is an evil regime, just as Bush says. It does not keep its agreements, just like Bush says. Tell me one thing that Bush says about North Korea that is not just true, but obviously true?

I'm also curious to know why Bush's simple statement of the truth is considered inflammatory while the wildest, most vituperative, hateful, warlike statements from North Korea do not? Why is that, au1929?

The fact is that taking a hard line with evil dictators is the correct approach, not the appeasement you endorse. Such dictators respect only force and will probe as far as they can until they are stopped by force. When you call their bluff, they back down in a cloud of hateful rhetoric and look for another weakness to exploit.

Tantor

(from the MiamiHerald.com:)

Seemingly out of nowhere, President Bush now faces a major crisis (even though aides refuse to call it that) that raises the prospect of an unstable nuclear-armed power in Northeast Asia and has significantly complicated the White House's plans for confronting Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

The crisis is not of Bush's making. North Korea violated a 1994 deal with the United States not to develop nuclear weapons, embarking on a secret uranium enrichment program. Pyongyang admitted that last October only when confronted with evidence by a top U.S. envoy.

But Bush, in brandishing tough rhetoric toward North Korea from his early weeks in office, may have made his current predicament worse. And his initial moves in reacting to North Korea's October admission appear only to have prompted Pyongyang to escalate its brinkmanship to dangerous new levels.

The president's propensity to personalize, and even moralize, foreign policy is now colliding with the world's unpleasant realities, say U.S. officials and administration critics.

A year ago, Bush branded North Korea a member of an "Axis of Evil," and in recent months he has made it clear publicly that he loathes and distrusts North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, whose cult-like regime brutally represses its people and sells missiles to all comers.

"There's just no way you're going to get George W. to sit down and sign something across the table with Kim Jong Il," said a senior U.S. official of North Korea's demand for a mutual non-aggression pact with Washington. "Bush will never do that. This is going to be a tough road," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Bush has made diplomacy more difficult, critics say

PDiddie, If you go back to my post of yesturday at 17:05, I've said essentially the same thing! c.i.

You should write a column for Knight-Ridder , c.i. !

I'm not a word smith. Just a participant on A2K. c.i.

Tantor



The Germans as a people did not need the Gestapo to force their adherence to Hitlers policies. They stood behind him four square. These are the same people who claimed they were not Nazi's and did not know what that smell was coming from the concentration camps.
Regarding North Korea who some have described as a cult with Kim as the cult leader I believe it is entirely possible that millions of people believe everything they have been force fed. It is a nation where the people have had no contact with the outside world and it has been reported they have been lead to believe that conditions in the outside world are far worse than in NK.



Isn't it odd what Bush the great orator says is a simple statement of truth and NK's statements are vituperative, Truth is indeed in the eye of the beholder. Bush upon coming to office refused contact with the North koreans. Labeled them as part of the Axis of Evil, Told reporters that he loathed Kim and to top it all off Rumsfeld made his two front war statement. Those to you were simple statements of truth?How would you expected the North Koreans to respond?
In any event I would expect cooler heads will prevail and despite Bush's present stand to the contrary contacts and negotiations will ensue. The airways were filled with discussions concerning the situation on Sunday and that was the consensus of most if not all regardless of which end of the political spectrum the sat in.

au

Since thousands of communists, socialists, catholic and protestant German christs died in concentration camps, not to speak of the millions of Jewish Germans - your response looks a little bit ... I don't know what to say.

au1929,

Are you suggesting that the entire population of North Korea is at fault for the bullying and very dangerous policies of that regime, just as you suggest that all Germans knew, approved of and were at fault for the crimes of the Nazi regime?

Neither hypothesis stands the test of critical analysis. There are certainly objective factors in the histories and life of both countries that contributed to the creation and endurance of these regimes, but that hardly means that every individual within them knows, decides, and acts in concert with them. History abounds with examples of ghastly behaviors on the part of nations, kingdoms, and empires that in other times and under other regimes have behaved with great magnanimity and benevolence to their own and neighboring people. Few countries are without their own bad episodes, and the list is well-known. Indeed the inexplicable complacency of German Jews in the face of early Nazi threats & brutality was a direct result of the several generations of acceptance and inclusion they enjoyed in Germany, particularly compared to what then prevailed in France, Poland, and Russia. When such evil occurs, it is the regime is at fault along with the people in the country who actively support and advance its policies. The great majority of others are just passengers on a train.

In North Korea it is the regime that is at fault and dangerous - to its own people and to others as well. We are right in opposing it and in refusing its bullying demands.

george, As obvious your claim of the regime in NK, it also applies to Iraq - doesn't it? Your analogy of "passengers on a train" is very good, but I think in this day and age, more people are apt to speak out when they can. Public protests may not change the regimes behavior, but that's a big change from the silence of the majority of the past. I'm not sure what more people of peace can do? c.i.

Walter Hinteler
Yes Walter there were millions of people killed in concentration camps for reasons of their political views, ethnicity, religion and etc. However there were many more Germans who stood four square with Hitler. I am sure that people from the Hitler youth who had been indoctrinated were behind him 100% And further I have no doubt that they believed in his principles till the day they died. I had a clerk working for me in the 80's who had come from Germany after the war. One day she came to work with a flower and dressed for an occasion. I asked her what it was?
Her answer she was celebrating Hitler's birthday. I won't bother to tell you what else she had to say.
However my original response was written to prove a point and was not meant to open long past wounds.

georgeob1



No I am suggesting that they go along and believe. Especiallly in the case of North Koreans who have no contact with the outside world for over 50, years. The original statement was made by Tantor that the million people who were cheering the regime were being forced to do so.

Cicerone,

Yes, I would apply the regime idea to Iraq (and Iran, and Israel) as well.

All the more reason to look for opportunities to facilitate the needed regime changes. Indeed one of the strongest arguments (in my view) for regime change in Iraq is that socially and economically it is perhaps the Arab world's best hope for a modern secular & liberal state. That part of the world will sorely need a beneficial example when the (in my view) inevitable fall of the backward & corrupt Saudi regime occurs.

It is not clear to me that modern communications have significantly changed the relationship of people to their governing regimes (to use the currently topical word). While there is certainly more information available and more channels for private expression of opinion, there is also a flood of other information flowing in all directions that may effectively distract and drown out the relative advantage.




au1929,

Do you assume your clerk was typical of all Germans? If so what does that say about you?