If you rush out now, you may be able to secure yourself a copy of today’s Korea Times featuring a column by none other than yours truly - or, if you prefer, you can read the online version. Like my letter to the Chosun. it’s a cleaned up version of a previous post here on sending Korean troops to Iraq.
And for a very different take on the same issue by a professor I spent two years living with in the same dormitory, check out Pedro Bernaldez’s column entitled “South Korea in Iraq Quagmire.”
8 Comments
First off lets us quickly categorize Pedro B. Bernaldez as an idiot. He makes the case that the peace demonstrations had some sort of affect on the tactics and strategies of the US military and the way they conducted the campaign in Iraq. He is a moron and I had to stop reading right there.
The reason we didn’t blow everything up and kill everyone was because one, that is not the way we do things (despite what the war protestors would have you beleive) and two, we want to be able to leave Iraq someday and it would be easier if we didn’t have to build it all up from scratch first.
What a maroon.
Very thought-provoking, as always.
Kevin
Congrats on getting published. If you can string a few of those together, someone might actually pay you for blathering off.
I know Prof. Bernaldez fairly well, and I can say with a fair amount of certainty that he’s not an idiot. That being said, I think he’s way off base with arguing that the anti-war movement had any effect at all on the way in which the war was fought. I hope he wasn’t suggesting that without the peace protests, the US would have carpet-bombed Iraq into oblivion.
Another thing that rubbed me wrong was his line, “In fact, any country that has supported the U.S., actively or otherwise, must have been branded a potential enemy by Muslim countries sympathetic to the Iraqi cause.” I’m sorry, but I’m not sure if we can correctly refer to the efforts of certain sectors of Iraqi society to protect Saddam Hussein as the “Iraqi cause.” “Iraqi Baathist” cause, perhaps. But definately not the “Iraqi cause.”
I am sorry to brand Prof. Bernaldez an idiot but only a complete nincompoop would believe the nonsense he espouses
Your opinions about the issue in the troop dispatch seem to resonate Korean conservatives’ opinions even though yours are different from those in that the latter is quite much based on the attitude of “worship of America.”
Yes, I know the reality of “winner takes it all” which also can be applied to this Iraq case. In fact, Bush took oil at the expense of Worldwide criticism of that unlegitimized war on Iraq.
Yes, we need oil, we need US market, and indeed we need the deployment of US troops in Korean. Above all, we also know what the penalty would be if we would refuse to send our troops to Iraq.
But the US demand of sending our troops is not “polite asking.” As you know, the arrogant Bush as a way to manage domestic criticism on the Iraq issue tries to threaten other countries whose economy is much dependent on the US market to dispatch combat units in Iraq.
However, I don’t think Bush will appreciate it even if we send our troops to Iraq. Historically, bad guys always stab their friends in the back after all. In Bush’s eyes, US-Korea relationship is even not alliance but subordinate one. In his eyes, we are not a friend but a servant.
I don’t think we have much to lose even though we do not send our troops. What we could get benefited from that dispatch is an after-war-recovery construction which may be good for some industries that have a stake on it. Nothing else.
Another reason that this issue will not provoke US conservative wing is that Bush is in emergency to manage domestic issues like economy to win the next year’s election. What American mainstream media pay attention to is not the issue of dispatch of South Korea’s troop, but NK’s nuclear issue.
I know you are quite intelligent and far reasonable in expressing your opinions. Please don’t provide Korean conservatives with seemingly reasonable cause. Just let them propose to send our troop without discussions because we are benefited from our dear American and Bush…..
Meanwhile, we need to take time and wish Bush’s demise next year.
I happened to agree with you somewhat in the sense that Korean conservatives need to cut the “worship America” crap. Personal feelings aside, emotion is not what you base foreign policy decisions on, and if they honestly feel that sending troops to Iraq is not in their interests, than they need to come out and say so. “Loyalty” is not a good enough reason to go to war.
I disagree quite strongly, however, with your characterization of Bush’s views on Korea. To be blunt, the Bush people do NOT view Korea as a servant - they view it as a burden. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Co. have made it quite clear that they see the American troop presence in Korea as a strategic liability, and it’s American conservatives who have spearheaded the attacks on the US-ROK alliance. Still, I guess there is room to argue.
I also adhear to a school of international relations that views concepts of “legitimate” and “illegitimate” with a fair amount a skepticism. International laws are not “law” in the same way that domestic laws are - they are more like “international norms,” and those norms get broken quite frequently when national interests are at stake. Was the Iraq war “illegal”? Perhaps, but not any more so than the Kosovo War, a conflict in which a number of very vocal opponents of the Iraq War (namely France and Germany) participated. The debate over the legitimacy of “international law” is a common one in international relations, and I’m not saying that my view is the only one. I just wish to clarify which angle I’m coming from.
As far as providing ammo to Korean conservatives, well, I can’t help that. I’m simply arguing a case. Besides, it’s not like the GNP reads the Korea Times. If I write it in Korean and get it printed in the Chosun Ilbo, then it’s time to worry
Thanks for your comments so far, and I see you have a nice blog going there. I just added it to my blog list to the left.
I read the online version of your Korean Times column and I could not be in more agreement. In particular, the discussion on how Korea’s international stature would be enhanced by joining the fray seems to me to be dead-nuts good guidance. Unfortunately, the comments appended to the column appear to indicate that the subject matter was way over the heads of the average reader of the Korean Times. Somewhat upsetting is that each seems to have a burr beneath his saddle with regard to three-decade-old happenings in Vietnam. I’m not sure any direct correlation can be made concerning the wars in Iraq and Vietnam. Of course, the commenters are probably not a representative sample of the newspaper’s readership, so I could be wrong.
On a positive note, congratulations on getting published. It needs to occur more often.