North Korea issued not just one but two statements yesterday declaring a state of war on the Korean Peninsula.
And yet, the sun still rose this morning, armageddon miraculously avoided for another day.
As always, Andrei Lankov is the voice of reason, this time in the WaPo:
Andrei Lankov, author of several books about North Korea and a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, said “small-scale shooting is possible and even probable, but nothing more serious than that.”
“The location of mansions where Pyongyang’s leaders enjoy their Hennessy cognac is well-known to the American military, and North Koreans know the precision of U.S. cruise missiles,” Lankov said. “The North will steer clear of any action which might lead to a real confrontation.”
Well, at least one hopes the North will steer clear of a real confrontation — my fear, expressed earlier, is that while the North might have had DJ’s and Roh’s numbers, they may miscalculate how a very pissed-off Lee Myung-bak will react to a military provocation. For example, a clash that would have remained limited just two years ago might end up with ROKAF F-15s raining death and destruction on North Korean missile and artillery bases along the West Sea coast, and Pyongyang might find itself with a “real confrontation” it neither planned for or wanted.
{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
Not the cognac trope again!
Now, I like and admire Andrei Lankov as much as Robert does — mostly because I usually agree with him — but god, oh god, can be leave behind the tired cliche of North Korea being led by a bunch of cognac swilling womanizers? I mean, if my time in Korea, Japan, and China has taught me anything, it’s that ALL of these countries are led by cognac-swilling womanizers!
Well, someone had to say it.
DLB
Today’s Chosun Ilbo front page editorial – “We’ve been defrauded by North Korea!”, pertaining to North Korea’s hide and seek game while buying time with the 6 party talks. Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun are not exactly popular figures right now in the Korean Conservative circles.
To the extent belittling the enemy builds confidence and courage, cheers. But I’d remind you all that the ROK and USA govts said much the same things about the North before June 1950. And (speaking of cognac-swilling womanizers whose pleasure palaces could be easily targeted by advanced weaponry in the opening minutes of any conflict) Saddam Hussein.
We all know Bush-Cheney told us their splendid little war in Iraq would last a few weeks, and that the occupation would last a few months and pay for itself from oil revenues. Most of you seem to have forgotten, however, that people like MacArthur (to whom history has not been kind) expressed similar contempt for the North Korean regime, once upon a time.
to qualify as a Korean conservative, you should have done Korean military service to back it up.
Ky region is most voiceferous, but also curiously leads the nation in dodging service.
it’s a shitty state of the state.
fuck the Kim family.
Stop spreading ugly genes down generations.
ddong bae.
gop seul muh ri.
short height.
pudgy face.
NK have been doing this since the beginning, there is low low chance of Nk launching the first attack, if they do then say bye bye to NK regime.
If there was a war I would totally sink all my money in the Korean stock market as soon as fighting drew to an end. Post-war reconstruction is always a guaranteed winner.
#1: I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree with you on this. The fact that these guys swill XO and live in mansions while the rest of the populace eats bark and grass IS news. Although the leaders of South Korea, China and Japan may do the same thing, that isn’t news, since a significant chunk of the populace in those countries is also swilling XO and chasing broads, and people are getting three square meals a day at worst.
As usual, I think Lankov will be proven right, although it’ll probably be a few shots fired on the DMZ, not a naval battle (I think the Norks are too afraid to do a NLL incursion under LMB’s rules of engagement).
http://twitter.com/kcna_dprk
ㅋ_ㅋ
Now that the North Koreans have killed Roh Moo Hyun, I think we will see some real action.
#3
I don’t think anyone believes a conflict with North Korea would be a cakewalk (thousands of missiles and all that) but the end result of a full-scale conflict would almost certainly see the end of the Kim clan’s rule of NK.
@3
I know you like to toe the hard-left line, and that prevents you from saying anything positive, or even anything remotely not negative, about the Iraq War. But the fact is that the Bush administration was mostly right about Saddam Hussein. The Saddam government and military went down fast – within weeks – and was never really reconstituted. If you wanna talk about the insurgency, well, that’s a different thing, and Saddam had nothing to do with that.
For various reasons, there is little concern of any kind of insurgency in N Korea after KJI goes down. Once the war’s over, it’s over.
“For various reasons, there is little concern of any kind of insurgency in N Korea after KJI goes down. Once the war’s over, it’s over.”
Hmmm…If my memory serves me right I believe that’s what DOD officials and other starry-eyed Neocons predicted would happen after the end of “major combat operations”.
Colontos also cites “various reasons” as to why there won’t be an insurgency following the collapse of the DPRK. Care to be so kind as to cite any?
“…the fact is that the Bush administration was mostly right about Saddam Hussein. The Saddam government and military went down fast – within weeks – and was never really reconstituted.”
I’m sorry, NO. The Bushies were mostly WRONG about Saddam. They said he had all these nasty, scary WMD’s-he didn’t. They said he was in bed with al-Qaeda-he wasn’t. They said he was this un-containable threat to the stability to the Middle East, but the trouble is that after 1991 such notions were flat-out dated. If anything, it was Bush’s invasion that did more to make the region volatile.
Yeah, I’ll grant you that the Bushies were right about how quick it all would be. But on the substantive issues as to why the invasion was undertaken, they were flat out wrong. Period.
@12: if you don’t understand the differences between Iraq and N Korea, then you’re beyond my help.
Hey fuckface, I was explicitly referring to only one thing… oh wait, looks like you got it:
Yeah, I’m right about that, and, funny, that’s the only fucking thing I said. You must be a goddamn fucking genius. If you wanna respond to what I wrote, fine. But you agree with me on that. The only areas where you disagree is where your leftist brainwashing has convinced you I MUST be referring to. First let’s try to find a cure for your verbal diarrhea, and then we can work on those critical thinking skills, you fucking ass-clown.
My, my aren’t we sensitive!
Yes, I understand that you were referring to only one thing. But you see, that one thing you were referring to is why your logic is so utterly flawed. C’mon, everybody knew that taking out Saddam was the easy part. It was formulating a reasonable rationale as well as having a sound policy for what happened after that was the key. To say that the Bushies got that one part right and wanting to give them credit is like congratulating a college graduate for understanding the concept of gravity.
Your grasping here and it’s not looking pretty.
Furthermore, you still haven’t answered my question about why you think there is minimal probability of an insurgency in N. Korea following a military conflict. Since you deemed me lacking in critical thinking skills, I only thought it wise to ask you-Colontos the Sagacious.
Sincerely yours,
“fucking ass-clown”
I think the burden of proof is on you for the insurgency thing. If you got the chops, then let’s see ‘em, numbnuts.
Okay, idiot, let’s go through this real slow-like:
WeikuBoy sez:
So he draws a comparison between people thinking that N Korea would be easy to defeat (it wasn’t) and people thinking that Saddam would be easy to defeat (he was). So I sez to WeikuBoy, I sez, that ain’t a real good comparison, seeing as how Saddam went down easy.
Then Tilly shoves his shit-smeared nose in. See, here’s the problem, and it’s the same problem that Weiku has: it’s called Bush derangement syndrome. Whenever someone states that something that occured during the Bush years was not a complete and total disaster, you fucking lefty zombies come crawlin’ outta the woodwork, yelling about how each and every little thing that occured was a total loss. Well, come to find out, smartass, you agree with the only point I was making. That’s all I said, and that’s all I meant, and if you weren’t a brain-dead chimp-fucking mouth breather, then perhaps you’d be able to pick up on that.
colontos: Bush was right about this one thing
tilly: NO HE WAS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING!!!!1111oneoneone (oh yeah, except for the one thing that you were referring to)
Who looks like a damn idiot in this exchange?
If anybody looks like a “damn idiot” in this exchange, I believe the kudos go to you Colontoscopy.
Let me be so kind as to reiterate for you, your very own words:
“But the fact is that the Bush administration was mostly right about Saddam Hussein. The Saddam government and military went down fast – within weeks – and was never really reconstituted.”
Do you not see the problem with this sentence here? When you write that Bushies’ were mostly right about Saddam and then cite how quickly his regime folded you’re arguing that this was what essentially preoccupied the minds of Bush administration officials. That this was the crux of their analysis regarding Saddam. That no other considerations were discussed. Nothing about alleged al-Qaeda links or WMD’s. Well, anybody whose even skimmed a major newspaper over the past at least 7 years should know that this balderdash. This conclusion you cite about the Bushies’ conclusions regarding Saddam was a mere detail, not “most” of anything when it came to the issue of Saddam.
Please, read your own sentences before you try some lame-ass backpedaling, thinking maybe I won’t see the egg you’ve gotten all over your face.
As for me coming up with reasons as to why there won’t be an insurgency in N. Korea, I have to say that this utterly lame. The onus is not on me to come up with reasons as to why something will happen. You asserted it. The onus is on you. Put up or shut up. Stop with the cop-outs. If anything, that’s what idiotic.
Why did the insurgency occur in Iraq? Some reasons:
- Insurgency being a common trope for Islamic radicals, of which there were many in and around Iraq
- The lack of nearby countries involved in the postwar to maintain border security, suppress illegal activity, disrupt the insurgency, etc.
- In fact, nearby countries were interested in propagating chaos, and therefore provided various levels of support to the insurgency
- Insurgencies are conducted by “true believers” like the insurgents in Iraq
Another important fact: the insurgents were not supporters of Saddam.
None of these conditions apply to N Korea. The Norks are not Muslims. Nor are they “true believers,” even in Communism. Communism is a dead religion in NK, used only by the powerful to maintain their power. Neighboring countries (S Korea, Japan, and China) have absolutely no interest in seeing chaos in NK. They want stability. Even if an insurgency started to germinate, you have two countries with huge armies on either side, neither of which would be at all interested in seeing an insurgency.
There are a few reasons, asshole, that an insurgency will not occur in N Korea. Got anything to say?
As to the other thing: you’re being a stubborn idiot, and you know it.
No. I’m not arguing that. No one who was not suffering from an acute case of BDS would ever think that. Have you ever heard of a little thing called “context”? It makes it so we don’t have to talk as much, because intelligent people following the conversation can infer things! Neat, huh? Now, little buddy, you might notice that Weiku was talking specifically about military strength. And I responded on the same topic. Therefore, I didn’t feel the need to state, in full, that I was referring specifically to the thing that everybody was talking about. Anybody with half a fucking brain, Tilly, would get that. Guess that counts you out.
And let me help you with the word “mostly,” which seems to be giving you some trouble. I said “mostly right,” not “right about most things.” And again, that whole context thing will tell you that I meant “mostly right” about Saddam’s military weakness. Not totally right, I would argue, because he was able to put up a bit more resistance and last a bit longer than folks anticipated. That’s what “mostly” signifies in this sentence. Apparently you’re not too hot on this whole English thing. It’s okay. It’s hard. Maybe some of the English teachers on this blog can give you a hand.
Oh, and congrats on the “colon” pun. Very fucking original.
Maybe some other folks can chime in. Did you understand what I meant, or was all the explanation that Tilly needed really necessary? Was my language really that obtuse, or is Tilly dense?
Chime.
US and Korean forces engage the Norks, Pyongyang falls within days and is occupied. Initial confusion, but North Korean territory is basically quiet within a week or two. US and SK forces patrol the streets of the capital. The UN sets up an office, several NGOs put some boots on the ground to get set up for humanitarian work.
Over the course of the next several weeks US/SK soldiers start taking sniper fire. Old tank shells start blowing up at roadsides as convoys go past. Who did it? We don’t know yet. The news talks about “Kim Jong-il loyalists”, “Maoist rebels” and “NK fanatics looking to establish a realcommunist utopia”, but nobody knows.
Then the Norks start killing each other. KJI has kept a lid on intra-NK hatreds for decades. Time for some revenge. One night, everyone named Kim in a certain area is killed in a brutal massacre by the Lees. A day later, a vegetable cart blows up and rips a hole through the UN HQ.
The US attacks what it thinks is an insurgent stronghold. Some of the dead are found to have Chinese-made weapons. More worrying, it’s found that some of the fighters are ethnic Koreans from China. It’s not known if they are acting alone or under China’s auspices. The Chinese authorities claim they have nothing to do with it.
In smaller population centers, gangs of militia begin forming with a wide variety of objectives. Some just want local security, some are out to kill former NK communists. Some have cell phones and money supplied by distant SK relatives who want their families the reclaim old home territory. The SK newspapers find out that, right after graduation, several hundred young South Korean men have ‘disappeared’. We quickly realize that they have sneaked into the North for whatever misguided youthful reason. Something they all want, though, is to pick up a gun and kill an American soldier, or even a South Korean soldier.
Trying to make sense of the detiorating situation, analysts figure out that within North Korea, several clans are battling among themselves, all are battling the Americans, money and guns are coming from China, money and reserves are coming from South Korea, and North Korean territory is being divided up and civilians forced out of their homes along clan lines. US soldiers are dying at a rate of a dozen or so a week, and nobody is completely sure why.
Then, one day, 30 well-armed NK men launch a suicide attack simultaneously on the Blue House and US embassy in Seoul. Later, intelligence agents learn that the operation was planned with the help of Al Quaeda. Within South Korea, pro-left political parties goad hundreds of thousands of supporters onto the streets, blaming the US for everything, and demanding the immediate withdraw of all US forces from the entire peninsula. The SK government has no choice but to dig back into the tear gas stockpiles and start gassing its own citizens.
All this has taken about 3 to 6 months.
You can’t imagine this, colontos?
Saying the Bushies were right about the war and wrong about the insurgency is like saying that except for a brush with an iceberg Titanic’s maiden voyage was a success. “And other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” Anyone who had so much as stubbed a toe on a history book could see that the war in Iraq was just beginning, not ending, when the Lesser Bush posed under the Mission Accomplished banner. The notion that “the war” and “the insurgency” are [note: present tense, six years on] different things is silly, and exactly the kind of thinking that led to the disaster in Iraq. Forest, trees, etc.
As far as my “toeing the hard left line” — wait a minute, instructions are arriving from Haupt Leutnant Barry Hussein Hitler Stalin Mao Obama X — OK, I’m back — I assure you I opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq not because I thought it might hasten La Revolution, but because sending a Judeo-Christian army to occupy Iraq is a fool’s errand and the reasons for doing so were such obvious lies. I also think Obama is wrong about Afghanistan, and that his war there, if seriously pursued, will surely end badly. But at least he’s not lying about it. Yet.
Returning to the topic of North Korea, my point is simply that misunderestimating a foreign enemy (and/or assuming the enemy will have the courtesy to comply with U.S. war planning by wearing easily identifiable uniforms and fighting in easily-defeated formations) is an easily avoidable yet strangely common error. As is the notion that nations enjoy being occupied by the armies of other nations.
Very cool scenario, LinkD. I would put it into the “possible but not probable” category. But very cool. Someone ought to write a book or make a movie or something.
Linkd: interesting scenario. Hard to imagine. Why? Because the motivation and the background are not there. It’s easy to write a story that sounds cool. It’s much harder to attribute plausible motivations to people. Even in your story: we don’t know who’s doing it, why they’re doing it, etc. Because it’s hard to imagine motivations for the actions in your story.
Weiku: surely you acknowledge that Saddam’s army and the insurgents were different people with different motivations. You have to agree with that since it’s one of your main points: Saddam and al Qaeda were not linked and in fact disagreed on everything except KILL AMERICA.
Again, my point is limited. Our intelligence re Iraq’s conventional military forces was mostly correct. We correctly estimated their forces, by and large, as well as what it would take to subdue them. Your point about not underestimating enemies is correct. Your use of Saddam as an example is not.
Sorry Colontos, huffing and puffing profanity is not a substitute for a real argument.
This whole notion that you’re pedaling about how the Bushies were right about the initial military phase of the Iraq invasion and how they deserve credit for is utterly nonsensical. Listen, most reasonable people knew that such a thing would transpire. Lefties, Democratic politicians, Klingons at the DOD, you name it-they never argued that taking down Saddam was the hard part. To want to give kudos to the Bushies for getting this right is like giving someone a gold medal for being able to walk and chew gum. I find it highly ironic to be accused of being some partisan hack, when in fact it is you who is taking something rather insignificant an exaggerating into some major accomplishment. Can we say Right Wing Gopher Boy?
As for your reasons as to why there won’t be an insurgency in NORK, I find it highly laughable. You accuse me of lacking critical thinking skills but you seem to have no problem in demonstrating the above yourself. To wit:
“The Norks are not Muslims. Nor are they “true believers,” even in Communism. Communism is a dead religion in NK, used only by the powerful to maintain their power. Neighboring countries (S Korea, Japan, and China) have absolutely no interest in seeing chaos in NK. They want stability. Even if an insurgency started to germinate, you have two countries with huge armies on either side, neither of which would be at all interested in seeing an insurgency.”
1) So what if the NORK’s aren’t Muslims? Insurgency isn’t the only provenance of Islamic radicals. How do you explain the FARC, FRELIMO, the Maoists in Nepal, the Tamil Tigers, Basque seperatists, The Lords Resistance Army, or Shining Path?
2) So what if they aren’t true believers in communism? What’s makes you think that true believers in say nationalism or not wanting to be occupied by a foreign power aren’t inclined to insurgent behavior?
3) I’m sure many countries adjacent to NORK in NE Asia don’t want to see an insurgency. But that doesn’t mean they’ll get they’re wish. A lot of countries in the Middle East didn’t want to see a violent insurgency in Iraq. Countries like Syria and Jordan didn’t want refugees pouring in. Turkey didn’t want to see Kurdish nationalism for fear that it would have a ripple effect within their own territory. But, as we all know, it happened anyways. You argue that countries neighboring Iraq wanted to sow chaos in the country. Sorry, but this is blinkered take on what happened. The arming and financing of insurgent groups by outside powers was not simply for the sake of sowing case but to ensure that the side amenable to their interests won out. In fact, countries like Iran want order in Iraq, so long as that order in congruent with their strategic interests.
And no, I don’t think a huge large army by two countries will make all that much difference in impeding an insurgency should the masses of NORK decide on that course of action. One, from everything I’ve read about the Chinese military nothing indicates that they’re even remotely prepared or have any desire to engage in such an operation. Second, the US is currently engaged in two insurgencies right now with very little to show for it. I doubt that American leaders or its people are really up for another round of counterinsurgency.
Again, Colontos, you’re mired in the same old wishful thinking of the Neocons back in 2002/03. C’mon man, time to move on.
“Again, my point is limited. Our intelligence re Iraq’s conventional military forces was mostly correct. We correctly estimated their forces, by and large, as well as what it would take to subdue them.”
Indeed Colontos. So limited to be utterly useless as any meaningful unit of worthy analysis. In fact, I’ll do you one better: Your point isn’t so much limited as it is utterly vapid and vacuous. It like stating that the sky is blue.
Weiku: surely you acknowledge that Saddam’s army and the insurgents were different people with different motivations.
You’re wrong. Sunni Iraqis dominated both Saddam’s military and the so-called insurgency. The Shiites have for the most part played it cool, no doubt delighted to see Baghdad remade from a Sunni to a Shiite city as a by-product of the U.S. occupation, content to see what may come from democracy (as they are the majority), and saving their powder for the inevitable civil war. Meanwhile, the decision (blamed on Bremer) to blacklist all Ba’ath party members led to the famous line that “400,000 Sunnis will join the insurgency by nightfall.” The U.S. military effort has been focused on the Sunni areas to the north and west of Baghdad.
Bush (Jr.), at the time of the military invasion he authorized, didn’t know about Sunnis or Shiites or the differences between the two. Now that is deranged.
That doesn’t matter at all. My story is based almost exactly on Iraq II. Substitute the SK schoolboys for Syrians, etc. As it was unfolding, most of us (very much including the Western media) didn’t really know about Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. We didn’t know that Iraq’s ruling class (the Baaths) came from one home town (Tikrit) and that Iraq’s army was mostly Sunni but the population was 60% Shia, and that Iraq was a cauldron on complicated hostilities. So the news just came up with phrases like “Baath party remnants”, “Saddam loyalists”, “Al Qaeda sympathizers” and on and on. But these labels changed every few days because the media had no clue who was doing the shooting or why. Neither did the US soldiers at first.
We all just learned as we went along. There wasn’t a single neocon on earth who had the slightest clue WHY Iraq would erupt after the fall of Saddam. They remained clueless for a year or more after most of the rest of the world started to make sense of the different factions. The lack of outsiders’ knowledge about motivations for the killings was irrelevant – the killing happened anyway. And my story could happen, too. We know that because my story DID happen, in Iraq, where it turned out that nobody had a damn clue what the background, motivations and ambitions of the local groups might be.
Weiku and Tilly are demonstrating perfectly what happens when you run afoul of BDS. Sputtering rage. The funny thing is that they both acknowledge that I’m right.
but HOW DARE YOU… etc.
I agree with one thing. My point was as obvious as saying that the sky is blue. Weiku, however, stated that the sky wasn’t blue. Or, if you prefer, that the Iraqi sky is the exact same shade as the N Korean one.
If you folks think I’m right, then shut yer traps. Respond to the point I made and not all the others that you think I made.
“Yes, you’re right, but BUSH IS A FASCIST!!!”
Linkd,
I’m not going to pretend to know what most people knew. But I knew most of that before the Iraq War began. We did have a prior war there, remember. Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Baathists coming from Tikrit, hostilities, Shias being 60% but Sunnis having almost exclusive political control… I was aware of all this by the late ’90s. Fuck, maybe the government should have called me. Folks also know quite a bit about N Korea. We have some real bona fide experts on NK here at the hole, and others (like me) who are not experts but who have done some reading and are aware of what the experts say and know a bit about how things work up there. It’s impossible to predict the future, but we can discuss probabilities. There was a high probability of insurgency in Iraq, given the facts on the ground there as well as initial US strategy. Obviously we don’t know what US strategy would be in a hypothetical war on NK, or I don’t. But we can still talk probabilities, and I think folks would agree that the chance of a large, sustainable insurgency in NK is very low, so low as to make the possibility discountable.
Tilly, your “colon” jokes are almost as cool as when gbevers was calling you “Silly Tilly.”
Of course you thought that my “colon” joke was lame Colontos. Why wouldn’t you? It was at your expense. There you go again stating the obvious.
As for your point about the Bushies’ predictions about Saddam, even if Weiku and I agree with you regarding that fact, I still fail to see how it even remotely comes up to the level of a reasonable argument. In fact, it’s really a non-argument, seeing as how most people across the political spectrum come to that conclusion, BDS or not. In other words, you nor they own it. While on the point of BDS, you accuse us of BDS, yet in advancing this line of argument you seem to be demonstrating the exact opposite of BDS, BAS (Bush Apologist Syndrome). You know, the malady in which an individual hyperventilates, lunges at, and works up a profuse sweat over trying to find something, anything that could absolve the Bushies as being right about something when it came to Iraq and Saddam. Even if its an anodyne one.
I find it even more ironic that you castigate Weiku in his attempts to show how the Iraq and NORK are similar. Now, let me say at the outset, I myself don’t come to the conclusion that the two are comparable. However, the argument that you’re making about how there won’t be an insurgency in NORK following a military conflict strikes me as eerily similar to the sort of inane, asinine tropes spewed out by Neocons before the invasion: How everything following Saddam’s fall was to going to be milk and honey. Sure Iraq and NORK are two different animals, but the mindset you’ve displayed makes me feel assured that you’re merely just a commentator on a blog and not policy maker out in DC with the NE Asia portfolio. I sure hope that nobody in the policy world is calling you for advice.
Moreover, you talk about having knowledge of what it was like in Iraq before the outset of the war as well as having some secondary knowledge about the DPRK. And from these smatterings of data and anecdotes, you draw categorical conclusions as to what will or will not happen. I commend you for your efforts even if I do not agree with the end result. Really. But now you must move beyond the mere small-bore empiricism and develop a more panoramic, comparative view of insurgencies or mass social movements in general before you go spouting off you flaccid, barely held together assertions. And as a token of good will I leave you with this quote from Eric Hobsbawm:
“All social movements expand in jerks; the history of all contains abnormally, often fantastically rapid and easy mobilization of hitherto untouched masses. Almost always such expansion takes the from of contagion: a propagandist arrives in a locality, and within a short time the whole region is affected.”
I notice a pattern here. See if anyone else can find it:
I say that Bush was right about one thing. Tilly attacks me for saying that Bush was right about everything.
I say that there won’t be an insurgency in a post-war NK. Tilly attacks me for saying that everything will be “milk and honey” in a post-war NK.
So my statement is a non-argument. You’re right; it was a statement. So what is your argument? That I shouldn’t have said it, even though it’s true? This is the longest discussion I’ve ever had with someone who agreed completely with the only point I was making.
colontos: A is A
Tilly: yeah, it is, but why would you say that? It’s a non-argument. It’s a stupid assertion. It doesn’t make sense. A may be A, but it is not B, C, D, E, or F. Also, B is not C, nor is D E. Oh, and BUSH SUCKS
colontos: *shrugs* alls i said was A is A
There is nothing so droll in all the internet as “Go back and read what I said!”
In the interest of honestly and accountability, let me amend the last line of my previous post to:
colontos: alls i said was A is A, you fucking dipshit asshole limpdicked turd
Better.
“So my statement is a non-argument. You’re right; it was a statement. So what is your argument? That I shouldn’t have said it, even though it’s true? This is the longest discussion I’ve ever had with someone who agreed completely with the only point I was making.”
Let’s not get into the sheer illogical kookiness of those first two sentence and simply hope to the gods in heaven that you’re not an English teacher in Korea, Colontos. My argument isn’t that you shouldn’t have said what you did Colontos, rather that it’s so really beside the point. I never said that your argument didn’t make sense. It’s just that I don’t attribute that particular argument as some sort of merit badge for the Bush administration. It was something said by almost everybody in the lead up to the war.
Are you seeing the nuance here Colontos? You know that concept right? If you don’t, then I believe therein lies the answer as to why this conversation has dragged on.
I’m not. But more interesting: do you think that a statement and an argument are the same thing? Cause they’re not.
Neither do I. See what I mean about BDS? I wasn’t even praising Bush. You assumed that I was and went into freak-out mode.
I’m familiar with nuance, but damned if I can see any in what you’re saying. Seems like my summarization of our conversation was correct.
Well Colontos, if that’s what you sincerely believe then so be it: Bush was right about the most obvious, transparent thing in 2002/03. If you want to dish out a cookie for that so be it. Somebody has to set the bar low I suppose.
I just thought something like aid to Africa or even something on the education front would have been more noteworthy. But as they say different strokes for different folks.
Nice…err…debating with you…I guess.
Go to hell, Tilly.
I think Linkd should take over Tom Clancy’s job when he becomes too old to write. But actually, I remember the shiite vs. sunni vs. Kurd issue being brought up by the anti-war people during the debate about whether we should invade Iraq or not right before the March of 2003. I think it’s more likely for the individual North Korean generals to have intra-NK conflicts rather than any tribal/clan disputes though. Some of these soldiers have been isolated from the rest of the world for all their lives… who knows what they believe about the Western world and South Korea.
Plus, weren’t experts expecting NK troops to engage in guerrilla tactics in the numerous mountains once the initial smoke clears and their main forces get bombed to smithereens?
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