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On Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:34:07 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


wrote in message
. ..
On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:41:24 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


wrote in message
m...
On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:25:40 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

So you don't think Kim moving from WWII Soviet surplus Nagant rifles
and a few aging migs to a nuke and a missile that they tested by
shooting over Japan is troubling?
That is not a worse situation? In spite of us keeping 50,000 troops
there for 57 years. Did we make it better or worse. If we had just
come home, they would have finished their civil war and followed the
Chinese example of joining the world.


I do think it's troubling, but since you're insistent about the
specifics
of
military adventure, no deaths have occurred this year.

As I said, we've pretty much kept the peace. They claim a lot, but
they
do
very little.


We may haver somewhat "kept the peace" if you considered Kim sinking a
ship a couple months ago "peaceful" but strategically we lost ground.
The regional threat is exponentially worse that it ever was.
Even if Kim's bomb doesn't work, he can still contaminate a whole city
with radiation and effectively destroy it.
If that is Seoul it is horrible. If it is Tokyo it is a catastrophe

Why would there be a difference in horribleness between the two?

In any case, no Americans have died since 1953, which is what you were
claiming as better off.


No that was your criteria.
By that standard we won in Vietnam. No Americans have died there since
1975 either and we didn't even have to spend a dime on an occupation.
They are essentially demilitarized, not a nuclear state. Economically
Vietnam is entering the world marketplace very quickly. Maybe that is
the lesson we should take away from the difference in the two
policies.

I think that sometimes we should just step back and let these
countries work out their own problems.

You said (first, I might add)...

The question is whether we are actually accomplishing anything or are we
just prolonging a war for grand children to fight. We have been in Korea
for
almost 60 years and things are worse now than they were in 1953.

There is no relevant equivalency with VN, since that was was lost, and we
left.

We have left S. Korea alone and only are there to ensure the North doesn't
get overly aggressive. We've mostly succeeded.


We have only succeeded in maintaining the DMZ we established in
1953.The threat form the north is exponentially greater than it was 57
years ago.
It really does beg the question, what would have happened if we had
just let the north win.
Would communism have just collapsed like it has everywhere else where
we ignore it? We seem to prolong the system when we fight it. Once we
normalize relations the citizens start finding out what the rest of
the world is doing and bring change from within. Satellites, cell
phones and the internet seems to be a lot more powerful that guns and
bombs.

Are you seriously trying to make the argument that the S. Koreans would have
better off if the North had won??

That's really outlandish.