Reply #135: Since I opened this thread, I probably oughta' post a couple of comments... [View All]

along the lines of Posteritatis' observation about human agency.
We can apply it to the world-at-large.

I've just finished Taing for a History course called 20th-Century World. While the professor interwove colonialism throughout the course (as expected) he also underlined another repercussion of the paternalistic element of most colonialism; it blinded us to the idea that, while colonialism certainly was a signal factor in such horrifying events as Rwanda, nations and peoples are perfectly capable of starting wars or genocides for their own reasons (simply to speak to the tendency-to-want-to-dominate-others aspect of human nature).

There is no more official Cold War, but we are dealing with one of the last of the Cold War confrontations, which has morphed over the years into something less about client states than about the nut-craziness, and oppressiveness, of its current dictator.

As noted in several answers, we signed a treaty, and committed ourselves to the mutual defense of S. Korea; I agree that we are compelled to honor that while in the breach. And we are compelled to pursue every avenue to find a peaceful solution that leaves S. Korea's safety intact. Can we afford to fight a war there? No, I don't see how we can. We're so over-extended abroad, and so skewed/screwed in how we prioritize our debt and domestic expenditures that, simply in the crassest of economic terms, war would be a disaster. In human terms, an unmitigated disaster.

I also agree with a sentiment I think most feel at the moment: even contemplating what it all means in human terms as we step closer to the FEBA is extremely sobering, and one hopes that this can end peacefully, and with the miracle of something positive as a result.

As for suggestions that this may be some sort of ploy to start a war with N. Korea, I respectfully disagree; we would certainly win the war, but I think both S. Korea and the US would view it as a pyrrhic victory which neither wants.

Anyway...just my take on some of what has been talked about.