Danegeld

I heard this weekend on NPR that Iran is threatening to recommence making plutonium unless its demands are met The European Union promised to make a "very attractive offer" of economic inducemtns to dissuade Iran from building its bonb.

I heard a second story, rather similar, that N. Korea has announced that it will commence separating plutonium (or whatever) unless its demands are met by S. Korea and (I guess) the U.S. and China, maybe? We're continuing to negotiate.

Now wait just a damned minute.

If it is our announced National Interest that as few brutal, vicious, terrorism supporting regimes possess atomic weaponry as possible (and it sure as h*ll IS), what is this business of trying to buy them off? It sounds a LOT like national ransom, "If we pay you all this money, will you please not hurt us? PLEASE?" to ME.

I prefer the Israeli approach: Before the first Gulf War, Iraq really WAS developing atomic weaponry and making plutonium at a particular reactor site. The Israeli IDF, (in a move that received NONE of the accolades it deserved from its neighboring Arab kleptocracies who were themselves protected by it) , bombed the reactor site into rubble. No deals THERE.

I am at a loss to explain this. NO ONE wants these countries to have nuclear arms. NO ONE is likely to interefere; lots of folks are likely to assist, come to that. WHY ARE WE PAYING ONE DAMNED DIME?

Once you START paying the Dane, you will pay the Dane forever.

(Note: Apologies to modern Denmark; I am of Danish extraction on my mother's side, but the modern Dane bears almost no resemblance to his ancient forebears)

 

Sooner or later that´s what will happen. Those nuclear activities will have to be terminated the quick way. And Korea should be the next customer in the queue.

 

So what do we gain by waiting? There can be no compromise on this. I am not talking about regime change or invasion or anything else of the sort. I am talking about protecting the WORLD from nuclear armed rouge states by removing their ability to make these devices.

You know, this is the thing for which I never forgave President Carter. Sometimes war IS the answer and attempts at peacemaking only prolong the agony and intensify the danger. His Peace Accords between Israel and the PLO is a good example of inappropriate peacemaking; neither side had any interest in peace on terms that the other side could possibly accept. So rather than let them fight it out once and for all, he simply disregarded these differences (such as the possession of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Right of Return) and left them for "later". When "later" got here, these problems were still unresoved and remain unresolved to this day. That's why his whole "accord" unravelled; the parties hadn't actually agreed to anything!

The Iranian hostage crisis is the other great error of his Presidency. When the ayatollahs' "students" seized our Embassy and took American diplomats hostage, all he could do, it seemed, was wring his hands and plead. He did order an abortive resuce mission but it was ill conceived from the beginning as his military advisors warned him.

What he COULD have done and maybe SHOULD have done was issue an ultimatum something like this: "You have permitted your subjects to violate the sovereignty of the United States in an outrageous manner that is a clear act of war. We have no desire to resort to war but neither will the United States tolerate this treatment at the hands of any government, revolutionary or otherwise.
THerefore, I give you 48 hours to clear the "students" from our Embassy compound and return all hostages safely. At the expiration of 48 hours, if this has not been done, I will order the firebombing of an Iranian city of my choice. If this demand is still not met within 24 hours thereafter, a second city will be firebombed, and a third and a fourth until, if necessary, all of your country will be reduced to a smoking ruin."
Furthermore, we will take continued refusal to do as we demand to be a clear sign that you are now the sworn enemy of the United States. We will inform the Soviet Union that we no longer see any objection to their making Iran a protectorate. We trust them more than we trust YOU."
"48 hours. After that, Iran will cease to exist as an independent political entity."

No, I realize that I couldn't have ordered such a thing even if I were President. Well, maybe I could have, and that's a damned good argument for my never being made President. But its what I wanted, emotionally, to see. And HAD we made it VERY clear that the United State will tolerate NOTHING, will hold governments responsible for EVERYTHING, and will accept NO EXCUSES, I wonder how long the Saudis would have continued to support Bin Laden

 

So, Iran and North Korea have weapons of mass destruction? I think our current president knows what is the right thing to do!

 

I HOPE so, but invading Iraq has tied up so much military power that I'm not sure he CAN take appropriate action.

But SOMETHING must be done and paying these criminals off ISN'T IT!

 

BTW, I meant "rogue" states, not "rouge" states.

Somehow I can't imagine that a "rouge" state would present much of a threat...

 

You only need a couple of men (or women), and a B-52 loaded to the top (not that I wish anything to happen to those Iranian nuclear flirtings ). But definitely this is unacceptable, and I doubt these people at Brussels will solve anything. I´d have the bombers ready....

 

BTW, I may be wrong but I think it was Clinton who started paying Korea to keep them off those nuclear ambitions. It obviously doesn´t work as it doesn´t work to negotiate with this type of rouge states

 

I think that Iran is going to continue to develop nuclear weapons because they see them as a way of putting the Islamic (and in their case the Shiite) world on a more equal footing with the West. They probably see it as the quickest available way for them to increase their international clout. We don't like it, but at least its a rational course of action from their perspective.

The North Koreans are scarer to me because I don't trust the Dear Leader's sanity. There's a strange hermit-kingdom thing happening there that suggests paranoia at the top. So I fear that they may act irrationally at any time.

But while both countries can be expected to to pursue their own agendas, they will simultaneously try to turn the world's growing concern to their own benefit by playing kind of an extortion game with us.

Unfortunately, the US is probably the only country that can take on Iran. China and Russia could probably do North Korea.

The US did take that preemptive course with Iraq. We didn't get a whole lot of international support. I expect that if we went off on either Iran or Noth Korea we would get even less support and would be widely denounced as the aggressor. Lots of powers (China, Russia, France) would privately cheer our action and be relieved that we were doing the heavy lifting for them, while publicly denouncing us and trying to exploit the wave of worldwide anti-Americanism to their own benfit.

And the downsized post Cold War American military is already committed to such an extent in Iraq that I don't know if we even have the ability to engage another major opponent right now. I'm not sure if the American people have the will to support such a thing either. It might take another domestic 9-11 to get the US population on board.

In that sense, the Iraqi insurgents score a victory against the US every day, by making it more and more costly in political terms for an American administration to contemplate another adventure.

 

Henrik certainly hopes so.

I think that you have just squandered whatever hope you had of acquiring a Ph.D. from KU.

 

Re: Re: Danegeld

I think we could get support if we put together a real case against them.
We didn't get any support for the Iraqi War because we had inspectors telling us there wasn't any WMD and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush's war for his daddy and oil buddies is bankrupting us and making it impossible for us to act when there is say......cause.
North Korea is giving us cause and Iran is starting to...by their own admission. I think we could garner support if we had real evidence along with what the countries are admitting to. Not that that we have any money or troops left to do anything about it. And not that I would be thrilled that we take on Kim Jong the freaking nut.

 

I worry more about Pakistan than Iran and North Korea. It has nuclear weapons, mediun range missiles, and F-16 aircraft. Should the army be overthrown (remember the Shah in 1979) then it is possible that Pakistan could become a militant Islamic country with WMD. Of course Pakistan is currently a US ally.

 

If there is ever a nuclear exchange of small tactical weapons, my first thought would be India and Pakistan going at it, possibly over Kashmir.

One of my neighbors is a former major in the Indian Army, and served for several years with one of their mountain regiments in Kashmir and the surrounding territories. He tells quite the stories about artillery exchanges and going out on patrol at an altitude of 10,000 feet. He says the cold and altitude exact many more casualties than direct military action.

Frighteningly enough, he also said that the command, control and communication of each military is no where near First World standards, and each side likes to intimidate the other by intimating that control of the tactical nuclear weapons is held by field commanders. Swell.