TTI is known for its intellectuals. This is a place for thinkers to gather and exchange quotes, thoughts, or other topics that might not appeal to the average gamer.
Yoshokun Shinzuku wrote:If you haven't noticed everyone's forgotten about Israel lately. News that should have been bombshell world shattering news (Israel officially announcing it was going to combine all of the small West Bank settlements into one mega-settlement/extension of East Jerusalem in the West Bank) barely made a ripple.
There are just too many real issues. North Korea being the biggest. This Iran hoohaa needs to end. The Europeans have a high vested interest in this problem going away properly w/o violence. I trust them to achieve it.
Things with Korea are going to get a lot worse once the current South Korean govt gets kicked out. The Korean people finally seem to be coming around from being anti-American North Korean apologists and realize that North Korea, low and behold, may not be in it for the glorious rise of the Korean people in a unified peninsula. The South Korean govt spends more time trying to battle with the US over its hardline policy against NK than trying to fix NK. This, obviously, is getting them no where. The next govt will start expecting real results. The big question is when NK is pushed into a real corner.
The situation is becoming much worse because of China. It can't use its power, else NK ignores it (to its own detriment), but if it doesn't, then they're marginalized. Either way, China stops being a power broker, the latter just takes longer. Plus, the NK/China border is insanely open. China doesn't want millions of North Koreans spilling into China if NK destabilizes.
China's trying to fight this all of this right now, but it's not possible unless something amazing happens in Korea that involves NK capitulation and insanely slow modernization. That is something I'm less confident in happening.
North Korea is perhaps the most grotesque example of the collectivism’s shortcomings. Insulated from revolt by China, North Korea has been allowed to decline MUCH further than most failed dictatorships. The people have routinely starved in NK for decades, and yet the military and its weapons production thrive. NK has produced oh so much military hardware for the “axis of evil”.
NK has been a rogue nuclear state during my entire lifetime. They demanded free food and monetary aid in exchange for not developing nuclear weapons, and then they developed the weapons any way. Of course, being a rogue nation is the only way these weapons get developed (ala Israel, India, and Pakistan). But at least those countries didn’t make me explicitly subsidize their development programs. Now the Dip-lo-door-mats want to give Iran the same deal they gave North Korea – Idiots.
Finally look at my little buddy Kim Jong ill, a most perfect example of corrupt bureaucrat. He enslaves the entire population of NK, and what great works does he produce? All I see are a huge military to insure his power. Of course Lil Kim does indulge his every desire. His lifestyle is like a God’s (well a very weird God) among the poverty of the collective. Yep it doesn’t get much worse than North Korea.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Did that happen in any of these collectivist societies? And yet we have allegedly intelligent people in the free world that cannot see these fantastic examples. I don’t know who is more crazy, Kim or the socialist that live beside me.
Keep your sharpened steel sword, this wooden one will be all I need!
To be honest, being in the military in the times we are in has made me re-evaluate a great deal of my politics. I get very nervous when I hear ideology mixed in with politics. You don’t really come to a conclusion on what we should do about Iran/NK, but before you do, let me inject some of my Realist (the political definition) views into to the conversion.
The purpose of the US military, as generally accepted by the general populace, is to defend the People, Freedom, Liberty (if they even know what that means), and our way of life. That’s a great warm fuzzy.
The legal purpose may be similar, but not quite. The difference is enough to take note of, especially in political arguments where ideology becomes a reason instead of a guideline.
On August 14, 2003, I took the Oath of Enlistment to join the US military. You swear the Oath to a commissioned officer (legally, a delegated representative of the US President’s authority as the Commander-In-Chief):
I, (state your full name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God.)
My job is not to defend the American people or the American way of life, it is to defend that piece of paper and the bureaucratic structure which implements it. Further, it is also to follow orders from the President and those in my Chain of Command, whatever they may be, so long as they are not illegal.
So, you have a conflict. What if the President and those below him issue an order which is not in the best interests of Constitutional and governmental preservation, but is not illegal. While theoretically it would be illegal for them to issue such an order, you can’t say that since it was bad for the US to invade Iraq it was an illegal order. It’s just too subjective.
Every American, ideally, works under the assumption that those conflicts will never really rise because the President will have those best interests at heart. I joined knowing I would have to execute orders that I would not agree with because I do not agree with this Administration’s foreign policy for the most part. I joined for myself, the first part of the Oath, and the warm fuzzy. The warm fuzzy may not be legally relevant but it is indirectly true.
When you introduce ideology into your thinking and start ignoring the first part of that Oath, you start going away from what is best for the Constitution (that being, the core legal structure of the US that allowed it become what it is) you potentially damage it. You might say you are improving it though. But then, if you’re diverging from the spirit and core of the US foundation with the thought of improving it, are you really? The core system works, so are you really improving it or are you just implementing what you think would be better but really turn out not to be?
NK and Iran are huge problems, of course. But those same diplomats that you say ignore the true face of who they are dealing with are also the ones who:
• Rebuilt Europe.
• Rebuilt Japan.
• Brought the end of the Soviet Union, but in a very very messy way thanks to ideology’s influence.
• Brought Chinese integration into the world economy, thus de-clawing its military, showing we learned lessons from the messy fall of the Soviet Union that we are still cleaning up and will be for the next 30 years.
And those are just the big ones. The small examples are too numerous to list. No ideologue in modern US history can claim such success beside Woodrow Wilson, and even then he was a mixed bag – he may be the father of modern international institutions but he can also be blamed for WWII and most of the geopolitical stability issues we’ve been dealing with since. I do not know enough about the Revolutionary War to claim one way or the other on this topic, so if you can give a good example of either argument, I’m more than willing to listen.
You know, it’s terrible what happens in NK. I don’t disagree with that. And it’s pathetic and sad that such a place exists on earth. However, it does. The history of humanity is riddled with far more leaders like Kim Jung Il than Thomas Jefferson or Theodore Roosevelt.
Pragmatism is what allowed the US to become what it is. Ideology ALWAYS has existed, of course, but that is a guideline, not a reason. Using ideology in the face of all reality and consequences for the sake of it is doomed to failure because no matter how hard you try you cannot change reality. Reality is: There is no WMD in Iraq, much less stockpiles ready to destroy the US. Try to get a Republican Senator to say that.
The reality is that NK is in the process of failing. Why do they kick up shit and cause things to get to this level if they weren’t? If they were humming along just fine internally why kick a sleeping dog? They have energy problems, food problems, and a military that’s never been completely behind their current leader (Il’s succession of his father was highly questionable up until his Dad’s death, because the military did not consider him a competent leader and too much of a playboy.) It is a country with problems. Do not think the Generals are not aware of this. They are sitting on a huge military of dubious training, no experience, but tons of ideology. I doubt I will live to see complete NK integration into the world due to the nature of the propaganda currently keeping NK afloat.
No matter how you spin it, the NK and Iranian leadership want one of two things: to maintain the status quo (their power) and live nice lavish lives, or in the event of government failure, to live a decent life not die of old age in prison. Of course, there is the desperate third I guess of just simply living.
The first is not possible to maintain if the current political confrontations turn into sustained violence against their governments. They know this more than you might think (or at least the people immediately under Kim Jung Il are very aware of it). The second is ideal in the event of 100% capitulation. The problem is, it’s highly unlikely. War crimes and human rights tribunals are all the rage these days and they know it. The final one is not optimal, and they may even opt for suicide (ala Nazi Germany).
So what do they do? Well, they buy time, they puff themselves up so they’re treated with respect and caution (unfortunately the difference between how we treated Iraq then and how we treat Iran now proved this strategy effective, much to our detriment) and figure out a way to sustain the status quo (or a semblance of it) and keep the pressure off enough so they can keep the house of cards up.
These solutions are unique to each country, but we must play this game with them. NK’s messy collapse (worse than the Soviet Union’s by a magnitude of thousands) is not in the US’s interest and would probably be a worse security situation than the current state of NK. The same is true with Iran. Yes, ideologically, we have removed these ideological blights from the face of the earth, but now we have a security situation that is far more dangerous, far more sustained, and far less controllable. Iraq again has proved this lesson effectively, even if Iraq did possess WMD (which we knew before the war began that they did not).
These kinds of politics are not like removing a bandage where you rip really quick and it’s all over (like we tried with Iraq’s Shock and Awe policy). It’s much like how the various income taxes were implemented in the US. You don’t suddenly introduce all of these taxes, you slowly, over time, introduce them one by one (not as a cohesive package). As people get used to the last set, the idea of the new set isn’t so difficult, until you get to where things are now and the general populace rolls over.
This is the strategy we took with China and it has been immensely effective. This is not to say, however, that China is not a threat. They are a threat, but not one that must be destroyed. So long as their challenges are met and equaled, they will always pull back, because it is not in their interest to escalate. Their interest now is gaining the upper hand in a long term battle for relevance and influence, not victory in the form of military supremacy.
So, while it may be nice to live in happy land and view these governments and leaders through the lens of the greater good, Objectivism (ugh), or whatever you hold dear to you in principle, ultimately those can only guide your objectives, your end goals. The means are much greyer and the result may not be in perfect alignment of your objective ideology, but it will undoubtedly be closer to that than when you started.
Ultimately though, the goal is to ensure that we achieve the warm fuzzy version and legal version of the Oath of Enlistment that every military member takes. So long as the means are not illegal, violate basic human rights, and achieve the objective, then they should be viewed as viable and reasonable. To not take these courses of action due to ideology, as we have learned recently, will result in detriment to the defense of the US Govt, more jeopardy for the American people and their interests, and of course the failure of your ideology.
