This image is from BBC and shows how provocative the South Koreans were when their ship was sunk. Seems pretty clear to me that it was violating North Korea's waters and one wonders what they were up to. Maybe that's why it went away in the media quickly. The image also shows the location of the island for some context.
Ultimately this story is going nowhere. South Korea and the US, for all their bellicose behaviour and needling the north can't do a thing to get back at North Korea. If they attack in any forceful way there just might be a nuclear missile heading for downtown Seoul. The risk just isn't worth it, no matter how much the pundits emasculate you.
And so that's it. More insane behaviour on both sides. A lot of bravado and no solutions, no moving forward. And the North Korean people eat grass while South Koreans tuck into McDonald's and the whole nightmare continues.
This is the crazy thing about nuclear weapons. Once you have them, no one, not even the world's greatest superpower or whatever it calls itself, can dare to push you around.
This situation also reigns in Israel where a formidable nuclear arsenal precludes any threats from its neighbours and the only groups that stand up to it are non-state actors, who aren't troubled by holes where cities once stood. In fact it would be good for recruiting and you might just get a few X-Men thanks to the fallout. Even the mighty US has to beg Israel to stop settlement construction.
So what lesson then, do these two examples teach to Iran? Get nuclear weapons and you're relatively untouchable. A few sanctions perhaps but as long as you ensure their pain is felt by the poor alone you'll be fine.
But one day, someone will finally decide that a city has to go. And then all hell will break loose. So we had better start disarming. But the Republicans are back and this is the recession that will never end so there's little chance of that.
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thom, the cheonan was sunk in disputed waters, not in north korean territory. the islands near where the cheonan was sunk are south korean administered islands inhabited by south koreans. the north does not dispute the islands but they dispute the waters around them. just another north korean idiocy.
ReplyDeleteas you know, i comb articles on the korean peninsula pretty thoroughly but have not come across any that claim south korea and the u.s. fired into north korea first. not even the north korean press claim this. the bellicose behavior has been very consistently one-sided, from north korea. the attack on the island, on civilians, came just days after south korea sent tons of relief to the north. in contrast, the south korean government has been criticized for showing too much restraint, and emboldening the north to make bigger and bigger attacks.
also, although some south koreans do eat at mcdonald's, i don't think there's any relationship between this and the starving north. i would attribute their lack of food to decades of drought, flooding, and the mismanagement of a very oppressive regime.
it's tempting to paint every situation as one with no bad guys or good guys. but i think at this point that there's overwhelming evidence that the north korean government is pretty bad. in nearly every skirmish or conflict since the korean war, belligerence has been a northern monopoly. this has ranged from shooting down a commercial plane full of hundreds of civilians, to assassinating most of the south korean cabinet in a bombing in myanmar. and there are about a hundred other similar instances.
no country is perfect, but some countries try to be better and others do not. in my lifetime, south korea went from a poverty-stricken country controlled by a brutal military junta. now it's a thriving messy democracy. you and i may critique the consumerism that has accompanied that, but there have been dramatic gains in human rights and social justice as well. north korea? it has regressed from bad to indescribably worse.
sorry about the long comment. just thought you might appreciate a different perspective.
Thanks for the clarifications. I was just looking at the map and it seemed that the ship was pretty close to North Korea. Not to mention the island. One could imagine that an accident could happen in such close quarters.
ReplyDeleteNorth Korea (the state) is a nightmare. I wouldn't want to live there and wouldn't wish it on anyone. I'm sure the people are quite nice. I know that they (the state) don't really care about their people. Besides if they ate well they would be pretty pissed off I'm sure and might just change their government.
Wow, I didn't know about the assassination in Myanmar. That's quite a story.
I guess I'm sad about how we always have to hear the same old rhetoric and more sanctions or worse. The problem now is that there is nothing apart from sanctions which only harms the people. And thanks to nuclear weapons the state is likely not going to change its behaviour anytime soon. So what do you do?
But it was nice to hear that the south just sent in some food aid. I guess they won't be doing that again.