For another war, because why not? The ones the last Republican President started are going so well.
Earlier this week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that he was ready to start talks with North Korea without precondition. “We’ll talk about the weather if you like,” he said. He omitted the part about their having to give up their nuclear weapons and missiles first. But then his own spokesperson undercut him.
Our policy on #DPRK has not changed. Diplomacy is our top priority through our maximum pressure campaign. We remain open to dialogue when North Korea is willing to conduct a serious & credible dialogue on the peaceful denuclearization, but that time is not now.
— Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) December 14, 2017
North Korea is making some signs that they would be open to discussions of – something – but definitely not giving up their nukes. So Tillerson’s offer was well-timed. But others in the administration, likely including National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, have something else in mind. The problem is that nobody knows what it is.
A number of Washington-based nuclear experts on my Twitter timeline say that the administration seems determined to strike North Korea preventively. That’s likely a war crime, but let that go for now. Dan Drezner is worried, and Joshua Pollack lays it out in a tweet thread. Selected tweets from that thread:
For another, it's openly part of the White House's strategy to impress upon the Chinese in particular that if they don't fix this problem for us, we will have to "take care of it" ourselves.
— Joshua H. Pollack (@Joshua_Pollack) December 14, 2017
And indeed, if North Korea is too irrational to be deterred from using nuclear weapons, how are they rational enough to know when to concede to the pressure campaign?
— Joshua H. Pollack (@Joshua_Pollack) December 14, 2017
Lindsay Graham is beating the war drums. “Time is running out.” On whose timetable? In the 1950s, his arguments were made on hitting the Soviet Union to prevent them from getting a nuclear arsenal. In the 1960s, it was China. While it would be pleasant for us if they didn’t have nuclear weapons, we’ve all managed to live together for the past 60 years or so. We’ll manage with North Korea too.
It’s possible that the war talk is designed to convince China to magically fix things with North Korea. But they can’t. The US administration doesn’t seem to understand that.
If North Korea is attacked, it will devastate Seoul with conventional artillery. That’s been true for many decades, so Graham and McMaster should know that. Japan would probably take some hits too. My guess is that North Korea still doesn’t have a lot of nuclear-armed missiles deployed, but how about just a couple on Seoul, three on major cities in Japan, and one or two on the US West Coast? That could be pretty ugly, and dropping a bunch of nukes on North Korea wouldn’t bring back those millions of people. The scenario is worked out in more detail here and here.
Meanwhile, Nikki Haley is doing a Colin Powell to convince us that war with Iran is a good idea.
As badly as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone, war with North Korea or Iran would be worse. While you’re calling Congress to stop the tax plan, you might want to say that you wish Congress would hold hearings on administration plans for war against North Korea.
jhtrotter
Could it all wait until after the Olympics?
Hungry Joe
“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks.”
John Revolta
I hear Chinese tourism to S. Korea has basically stopped.
RandomMonster
Trump will hold off on war until the first damning evidence of collusion goes public. At that point a few million dead will serve as a nice distraction.
TriassicSands
@Hungry Joe:
Best black comedy ever. If only we had level heads like Generals Buck and Jack D. playing for our side now.
Florida Frog
Wait Mr. Frog is headed to Seoul in January on an engineering project. He is really looking forward to it. Is this a bad idea?
bystander
She was sickmaking today. So loathsome.
Mike in DC
My mom lives in Northern California. If she dies as a result of a “preventive” attack, I’m not going to be satisfied with mere resignation, removal or even imprisonment.
Cermet
AS long as the sub-human species known as thugish-greedist exist and flourishes within congress so elected by the stupid and religious (but that is redundant) loons, we are screwed.
Major Major Major Major
I’m sure Hillary would have been worse. She was the real hawk.
NotMax
There’s a vast chasm between irrational and suicidal.
North Korea demonstrates instances of the former but not the latter, IMHO.
Roger Moore
The good news is the nuclear winter would counteract some of the effects of global warming.
TenguPhule
Let’s not. That was what we did wrong last time.
Chris
Yep. This worries me more than North Korea. At least with North Korean nukes, I’d still say the odds are on the side of us not going to war. Iran doesn’t have nukes, it’s the only enemy left standing in the Middle East, and it’s been relentlessly demonized by three or four decades of nationalist crap.
ETA: Trump’s own government has already said several times that they can’t find the Iranians in non-compliance because they’re not, so I suppose it was inevitable that we’d eventually get a Colin Powell type farce. War with Iran might not be inevitable, but the odds of our torpedoing the 2015 deal are still very, very good. It doesn’t really cost anything in terms of domestic politics, and gives Trump a big boost with his base. It totally fucks up international relations, but these people haven’t cared about that since 2002 at the very latest.
SiubhanDuinne
@Florida Frog:
A good friend of mine is a fairly senior official posted to the Canadian Embassy in Seoul. I keep reading her Facebook posts to see if there’s anything between the lines, but of course she is far too skilled a diplomat to write anything careless. Still, I worry about her and her young family.
TenguPhule
@Mike in DC:
Presuming I manage to survive that result too, I’ll join you.
TriassicSands
The North Koreans would be crazy to give up their nukes while Trump is in office. The more belligerent Trump is, the tighter they will cling to them. Of course, they won’t get rid of them in any foreseeable future, but the more aggressive the US is toward them, the more incentive they will have to keep adding to the arsenal.
Trump (the ultimate deal maker) to N. Korea: “You give up your nukes and I promise to build a huge Trump Tower II in Pyongyang and the best golf course either North or South Korea has ever seen.”
How could they refuse?
Hungry Joe
“I’ll tell you what he did, he ordered his planes…to attack your country. Well, let me finish, Dmitri. Let me finish, Dmitri. Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it? Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dmitri? Why do you think I’m calling you? Just to say hello?”
TenguPhule
@Chris: Iran is also in a much better position to hurt us across the board, at every level.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: I think she meant that it’s the least of our concerns with regard to this particular action.
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
The same unfortunately can’t be said of the Republican party.
Cheryl Rofer
@Florida Frog: I’m inclined to say that, although we should contact our legislators to express our concern, we might as well act as though everything will be normal. Enjoy things until we can’t.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: Not if it can give our allies an excuse to intervene. I welcome our new Canadian overlords.
SiubhanDuinne
@bystander:
Yeah, I caught a little audio of her comments on MSNBC while I was driving to the library. Nikki Haley horrifies me — the more so, as she comes across as attractive and superficially rational.
TenguPhule
@Florida Frog:
It is now.
Doug R
@Major Major Major Major:
She did too much in Syria, and not enough in Libya, or was it the other way ’round?
Chris
Note that several West European governments were very worried that we’d do exactly that: that the urge to nuke the USSR before they had the capacity to reliably hit the American homeland would win out, and that Western Europe would pay the price when the Soviets retaliated. Thankfully, the Americans of that age weren’t deranged psychopaths. Our current political class, on the other hand? I’d give pretty good odds that they’d have done exactly that.
sukabi
@Major Major Major Major: I know that’s high sarcasm, still irritates the füçk outta me…and continues to feed the utterly false, unfounded Hillary hate.
Anyway, carry on.?
Chris
@TenguPhule:
Oh, sure. But you wanna tell Trump that?
Besides, they’d probably figure that Iranian retaliation could simply be used to further feed anti-Iranian hysteria and justify the war.
Anotherlurker
@Mike in DC: I have friends and family all over the State of California. If any of them are harmed because because of trump’s war fever, I will take it very personally. I will take it out on my g.o.perve congress critter.
Major Major Major Major
@sukabi: I basically just don’t talk to people who believe things like that any more.
A Ghost to Most
Can’t Kim Jong-Un and Him Rong-Orange settle this with a good ol’ mudfight? The pay-per-view take could be billions.
WaterGirl
I’m pretty sure that even my dogs understand that things are uncertain – they are asking for dinner now, even though it’s an hour before their usual time. You know it’s bad when even the dogs know.
Doug R
May I point out that the closest larger American city to North Korea is actually Seattle and that Vancouver, BC is even closer. They may aim for Northern California, but you know where’d they’d probably hit.
JPL
It’s just another day in Trump world..
Net Neutrality gone
Billionaires and millionaires tax cuts almost assured
It’s been 75 days since CHIP was renewed and
the war drums are beating.
TenguPhule
@Chris:
They’re trying to stick their dick into a steel hedgehog.
TriassicSands
@JPL:
I’m exhausted from all the “winning.”
TenguPhule
@Doug R:
Excuse me, are we just an island in the middle of the Pacific again?
Chris
@TenguPhule:
Hey, half our population would happily and merrily hop on board, at least initially. “They’re hitting us BACK! Those BASTARDS! I always KNEW they were up to no good!”
Lee Hartmann
Miss Lindsay wants another war, I see. I guess he liked the way the last one turned out. Wasn’t he one of the three amigos who went with Saint McCain and Droopy Dog to the market in Baghdad which was gloriously safe and normal (after it had been cleaned out by the troops)?
Christ, what an asshole.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: Seattle has more than twice the population of Honolulu…
NotMax
@TenguPhule
If the slippah fits….
(I keed, I keed.)
B.B.A.
Trump is such a sick fuck, he probably sees millions of dead Californians as a plus to nuclear war. He won the popular vote excluding California, after all.
Patricia Kayden
Just heard that the top rat is jumping ship. Ryan is pushing an unpopular tax cut which he knows may cost him his seat so he’s bailing. How nice.
JPL
@TriassicSands: Tis why I curled up in a fetal position on the sofa. At least we can say
Merry Christmas again. Trump is right, because I never said Merry Christmas again.
I thought it sounded rude, like the person didn’t hear me the first time.
Florida Frog
@Cheryl Rofer: Thanks. Rubio, Nelson and Rutherford hear from me every week about CHIP, Dreamers, Health Care, the Tax Nonsense, Russia and guns. I might as well add something else to the list.
Mike in NC
America’s #1 sexual predator should have made a campaign promise to disarm North Korea on his very first day in office, exactly like he repealed and replaced that horrible Affordable Care Act. Oh wait…
sukabi
@Lee Hartmann: someone ought to remind him that the last 2 haven’t actually ended yet.
Humdog
@Patricia Kayden: I think it is the other way around for Ryan. He wants out now so must push this final year to do his sick dream of curing us from having any social insurance whatsoever. Sick fucker, is Ayn Ryan.
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: Since he is not running for reelection, he can rid us of Medicare, Social Security and even Meals on Wheels.
or what humdog said
Ladyraxterinok
@Chris: Being close in time to the consequences of a major world war clears the eye and mind quite effectively. NOBODY wanted another war
StringOnAStick
Going to war with Iran tells every other country that you must have your own nukes to avoid invasion by a crazy US regime. Nice job Donnie Dumshit; all those years of careful diplomacy and who knows how many IC assets trashed for a creepy and corrupt old man’s ego.
TenguPhule
@Chris: I suspect it would be more panicked then that.
If I were Iran and had 30 years to prepare for this shit, the least I would do would be ready to gut any naval forces in the Persian Gulf, pound the shit out of every middle east US military base, have covert agents ready to decapitate the highest ranks of the civilian and military leadership and blow up as much of their domestic infrastructure as possible.
Mike in DC
1 nuke hitting Silicon Valley, and the other hitting the Seattle/Redmond area, and you can kiss the economy goodbye.
Mike J
Most people don’t seem to buy Haley’s bullshit:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/14/nikki-haley-yemen-houthi-rebels-iran-missiles-press-conference-pentagon-skepticism-united-nations-trump-nuclear-deal-diplomacy/
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: But we have better coffee.
Major Major Major Major
@Mike in NC:
Worst reality show ever.
Chris
@Mike J:
Wait… so the big deal is that the Iranians are arming a friendly government/insurgency/call-it-what-you-will? One that isn’t even threatening the United States or the West? That’s the big deal?
… what the actual fuck? Even if it’s true, arming friendly insurgents and governments in their civil war and/or wars with their neighbors is bog-standard practice in international relations. It’s called proxy war. It’s what you do when you don’t want to fight somebody directly. We certainly haven’t been shy of doing that, and neither have our allies – ask the Syrians. Or, for that matter, the Yemenis and the Iranians. This doesn’t even rise to the level of what we accused Saddam Hussein of.
TenguPhule
@Chris:
Yep. Its not fair for them to play by the same rules we do.
Because Freedumb.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Early Cancellation is demanded.
Gelfling 545
At the moment the country I most worry about having nuclear weapons is the US.
Major Major Major Major
@Gelfling 545: why, it’s not like we’re run by insane megalomaniacs or theocrats.
Miss Bianca
@Mike in DC: You can kiss more than the economy good-bye.
B.B.A.
On another forum I frequent, some glibertarians tend to say, “so, libtards, still a big fan of expansive executive power? the imperial executive and the pen-and-phone president was great under Obama, riiiiiight?”
And here I’m thinking, the most dangerous and frightening power, that of Commander-in-Chief, has been part of the presidency since day one.
John Revolta
@Patricia Kayden: Is he not running for re-election? I understood he was just giving up the Speakership. Maybe.
Chris
@B.B.A.:
That’s always been the thing that makes libertarians so utterly ridiculous. They’re terrified of the government becoming a dictatorship, so they don’t want it to have any power AT ALL!!! … except for the power of the military, the police, and the courts. In other words, exactly the powers you’d need in order to establish a dictatorship.
They apparently live in a universe where dictatorships hadn’t occurred to anyone until welfare states came along.
ruemara
@Gelfling 545: We are the most prone to using them.
Patricia Kayden
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I love the snarky responses to her tweet thanking Black people for the vote in Alabama. She really needs to take several seats when it comes to politics.
zzyzx
@Mike in DC: I lived near DC during the cold war and now I live in Seattle. I can just rerun my nightmares.
B.B.A.
@Chris: Some of the ones I wrangle with are anarcho-capitalists, and think we should have competing private protection
racketsagencies we could individually hire and fire at will. They have not done an adequate job in explaining why anyone would want that.chris
Shitgibbon just wants to nuke somebody, anybody will do. What use is power if you can’t use it, right?
Patricia Kayden
@John Revolta: You’re correct. I thought I heard Randi Rhodes say that he was quitting altogether.
Chris
@B.B.A.:
Have they done an adequate job of explaining how that’s in any way different from what Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Congo, and other such paragons of success call “warlords?”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I don’t see how this works out for Trump, not like we can’t live with the North Koreans and his approval in the trash with even his base. Then again it is Trump and it’s the stupidest, laziest course of action, thinking like some reality TV show twat, so of course.I don’t see how this works out for Trump, not like we can’t live with the North Koreans and his approval in the trash with even his base. Then again it is Trump and it’s the stupidest, laziest course of action, thinking like some reality TV show twat, so of course.
Cheryl Rofer
58 retired admirals and generals urge the administration to use diplomacy, not war.
JPL
@Cheryl Rofer: Unfortunately he is only concerned about what his generals say. Sad.
B.B.A.
@Chris: They’ve got some long tomes explaining the difference. Since I don’t feel like spending any time reading them, I can only assume the gist of it is “but we’re white, so it’ll work when we do it!”
chris
@Cheryl Rofer: Probably because they can find Iran on a map and it’s very big. They also have better sources than Wikipedia to gauge Iranian military strength which is, again, pretty big. Finally, they’re not fans of the nuclear option. Cuz they’re not stupid, unlike the CinC.
John Revolta
@Patricia Kayden: Yeah well it’s even better this way. Think of how sad those big blue eyes are gonna look once the Iron Mustache gets through with him.
And if he isn’t the Speaker anymore then he’s just another psychopath up in Congress.
Jeffro
I noted that first article (the WaPo one) A few days ago and it is still just as horrifying. I have sent it far and wide, I have it on my Facebook page, and I have added it to the list of things I sent to my senators and congressmen and/talk to them (ok, their staffers) about.
It is a very real possibility.
It will only be unthinkable until it happens.
Van Buren
Republicans by and large feel that Seattle and San Francisco being obliterated is a point in favor of war with NK.
Miss Bianca
@Patricia Kayden: Yeah, someone needs to be hit upside the head with a clue-by-four, that’s for damn certain…
cmorenc
If someone like Trump had been President in 1962, what are the chances the Cuban Missile Crisis would have resulted in a devastating nuclear exchange, with most of y’all not here (because most of your parents would not have survived the blast or lethal fallout)?
A Ghost to Most
@zzyzx:
I lived in the crosshairs of multiple nukes at SAC HQ. It’s just one more thing that could kill you.
TenguPhule
@Jeffro:
Chilling.
John Revolta
@B.B.A.: Because this worked out so great back when we had competing fire departments in the big cities.
Maybe the various mercenaries could fight it out to see who gets to kill the Bad Guys?
Van Buren
Republicans by and large feel that Seattle and San Francisco being obliterated is a point in favor of war with NK. @Major Major Major Major: Actually, I’m pretty sure it would get monster ratings…
Peale
@TenguPhule: then we should debate this as much as possible
Mike J
@Chris:
Export of missile tech/proliferation is the actual excuse.
efgoldman
@Chris:
I dunno. Memories of hundreds and thousands of US troops in the desert, coming home in body bags, for basically no reason at all, are pretty fresh.
Bush43 has the goodwill of the country after 911 (although they made up the connection out of whole cloth); wasn’t probitive. Haley’s is the only rationalization/”reason” and it has no general approval. with a widely disliked president who’s numbers continue to crater
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: Madame regularly talks to her family and friends in Seoul, they don’t seem at all concerned about their neighbors to the north.
Cheryl@Top: I don’t think that the DPRK would waste it’s nukes on Seoul, they’ve got plenty of conventional weapons that would do the job. Now Japan, that’s a different story.
Jay
Words of war, threats of war, yelling about war, makes Hair Furour and his Base feel strong and powerful. Crowing loudly is a default position for ChickenHawks and the 101st “Fighting Keyboard Commando’s”.
Col. Pat Lang at Sic Semper Tyrannis ran the numbers a few months ago. Given current global commitment’s and all the failing GWOT Wars of Choice,
The US Army and Marines can currently muster a light Air Mobile Battalion for deployment to the Persian Gulf or Korea, and the Pentagon is well aware of that.
Kathleen
@Doug R: It was Benghazi! It’s so easy to lose the plot line.
El Caganer
@B.B.A.: I think this is where they got the idea, but (a) it’s science fiction and (b) yes, it’s a really lousy idea: https://www.amazon.com/Syndic-C-M-Kornbluth/dp/0899683479/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1513299485&sr=8-2&keywords=the+syndic
Kathleen
Am way behind in my thread reading, but has anyone seen this story about internet traffic being routed through Russia?
http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/12/14/intentional-event-redirects-cloud-traffic-from-apple-google-others-through-russia
Duane
@TenguPhule: That’s a bright, cheerful sentence she’s got there.
Of all the bad things Trump could do that would be catastrophic. Unthinkable, but they do.
frosty
@TenguPhule:
You’re kind of small and hard to hit. A big metro area now, you hardly even have to be close. I mean, aim for LA and hit Santa Barbara or San Diego, it’s still a win. Miss Hawaii by that much and you’ve nuked the ocean.
frosty
@B.B.A.: The power to declare war was Congress’s from Day One. They abdicated it sometime in the 50s and 60s. Being Commander-in-Chief, while a big deal, was not as much of a deal until ICBMs, when you had 30 minutes at most to decide to fight a war. Even with nuclear-armed bombers there was more time. Somehow we’ve got to claw that power back from a single person.
Sab
@frosty: TenguPhule: I am sure you find that comforting. Tiny islands in a big sea.
Ruckus
It would be dramatically easier to list the things this administration does understand and work from there.
1. Not a fucking thing.
2. Finished
GWB was a genius compared to these morons. And GWB is no genius. The concept that they want to start a war is unfortunate in that they have no real idea why one would do that, and far more importantly why one wouldn’t. War makes them money, and as I responded to someone on FB the other day, they don’t give two shits that lots of someones will die, even lots of Americans. There are no arguments that will work because they are RWMJs and logic, reason, facts, reality all just get in the way of them being great and creating the bestest country of bigots.
J R in WV
I think we should all make sure our congressmen (and congresswomen) understand that their constituents will
makehold them personally responsible for any war crimes they allow to be committed during their time in office.The Constitution makes Congress responsible for War, and if War Crimes are committed, the CinC will not be the solitary responsible person we turn over to International Courts. And if international courts are not available, well, every town has lamp posts, which worked perfectly well for Il Duce Mussolini back in the waning days of the last World War.
I am speaking, of course, of members of Congress of the same political party as the CinC, who will share responsibility with P. Trump.
ETA fix grammar.
JustRuss
@Kathleen: Yep, saw that. Probably the biggest threat actually facing our country right now, but …Russia, so Trump won’t do a damn thing.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Mass death and war made Dubya popular.
Mike in Pasadena
The air force never sleeps. . . I’ll be back before you can say “blast off.”
Uncle Cosmo
@Chris: Bangalore! Pungent & perceptive!
Uncle Cosmo
@Mike in Pasadena:
:D (Seamus Kennedy)