There’s a big difference between skinhead, “white power skinhead”, and “I like to cut my hair really short”. One is a primarily leftist working class movent, one is totally racist, and one is just a simple aesthetic choice.
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@stinkinbadgers already pointed out when this occurred and why that matters so what is left to question here?
I don’t think the US was in a position to handle anything during the periods you refer to.
What led you to think there’s a difference?
Once again: North Korea is no threat to the USA. America is threatening to start a war with North Korea, not the other way around. Anyone who dies in this dies because of the USA.
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The story is that North Korea could decide to nuke Los Angeles. Or Guam. And that’s changed.
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How many of them were nukes again?
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How many nukes has NK launched?
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Sure, but so could China, or France, or Pakistan. People are not playing close attention to the details of the rhetoric being used, because of how this is being framed from certain media outlets. Every mention I have read from NK so far about missiles has been conditional, and that in itself is not a statement of intent. Which one might suppose would make a difference, or something.
Remarks to the effect that some acts against their sovereignty/state interests would be interpreted as being aggression, and carry the risk of a military response. That’s like “Countries 101”, and does not differ substantially from policies of other nation states.
Lots of people who didn’t know better in the US positively lost their shit a few weeks back when NK gave a heads up about landing for missiles 17 miles from Guam. It just lets the US hang itself in the media with more disingenuous hyperbole.
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The MOAB has the power of a small nuclear bomb (still about 0.1% of the only two nuclear weapons ever used on Earth by the US). The news bragged about it for like 2 weeks, and it was one of the few things the media has ever praised Trump for.
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It has detonated 5/6 (1 might not have worked), thankfully it has launched zero, it would be nice if it stayed that way. It has been launching the rockets designed to carry them quite a bit recently, and threatening to use them, or did you miss that?
This is wrong. The yield of the MOAB was commonly misreported on, as was the extent of the damage it can cause, so it’s an easy mistake to make. It was only 11 tons, and has a pretty small blast radius, the two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan were 36 kilotons in total, so MOAB was actually ~0.03% the total size. The use of MOAB had zero civilian casualties.
Most of the bombs the US is using in the middle east are hellfire missiles and similar very small yield devices, the 26k total is significantly less than a single nuclear bomb that has ever been used, and spread out over a massive area, and targeting individual military targets, so not even slightly comparable.
Japan today increased its estimate of the yield of the last bomb the North Koreans detonated to 160 kilotons (so MOAB would be ~0.0069% the size of that).
It was an incredibly dumb comparison, so no great surprise that CJ Werleman was the one making it I guess.
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The MOAB has about the same destructive power as the US’s M-388, the smallest nuclear weapon in its arsenal. That’s why it is compared to nuclear weapons.
And since I posted 0.1% by memory and to show that it is a tiny fraction of the power of the only nuclear arms that have been used, being off by a factor of three doesn’t concern me.
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Comparing them to nuclear weapons in general is a bit disingenuous, given that those are usually in the kiloton to megaton range. They also don’t leave radioactive fallout. The US only used it once, and did so to kill around 100 terrorists hiding in caves, no civilians were killed, North Korea is currently threatening to destroy cities with the bombs they’re building.
I’m not for a second defending Trump’s behavior in all of this of course, he’s just making everything worse, but it wasn’t a problem he created.
North Korea isn’t the victim here. They’ve had numerous opportunities to rejoin the international community over the years, South Korea would love nothing more than a peace treaty with them. I’ve seen lots of people claiming they’re right to feel paranoid, given the devastation of the bombing campaign against them in the 50s, well maybe they shouldn’t have invaded the south then? And why are people quick to judge the US for it’s role in the war, but give a free pass to the Chinese and the Russians?
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Because the Chinese didn’t enter the war until MacArthur charged for the border? And then openly declared his intention to nuke China?
The Kim regime are mass-murdering bastards, no question about it. But the North Korean people are not, and the North Korean people are the ones who will be the first to die if the USA needlessly launches yet another unjustified war of aggression.
NK has also tried to join the international community as recently as July this year, and yet the US has been the primary antagonistic force against NK reaching a peace treaty. No, NK is not a victim but the US is so far from innocent that it is ridiculous to say something like NK is “begging for war” when Trump’s opening statement on NK this year was to lie about bringing naval carriers that could attack them in an instant (or some similar lie) back in April.
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The war wouldn’t have happened in the first place if it wasn’t for the support of the Chinese and Russians. If the US (and the UN) hadn’t gotten involved then there would be no South Korea today.
McArthur never openly declared his intention to nuke China, he threatened retaliatory strikes if they invaded. Not quite the same thing.
I agree that the US shouldn’t pre-emptively invade the country.
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As was the case throughout most of Asia, the primary resistance to the Japanese occupation of Korea during WWII came from the local communists. At the close of the war, they were the dominant local political force in the country.
However, the US was in control of the South at the end of WWII, and was seeking to gain strategic position against the USSR.
So, they sent in a hand-picked kleptocrat, who had spent the war hiding in the USA (after being thrown out of the pre-war Korean government for corruption), and installed him as a puppet ruler.
Syngman Rhee went on to loot the peasantry and persecute his opponents until he was 84 years old. Whereupon he was extracted by the CIA, and then sheltered by the USA until he died. He was never brought to justice for his crimes.
You may have noticed similar events in the recent history of Iraq and Afghanistan.
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NK has also tried to join the international community as recently as July this year, and yet the US has been the primary antagonistic force against NK reaching a peace treaty.
No, NK is by far the biggest reason this has never been resolved, all attempts to deal with them in the past result in them reneging on the agreements. Twice in the last two decades we’ve reached agreement with them to halt their nuclear program, both times they unilaterally withdrew from the agreements. Their current position is it’s not even up for negotiation. The US is still attempting (despite Trump’s best attempts to sabotage), along with everyone else in the region, to get a diplomatic solution, North Korea isn’t budging though.
Like I said, Trump is making everything worse, but they were still acting like lunatics before he arrived on the scene though, so it’s not his fault we are where we are.
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Re: MacArthur:
To forestall needless exchanges: yes, those intercepts date from after the Chinese entry, and do not specifically mention nukes as far as I know.
