Quote:
Originally Posted by **********
Everyone can relax. North Korea would be lucky to hit themselves if they tried to launch nukes at the US. The smallest bomb they have ever made is still way too heavy for their missiles to carry.
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The US can't use nuclear weapons first for many reasons starting with how it will play in the rest of the world, how history would brand us as Darth Vader, and a showdown with congress about the always sticky interface between the president's role as commander in chief versus the congress's exclusive right to declare war. It won't happen. The Koreans might do just about anything, so unpredictable are they. They still think of their seizure of the USS Pueblo and its crew as one of their smartest moves and this ship - still a commissioned vessel of the US Navy - is docked as a museum ship in North Korea to this day. The US was brought to its knees, important intelligence information was seized before it could be destroyed, code machines were taken, at least one American was killed, and the crew was not released until it and the US admitted wrongdoing - an apology that the US immediately repudiated after the crew was repatriated, on the basis of duress in securing our apology. The ground war in Korea last time was simply brutal with enormous US loss of life and the encirclement of our troops at the Pusan Resevoir. These are some the most fiercely savage, deeply committed soldiers on the face of the planet, trained to believe that killing Americans and South Koreans is a high virtue, if not the highest. They have sacrificed a normal way of life for artillery, missiles, tanks, and underground fortification, which they all to be necessary for inevitable war with us. Some of them long for the day. No direct US engagement with North Korea will be a stroll in the park, no matter what weapons we use. It would not be a surprise to have 50% casualties among our 28,000 troops - the numbers were close to that the last time that we as "superpower" went to war with them, at least in some operations. MacArthur was so desperate at the gravity of the situation that he was demanding the right to US nukes, and when Truman refused him that, he started complaining about the impossibility of winning a ground war because we were so vastly outnumbered. And in the end, that's why we've had only a truce since then, not a victory and not a surrender, and not the end of the state of war. It was beyond our ability to obtain an outright victory in the fifties - and it might be outside our ability to obtain one now. You cannot win any war with missiles and airpower. It is not until you can occupy on the ground and control the territory that you win a war. That will be a tough nut to crack if hostilities resume in Korea. Would you volunteer to keep Seol safe for democracy? Would you send your children to fight against a nation of crazies armed to the teeth?