How Do You Solve A Problem Like North Korea?

You really need to swim in the shallow end. You're in way over your head again. I understand that you believe in fairy tales but in the real world, socialism/comunism becomes a totalitarian dictatorship and slavery. While Capitalism becomes the closest thing to Utopia.

Here is a quote from someone you could learn a lot from. Read it! Learn it! Know it!

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
Ronald Reagan

What you don't know is that there is more than one form of Communism. Certainly there is the totalitarian Communism of the Soviet Union and China. No one I know who is on the left favors that. You also have had the Communism of the Sandinistas of the 1980's who, though not perfect, offered many more freedoms to their people than the US backed gov'ts of El Salvador and Guatemala in the same time period.

It is so easy to come to conclusions when one neglects the details.

the El Salvador and Guatemalan gov'ts of the 1980's were backed by Reagan. How in the world did a Communist like Ortega offer his people more freedoms than Reagan offered those countries?

Kim wants to blow up America
He has twenty nukes aimed at America
He wants South Korea free of America
If we defy him they'll be no America

What is your documentation?

Not only are you brainless, you're also humorless.

Maybe my lack of appreciation for your humor indicated something else.

Take off two hours from posting; rent The West Side Story on DVD and enjoy yourself for a change. The Officer Krumpky song will really connect with you. "My brother is a junky, my sister pushes pot, golly Moses that's why I'm a flop."

Not a musical person but I am a music person. Was listening to Brubeck, Mulligan, Dawson and Six play Limehouse Blues. It doesn't get much better. Then again, my elliptical walker dvd consists of Peterson, NHOP, and Ray Brown in Montreaux. That one was interesting because at the most prestigious jazz festival in the world, you have 3 top musicians playing together without rehearsal and without a flaw.

Good essay.

One of the few disagreements I have with "conservatives" is over foreign policy.

I say we need to ask why. This is journalism 101. What is the enemy's motivation?

They say I don't care about the why, we have to act.

But they don't understand that if you get the why wrong, the how will never be right.

I hope that makes sense.

For example:

Why do we need to attack Vietnam?

Because of the domino "effect"; if they fall, the rest of south east Asia will follow.

The why was wrong.

What happened? The "how" we decided upon was the Vietnam war, which was an unmitigated disaster for everyone involved.

To rid Asia of western colonialism was why Japan fought WWII. They called it the Great East Asian War. And it isn't whether N. Korea has a large number of nukes because it would not take more than ten aimed at our west coast that could destroy much of the US with the resulting radiation. That we could turn N Korea into glass is irrelevant once they fired enough missiles. In fact, the lowest number of above ground detonated nuclear warheads needed to make the world uninhabitable is 20--at least from what I hear.

How are things?

Foreign policy is where we tend to agree because you come from the Ron Paul sector of conservatism. And he is the only Republican who is willing to consider whether what the US has done is moral.

Vietnam and N. Korea are two different scenarios. With N. Vietnam, we pitted ourselves against a former WWII ally in order to, at least initially, help France regain control of "their" colony. Later it became a battle because of, what Herman and Chomsky would call, the religion of anti-Communism.

N. Korea is lead by a madman no doubt. But despite that, he seeks what many world leaders seek, respect as an equal. And this puts us in a dilemma because we are no trying to respond to someone who is, at least in part, imitating what we have done. This points to the problems of relying on force and weaponry.

I don't know why, but your last post made my day.

In this last primary, republicans had the most conservative candidate the country's seen in the last 50-75 years.

What did they do? How did they react?

They treated Paul like absolute CRAP!

And do you know why?

Because he was against sending MY tax money and YOUR tax money... to Israel so they could continue to drop phosphorous bombs on women and children.

That's the only reason.

It kinda' makes you wonder who's really running the show.

(I know, I know, I need to get over it, but I'm still bitter. And for those who view my comments as anti-Semitic - shove it!)

Keep doing what you're doing, C5. Don't let the neocons get you down.

not that we give aid, but that we don't distinguish between supporting Israel's right to exist from supporting their occupation against the Palestinians.

We could control Israel's behavior by linking aid to behavior. In addition, we have to stand against all violence between Israel and the Palestinians. Though the Palestinians have certainly gotten far worse than they have given, domination, greed, and violence are the real enemies. And King said that we cannot kill hate with hate.

You mean there are different flavors of wrong? Who would have guessed? It's like murder, right, you have first degree, second degree, third degree, and man slaughter, right?
Guess what Curt, it's all murder. There has never been this Utopia communism. Every example of communism through out history has had a ruling class and the people have suffered. The spirit of freedom is squelched. There is no incentive to better yourself. Everyone is equally oppressed except for the ruling class.

Those are the details you neglected.

Again, the communism practiced in Nicaragua gave far more freedoms and did not practice state terror as did the "democracies" that the US established in El Salvador and Guatemala which did employ state terrorism and a big brother approach to watching its citizens.

One point I agree with you on is that utopian communism ends up in totalitarianism, as would any utopian system.

But not all on the left even think that their approach creates a utopia let alone tries to create it. When we see how elite groups in the private sector use wealth to seize control of the gov't, which is what we have in our country, then we simply say we could do better. That doesn't imply a utopia, but it does say we can have a more democratic society, gov't as well as the workplace, as well as see a more even distribution of profits. That doesn't imply everyone makes the same amount.