Freeing Iraqis from Saddam was justification enough.

How old are you Rockets2K? 1950s was a completely different generation. Do you still see people protesting the Vietnam War outside or something?

 

Attacking N. Korea would/could be justified using the same reasons. The thing is, N. Korea HAS nuclear weapons. They aren't trying to get them, they already have them. That means, if we invaded N. Korea, we would be in serious jeopardy of drawing a nuclear reprisal on the West Coast. This is a case where the potential consequences make action unlikely.

 

With all due respect OldMan, I was replying to the statement of yours saying we had never fought a war with the N Koreans.
Did I misread your statement?

and then you responded by saying..

then I responded with the crack..

ok...so what does my age and the Vietnam war have to do with the price of tea in N Korea?

seriously...the way I read it, you were saying we have never been to war with N Korea. Did I misread you?
I would expect an "OldMan" like yourself to remember that little war that gave us the cheesiness of MASH.

 

I would actually support war on N. Korea. I think there are ways of minimizing/eliminating the nuclear threat, even without going nuclear ourselves, and we could liberate a few million starving people. I don't think it is going to happen. People do not get re-elected when the first atomic weapon is used against America on their watch, and the #1 goal of a politician is to get re-elected.

 

Sorry, my mistake. Should've went up and read what I posted.

 

Hey FB,

I guess I probably fit into the group of 'posters' you are talking about. Great questions and thread.

The first part is 'should the US intervene to stop genocide or genocidal regimes.'

I think the answer is yes. How can we defend sitting on the sideline while thousands or millions are massacred? Does anyone think its a good thing that we didn't act to stop the Holocaust? Or Pol Pot's regime? Or the genocide in Rwanda? Would it have better to continue to let Serbia kill Bosnians or set up rape camps? I think the answer is no. The story of genocide is not only of the aggressors and the victims. It is also a story of those who stand aside and do nothing.

So what is the threshold? Certainly North Korea is also and evil regime. Before we get to that specifically though, we need to see what the limits on intervention are. Certainly there is a repressive regime in China. Should we then invade China if our policy is to intervene to stop repressive regimes? I think not. That would be silly. We simply do not have the capability, despite our standing as the lone Superpower, to invade and conquer China, their nuclear arsenal aside. To every policy there will be limits, but those limits also leave open other avenues to pursue the same goal. With the PRC, for instance, there are plenty of avenues to influence internal conditions, like economic avenues. Helping the PRC into the WTO, as an example, brings more rules into how their economy can function, moving it farther from the centralized state run economy. Political liberalization necessarily follows this. It Cental Asia, there are very repressive regimes. Do we invade those? I don't think so because we have common grounds with those regimes where we can use influence other than military to affect change. Could we do this with Iraq or Serbia? No. Therefore the best option was military. So the threshold has to be (a) will miltiary action be effective, can it affect change where other solutions cannot, or more quickly than other solutions could, and (b) are there other actions that can affect change in the stead of military action.

Now lets look at North Korea. It is certainly just as bad if not worse than Iraq. (a) Will military action be effective? This is not nearly as clear cut as it is with Iraq. We could invade North Korea to protect South Korea and Japan, but if N Korea wipes Seoul off the map, doesn't that defeat the purpose of invading (ie protecting innocents)? If they lob nukes at Japan, doesn't that defeat the purpose of intervention? (b) are there other avenues to pursue that might be more productive? In Northeast Asia there are other great powers, namely the PRC and Japan that have more influence with North Korea than we do. Most of the support North Korea gets is from the PRC. In Iraq there is no great power to check Iraqi aggression, nor to affect influence within Iraq. Neither the US, nor Japan, nor the PRC wants a fully capable nuclear regime in N Korea. As we can see from the current situation, both the PRC and Japan are stepping forward to try and affect change in N Korea. Hence military intervention should not be undertaken now as it would most likely not be effective.

We cannot stand on the sidelines and allow genocide to continue when we have the means to stop it. Allowing it to continue, where we have the clear capability to stop it, in hopes of some other solution arising despite having no influence other than military, is wrong. Saying we've allowed it before does not change this. Implicating the US in past genocide does not change this. We should neither support it going forward, nor allow it to continue if we can prevent it. This is also how I would answer your question about the worth of a moral dictate if you don't act because the odds are great for failure. We should always act to stop genocide/repressive regimes. ALWAYS. The main question is HOW. In some cases military intervention is the quickest or the only option. In these cases that is the action we should take. In others it is different methods, be in sanctions or engagement or de-investment. On those cases that is the action we should take. But we should ALWAYS do something to stop it.