Posted on 08/22/2017 7:24:49 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Talk of ‘Preventive War’ Rises in White House Over North Korea
By DAVID E. SANGER AUG. 20, 2017
Not since 2002, as the United States built a case for war in Iraq, has there been so much debate inside the White House about the merits — and the enormous risks — of pre-emptive military action against an adversary nation.
Like its predecessors, the Trump administration is trying to pressure North Korea through sanctions to dismantle its nuclear program. But both President Trump and his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, have talked openly about a last-resort option if diplomacy fails and the nuclear threat mounts: what General McMaster describes as “preventive war.”
Though the Pentagon has prepared options to pre-emptively strike North Korea’s nuclear and missile sites for more than a decade and the past four presidents declared that “all options are on the table,” the rote phrase barely seemed credible, given the potential for a North Korean counterstrike against Seoul, South Korea, that could result in tremendous casualties in a metropolitan area of 25 million people.
But as the Trump administration moves ahead on Monday with a new round of long-planned military exercises that involve tens of thousands of American and South Korean troops, computer simulations of escalating conflict and perhaps overflights of nuclear-capable aircraft, the White House is determined to leave the impression the military option is real.
“Are we preparing plans for a preventive war?” General McMaster asked recently in a television interview, defining the term as “a war that would prevent North Korea from threatening the United States with a nuclear weapon.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
P!
I’m sick of wars. No more wars! Get that McCain and Linda?
See...?
It wasn’t really, really over.
Bump
Yeah! I’m tired of North Korea and their constant blustering. Let’s finish the job once and for all!
‘Preemptive’ is the word they’re looking for.
Interestingly, the underlying theory would seem to get a cheery two-thumbs up from the antifa crowd:
Bannon was right: there is no military option for NK unless you’re willing to send millions of South Koreans to their deaths. The decision boils down to roll the dice on a nuclear NK or accept the same death toll of a nuclear attack from artillery strikes into Seoul.
The only strategy I could see working was if you could evacuate Seoul beforehand (where you’d put all those people, who knows). Tell Kim he can shell an empty city and face instant annihilation or surrender and we’ll give him protective custody on some remote island for the rest of his life.
North Korea is going to build their missiles and nuclear weapons anyway, even with sanctions and with threats from the U.S.
So, why not destroy their research and development facilities?
Before carrying out any strikes, we should do heavy spying and research to find Kim and his inner circle and all of their missile launching sites. We can then take out their military bases, while neutralizing Kim and his cohorts. Kim can then go back to being the leader of a neutered military and a more impoverished nation.
No need for any military intervention or military strike.
Send in the Delta Force and take out Kimmy and his top military generals.
That’s why we have highly trained special forces.
Neocon McMaster cavorting with his compromised elite mentor Petraeus to sow distraction. Petraeus is said to be behind the soft coup of Trump, and by coup is meant either taking Trump out or owning him.
As General Mattis remarked, it will take all of 15 minutes to wipe out N. Korea. There is no need for anything further unless it is for Petraeus’s plan to take back the WH for the Deep State.
What is difficult for so many Americans to believe is just how people like Petraeus would plan such a coup. It’s an easy state of denial. But Petraeus was seen at a talk a few months back talking about just such a plan to start a war with NK.
Globalist elites need a war.
And here we are.
But the antifa losers use the same rationale to commit violence. That is, they claim moral legitimacy in preemptively attacking "fascists" before being attacked, lest fascism get out of hand. Of course, they are WAY OUT OF LINE in being judge, jury and executioner in terms of defining who is a fascist. But, nonetheless, it's hard to (rightly) bash their philosophy and turn around and give the OK to a preemptive strike in NK.
Again, I understand the difference between antifa and normal people, and nation-states. But, if I was to read the text below, I'd say NK still has no right to preemptively strike the US.
NK said "if the US accumulate enough to kill NK ten times over, the fight is essentially over. If the US starts to initiate an skirmish, NK won't be able to fight back. The US will repeat his provocation, and take away what NK has by piece by piece until the US has it all. If NK decide to fight back, the US will crush NK and NK will have no chance.
Believe me, I'm not a pacifist and I'm not arguing we shouldn't turn up the heat in NK. I just want to make sure there is a sound philosophical underpinning for taking them out, that can't be used against us. Thank you for listening and the civility.
The answers to my questions I’d put to the Pentagon planners would likely mean, if I were POTUS, I’d not make a “preemptive” strike.
Why?
Question one would be: How much would a preemptive strike be able to render North Korea unawares and totally surprised before it was too late?
Question two would be: How total would the strike be effective in achieving against the North Korean ability to respond?
Question three would be: Can such a strike be done without a North Korean response rendering a good part of the metropolitan area of Seoul into a pile of rubble?
Question four would be: Can it be done such that North Korea would be rendered incapable of attempting a land war against South Korea in response? (In other words, even if you could TOTALLY take out all North Korean nuclear arms and missile units, could and would they still mount a land war in response?)
I have some imagination of what the Pentagon planners responses would be. My guess is they would not produce extremely good answers to those questions, and huge losses in Seoul and still reigniting full scale conventional war could still be possible outcomes of “successful” decapitation of North Korea’s nuclear arms abilities.
I think the Pentagon planners understand that the situation is NOT like anytime when we tried “limited strikes” against Saddam Hussein to take out “just” his WMD programs. The whole contexts of North Korea and Iraq are not the same sets of conditions. The possible repercussions of anything less than “total success” and even partial success are very different than ever was the case with Iraq.
If all that means “no” to a preemptive strike, that also means war, and destruction in Seoul still could come by a different set of circumstances.
It may in fact be a difficult moral choice as to - when all is done and over - which is in fact the “more moral” choice. I’m personally glad I won’t have to make it. I’d probably go from already mostly white hair to bald.
What is also missing in this argument is the will to prosecute a military provocation. For past several decades, they were more than willing to create one while those on our side did best to avoid it. Ax-murders in Panmunjom, Pueblo incident, shooting down a surveillance plane in international airspace, series of guerilla attack on S. Korea, attacks on S. Korean navy patrols and sinking them. Their past pattern shows that they are not content to take only defensive measures but to terrorize our side periodically. During that time, what was the threat our side made? Some annual military exercises? They had plenty of appetite to make provocations and our side had little of it.
This is not Saddam Hussein who did not want to provoke U.S. and had no WMD.
You can play your moral game, but there are others who have to worry about their survival, especially allies in E. Asia. They would rather live in peace, but if N. Korea is left unchecked and carries out the kind of moves I described, would they have to sit back and see N. Korea having lopsided advantages?
Let's hope that N. Korea start another provocation to shell S. Korean island killing a few civilians. I suppose that is too little for any real military action? Maybe it should be thousands.
If they know we would put ourselves in such a moral strait jacket, it will convince them that they would do exactly what I described and prevail. After all, past history shows that their odds are really good. What is to stop them? They can come up with any excuse to justify why they are threatened unfairly.
PING.
From # 14.
Neocon McMaster cavorting with his compromised elite mentor Petraeus to sow distraction.
Petraeus is said to be behind the soft coup of Trump, and by coup is meant either taking Trump out or owning him.
As General Mattis remarked, it will take all of 15 minutes to wipe out N. Korea. There is no need for anything further unless it is for Petraeus’s plan to take back the WH for the Deep State.
What is difficult for so many Americans to believe is just how people like Petraeus would plan such a coup. It’s an easy state of denial. But Petraeus was seen at a talk a few months back talking about just such a plan to start a war with NK.
Globalist elites need a war.
And here we are.
.
Once that happens, B2 stealth bombers with GPS guided bombs and Tomohawk missile launched from our subs will take out the North's installations before they know what hit them.
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