The sad part is that is not how China views South Korea, unless the US pulls out of the peninsula if the two Koreas unite. A unified Korea does not guarantee US pullout unless the US declares the intent. Right now the US will not give up the option to be present in Korea after they reunite, thus China will continue to prop up the North as a buffer zone against Japan and US.
Finally we do not have enough assets at the time when we were in Iraq to take on NK, unless you make the assumption the war in NK will go smoothly like we ASSUMED in Iraq. We are not going to control the NK territory unless US and SK troops move in when NK collapses. Problem is the Chinese will also move in. Today there are 4 reinforced PLA mech divisions on the NK Chinese border, something that never existed 5 years ago. Why do you think they are there? China has plans also if NK destabilizes, they will move in and the 4 mech divisions are the vanguard to a larger PLA force. So if we attacked NK and assume we can collapse it from the air bombardment, I say be careful on your assumptions. If the PLA moves in from the north and we with SK move in from the south, we will just end up with a divided Korean pensisula with different demarcation lines. Once China takes the NK, it will never be relinquished for a long long time.
Who says it has/had to be absolute scorched earth war? We were doing a pretty good job of strangulating them economically from 2002 to 2005/6 allright, and then suddenly, bang!, they (D.C./State/NSC) go totally Joe Pritchard/Wendy Sherman/Madeline Albright on us with Pyongyang, start the kowtow little by little, and before you know it they are getting hosed up the large intestine by a laughing Kim Jong il by December 2008. It was one of the most pathetic erosions of American Will & Resolve I have ever watched, and what made it suck was that it occured under “W”s watch after such great prose and policy during the Axis of Evil days. It will only be outdone by what this dorfus Obama in there NOW will do, IMHO. God help us (and the poor North Korean people).
The fact is, the North Korean people would welcome the South Koreans, Americans, Communist Chinese, even the Russians as liberators because they have been driven to the point of extinction by the policies of Kim Jong Il.
The North Korean military may be what props up Kim Jong Il, but they are not blind and they can see what KJL’s ‘juche’ theory has done to their country.
Actually, the discussion we’re having is moot because we ALL know that Comrade 0bama is not about to initiate any kind of military action against Pyongyang, in fact one of MY concerns is that 0bama would sacrifice ALL of our military forces stationed in South Korea on the chance that by showing “restraint” that the Korean War would not flare up again, where it left off in 1953 (of course being the Marxist/Communist that he is, 0bama would probably be wishing for a win by North Korea anyhow).
We had a window of opportunity in which at the minimum, we could have taken out North Korea’s nuclear capability, and it is highly likely that if that had occurred, that Kim Jong Il would have had his throat cut by one of his more ambitious generals and that would not at all be a bad thing.
I believe it was John Bolton who said “the only thing worse than a preemptive strike against North Korea to eliminate their nuclear capability, is a nuclear armed North Korea” (and he may have said the same thing about Iran, and would be likewise, absolutely correct).