Following North Korea’s claim to have tested a hydrogen bomb over the weekend, Senator M. Michael Rounds gives WNAX a sober assessment of why we don’t want to go to war with North Korea, even though we’d win:
There is no question but that… if it came down to a shooting war, North Korea will lose, and it will be the end of that regime, but at the same time, there would be a real human toll on the Korean peninsula, and that’s what we as a country are trying to avoid [Senator M. Michael Rounds, interview, WNAX, 2017.09.04].
A Clinton-era estimate of the cost of war on the Korean peninsula was one million dead and nearly $1 trillion in economic damage, and that’s without nuclear attacks. 25 million people in Seoul are within range of North Korea’s conventional artillery, although equipment malfunctions and tactical considerations reduce the possibility that North Korea could launch an all-out conventional attack that would annihilate the southern capital.
Senator Rounds appears to agree with Steve Bannon: there’s no military solution in North Korea, at least none that won’t cost us and our allies dearly.
Of course, North Korea may be able to inflict enormous damage on the United States without firing a shot, just by goading our Toddler-in-Chief into making wild economic threats against our most important trading partners, including South Korea.
When did we actually win a guaranteed winnable war? Why would a putz sitting behind a desk in the Nation’s capitol guarantee we’d win a war that is likely avoidable with competent diplomacy, which is not the hallmark of the Drumpf regime?
This is China’s problem too! With that, you would think more would get done.
Trump won’t fight the war. Only those who choose to serve will fight the war. You won’t. You will sit home and say things like “gee, that’s terrible” but you won’t do anything in addition. You will simply follow along on this anti-American site and cry about how terrible the loss is while those that are braver enough to protect your sorry ass put it on the line. Same story, same crying.
“sure we’d win war in Iraq”
“sure we’d win war in Afghanistan”
Republican wars of shock, awe, fury and some other b.s.
Rounds: “Obamacare is collapsing, there is no doubt”
riiight?
Oldsarge, we warned you that Trump was liable to get us into a nuclear war with his unhinged rhetoric and child-like mindset. Now that warning appears to be more likely by the day.
But like you said, Trump isn’t going to fight the war. He had a hang nail and got a deferment from service during Vietnam. But he made up for it during the 80’s, when he claimed his fear of STD’s were his personal Vietnam.
It’s usually not people like Trump who suffer during war, but it is people like Trump that get us into wars.
funny things republicans say while Trump (“no one cares about my IRS returns except the fake news”)…
fleeces a nation with Mara Lago, his DC Hotel, his Russian tower, and every other one of his family members unethical, fraudulent business operations during his presidency:
1. “obstrutionist democrats”-trump. he he ha ha
2. The Trump Administration Is Cracking Down on Visa FRAUD for High-Skilled Workers. http://fortune.com/2017/04/04/donald-trump-h1b-visa-fraud/
3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-hotel-dc-profits_us_598db0f1e4b09096429653c4
see photo (Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Tiffany Trump and Ivanka Trump attend an official ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Trump International Hotel in Washington on Oct. 26, 2016.)
4. “storm chaser fraud”–Fraud is the latest threat facing victims of Hurricane Harvey…could threaten us for nxt 7 yrs http://www.npr.org/2017/09/04/548505790/fraud-among-the-threats-for-victims-of-hurricane-harvey
5. “Because Trump did not fully divest from his businesses, he still benefits financially from the hotel, which ethics groups have suggested leaves him open to major conflicts of interest, including bribery.”
6. “President Trump now both owns the lessee, Old Post Office LLC, and controls the lessor, GSA, whose administrator is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the president.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-hotel-dc-profits_us_598db0f1e4b09096429653c4
Are we supposed to seriously fear fraud by storm victims and their roofers while under a fraudulent trump administration?
seriously?
fraud is deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right.
Again OldSarg takes the fascist route, not addressing the substance of the issue, just hurling the usual false insults to lure us away from the topic and into a pointless personal shouting match.
Rounds speaks here with appropriate caution and sobriety: war in Korea will have a terrible cost. As multiple observers have noted, the current occupant of the White House has said and done nothing to help avoid that costly outcome and is just making matters worse.
Old “demoted to buck private and dishonarably discharged” Sarg imbibed a whole case of Whacky Wingnuts Bitters and a box or two of Unhinged Talking Points for lunch.
I have been to the land of the morning calm…driven from one end to the other. Met the people, toured the cities and villages. its not like MASH folks… the terrain is unforgiving the weather is unpredictable and when it is its mostly bad.
Open war with the North is not something we want to do….
The irony of OldSarg’s comment is that he won’t be fighting a war in Korea either, after all he is an ‘Old’ Sarge and not combat ready.
I read the Blog subject line as “We’d win a war with North Korea with a real human troll.”
It caught my attention, because if we have real human trolls to throw in with the army it would be like that TV show my grand daughter watches where these giant trolls fight with men on horseback.
But, alas, I was just a victim of my poor eyesight or reading comprehension.
I wasn’t aware that Rounds was Sicilian. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mTlnrXFAXE
Seriously, MacArthur, then Gates warned us to never get involved in a land war in Asia. Our track record isn’t so good. https://worldview.stratfor.com/weekly/20110228-never-fight-land-war-asia
And just by what stroke of wishful thinking does Rounds or any other apologist think that guarantees that China would not intervene, again?
War is an unpredictable, uncontrollable crap-shoot once embarked upon. Many, too often most, factors (enemy, friendly, neutral players, own citizens, geography, science developments, even weather) are beyond ones control or influence or ability to accurately calculate. Our track record is full of hubris that we will win this or that – but fall far short. We should keep our powder dry until there is an imminent, imperative threat to our Constitution, nation, and way of life. If one is not ready to re-institute the draft, ration the economy, and ready for a years-long, perhaps decades long slog – then it’s irresponsible and the height of hubris to speak of war.
Recall that Mao’s favorite general was George Washington. Not because Washington was undefeated or bold — but because Washington outlasted, survived longer than the British were willing to fight and bleed their soldiers, sailors, and economy. [Read, or at least go see, Hamilton if you need a civics reminder.] And in doing likewise Mao unified China. Those championing “Buda’s Wagon” (more powerful than dozens of wings of bombers, and often of divisions – the IED is the modern version), hold a particular disproportionate leverage over nation-state bound fighters. War is unpredictable.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2007-05-01/budas-wagon-brief-history-car-bomb