“In April 2008, Senator John Ensign’s parents each made gifts to Doug Hampton, Cindy Hampton, and two of their children in the form of a check totaling $96,000,” a statement on the senator’s behalf said. “Each gift was limited to $12,000. The payments were made as gifts, accepted as gifts and complied with tax rules governing gifts.”

July 9th, 2009
3:58 pm

Au contraire! We ignored al Qaeda and paid a high price. We can deal with Iran and N. Korea without an all out war, just like we could have Iraq and Afghanistan. Certainly all diplomatic efforts should be exhausted first, but we can’t just let them keep making threats without letting them know there will be consequences. Serious consequences.

What do you do with that kind of nuttiness? The whole situation makes me think of the dangerous crack-addled cousin whose mom keeps slipping him twenties when no one’s looking. Not a perfect metaphor, but ask yourself, as a member of the world family (maybe even the daddy) what are your options?

Kill or maim cousin crackhead (Attack NK)
Reason with cousin crackhead that it’s time for rehab (Already done, no dice. Cousin Kim loooves crack)
Get mom to stop giving cousin crackhead money (Pressure Russia and China)
Wait until cousin cracky OD’s (Regime folds, military coup, something else)

If it was a simple problem we’d have solved it a long time ago. All the people in charge can do is weigh the costs and benefits of the options and make the best decision possible. To people who think we should jump into everything head-first guns-a-blazing (Honduras?!) just remember, these things have high costs. Crack aside, war isn’t funny. It’s a terrible last resort and you won’t know if it was the right thing to do until after the fact, once the dust settles and the victors write the history books.

Some people think we’re at the last resort the first time someone says something nasty… think of former UN Ambassador Bolton. That kind of thinking is way too predictable to be a real threat to our enemies. You can’t throw punches every time someone calls your mom fat. That’s not controlling the situation.

July 9th, 2009
1:51 pm

Ask the GOP.

rob

July 9th, 2009
1:54 pm

Thanks for your service. It’s hard to believe we’re still there over 56 years later. Wonder what would have transpired if Stalin hadn’t died?

I guess keep ‘em starving and freezing is good policy. I hate to see the government waste precious resources as the populace suffers.

My take on military interventions in NK and Iran. Pretty gloomy stuff to ponder:

I could see the missile strike option working in North Korea, where they are geopolitically isolated and playing an endgame. Then again, we have crumby intel on what is where. Someone only recently figured out where Pyongyang’s subway system actually went using inferences from Google Earth. And there’s no guarantee that the deadenders up there won’t let their artillery go on Seoul causing deaths in the 100s of thousands to millions. At least in NK’s case, it seems that you can look at the damage and assess the outcomes with reasonable certainty. It may not be pretty, but you could. From what I hear they’ve run the scenarios and have a plan to do so. The US military could shut the whole place down, just at a gravely serious cost in lives, not to mention millions of refugees rushing the Chinese border.

In Iran’s case we have pretty good intel since people are actually able to come and go from there. We know the major nuclear sites there. The Israelis even took the Natanz one out back in the early 80s. Problems with bombing Iran are manyfold, however. 1. Natanz is now buried under so much concrete that it would take a nuke to get through it. 2. Iran is not as isolated as NK. People like their oil, and they still have good relations with much of the world. 3. Israel, Pakistan and India all have nukes, and are all rivals to Iran. 4. Iraq and Afghanistan would be the logical jumping off points for a full-scale invasion, but then we’re fighting a war from there clear across the desert to Pakistan. The potential for an unpredictable chain of events can’t be underestimated.

In both cases, there is significant uncertainty around the stability of the regimes. Iran’s got more than a few students angry. A lot of the clerical establishment is pretty PO’d too, and Kim Jong Il is quite ill himself. It explains a lot of their belligerence these days, irritating as it is.

As for Al Qaeda, if you compare the worst-case scenarios of an attack by them to even the middle-grade scenarios of an attack by an actual state like Iran or NK, their threat is much, much less. If they can get one dirty bomb to go off in an American city (God forbid), the damage is nothing compared to open nuclear, or conventional warfare. That said, Al Qaeda is more likely to actually hit here and kill us than either Iran or NK. Admittedly, my argument is only valid if you value the lives of people in Seoul and Karachi the same as US citizens.

Truth is, there’s no right answer. You just get judged later. I don’t know what I’d do in Obama’s shoes.