He held no illusions of his fate if war ever broke out. They are a temporary stop gap destined to hold as long as possible until a larger force could be deployed. With our previous presidents, whether you supported them politically or not, they at least held some consideration for the lives of those military personnel and their families. I do not believe for a second that tRump has any respect for those 28k men and women. If war broke out, he would lose no sleep nor would he shed one tear for the loss of life. He has no respect for anyone and he is incapable of compassion. I feel for the military. Their commander in chief has no honor. He views everyone beneath him with contempt. They answer to a deranged madman. I only hope relations can hold until he is gone. At least with Pence, horrible his views may be, I believe he has some respect for the men and women in uniform .

Why, as we speak Cheeto must be ruminating about how "starting a war saved Dubya's ass - why can't it do the same for me!"

It's all about himself, and what he thinks might be most convenient at any given moment - anyone else be damned.

I pray that if he gets it into his fat head to actually pull something in the Koreas, that our Joint Chiefs can somehow stop him - or depose him if need be.

a Master Sargent in the Korean War,and he said this,The North Korean's will come at you with a 100k strong per day for ten years. And if the Chinese join in,a million men per day.

Ask any Vet from this War,and they will tell you,you don't win.

There was a standard 'joke' during the Korean War:

"Today, we (the US) lost 500 and they (NK) lost 100,000. We're doomed to lose because we'll run out of soldiers first."

number of Guys who suffered from frost bite and some even froze to death because of Stupidity in Washington. Nothing seems to change,when the Military Industrial Complex rings the bell,we send our Kids to do their bidding.

North Korea is a nation of 25 million people. That's fewer people than Texas.

South Korea has 51 million.

North Korea's army is claimed to be 1 million strong. South Korea's is 650,000 strong. South Korean soldiers are better fed, healthier, better educated, better trained and better armed.

With an army of 1 million and a population of 25 million, you're not going to throw 100,000 soldiers a day for years at a time.

More likely the North Koreans will throw in a blitzkrieg style attack. Each mile they advance their losses would pile up, their supply lines would snap and their command and control would fall apart.

The question is will the North Korean army fall apart once it reaches the south? When they see how much they've been lied to their whole life will their army melt away?

not winnable. If this sucker is lite off,hundreds of thousands of causalities in the first 24 hrs. There is zero winners only losers.

People still believe the Rumsfeld Theory which was one huge disaster. But then Fox News wants this war.

chemical release will cause major problems in it self! UNWINNABLE

Radiation in amounts that will kill tens of millions of people around the World. Those down-winders that are now suffering with various Cancers and other Diseases caused by the above ground testing here in Nevada. Ask them or their surviving family members and friends how this all worked out.

No Winners,only Dead and Sick and Dying People with a few to record their stories.

grow from there totally out of control. THEN maybe Russia invades U.S.A.?

it's a total different world i'm afraid

The Iraqis were decimated from the air.
If this war was non-nuclear, the NK forces may rush south en masse, but A-10s and attack helicopters would slaughter them. Add in the artillery and it gets even worse.
Not to mention, as you say, the higher likelihood that they fall apart as soon as they lose their leadership
Now there certainly would be large losses on the South side, but the North would fail miserably. Seriously doubt china would jump in this time

The agreement would be that the US and ROK forces agree not to cross the border. In return, China deposes the Kim regime and sets up a government in North Korea acceptable to China, and not threatening to South Korea.

I wouldn't be surprised if the US and China have not already talked about such an arrangement.

Technologically it isn't much more advanced than armies were at the end of WWII. Their command and control is likely very vulnerable. They could certainly do a lot of damage initially, but the final outcome would only go one way. Bio and chemical weapons are considered a wmd; if NK were to use them it would almost certainly end with a nuke on Pyongyang.

If we used a nuke on them we would still have to rebuild the country afterwards and you'd have a masses of rebellious N Koreans who would continually try to overthrow the US like the Taliban does in the Mid East.

A nuke won't end it like it did in Japan.

We would be stuck in another Iraq but worse and we gain absolutely nothing for it.

Theres little difference between NK and the Japanese forces when it comes to fanaticism. But resistance wouldn't last long because its not religion based. Dear Leader wouldn't hold up as a religion.
Once they see the real world, most would stop fighting. The rest would be killed.
Islamists think death is a reward.

North Korea is not India or China or even Indonesia or Bangladesh.

It is a small nation of 25 million people. It has a smaller population than Yemen, Nepal, Madagascar, Uganda and Peru.

Its road network is antiquated and repairs are performed by pressed gangs of civilians with axes and shovels. They're short of transport and the oil to run what they have.

I don't want war because hundreds of thousands would die, but let's not make North Korea some world power because they aren't.

One advantage they'd have is that their population is used to being hungry so after their supply lines snapped, their soldiers would be able to survive off the land better than most. In fact, they'd probably think living off the land of South Korea wopuld be a bigger bounty than they'd ever had before.

And the point about their fanatical dedication is only to their leader, not a religion, so if he is eliminated the armies might disintegrate into chaos.

So I take back some of what I said.
We would still get into a horrible quagmire trying to rebuild N Korea from a brainwashed population.

We could win with superior firepower but at great cost.

Bigly, even.

He's a vile, inhuman robot with no regard for peace, truth, decency or logic. May he suffer his final doom in the most embarrassing, public, humiliating way possible. May his grave be at the bottom of the shit-pit of an outhouse where every dump taken buries him deeper in what he deserves. Fuck the forces and ancestry that brought him to where he is today. Fuck those that support him.

The only good thing he ever did was call Trump a dotard. Other than that, he and Trump are basically long, lost brothers.

It would be hard to quantify the hate I have for Kim Jong Un and for Donald Trump and his bottom-feeding 30% of supporters.

That about covers it.

Until tomorrow.

that is more than capable of handling North Korea. Now, don't take that as an indication that I'm in any hurry for a war to break out. A war would be catastrophic in terms of loos and life and the destabilization of the global economy. But the idea that the combined U.S. and South Korean forces would lose to North Korea is ridiculous. North Korea could do enormous damage and inflict huge losses of life, but defeat both the U.S. and South Korea? No way.

And they were tough, battle-hardened vets of a long, grueling war, instead of half-starved, poorly equipped conscripts. With no counter to US air and technological power, they have no chance. And I have my doubts about the supposed "fanaticism," of the NK people and army. I think it's less "brainwashing" and more "dealing with living in an extremely totalitarian police state."

Or risk losing 20000 plus military people and their dependents.

Of course NK could drop VX nerve gas on our bases right off the bat and....yeah.

NK classifies 22% of their population as "hostile," so there is a group who'd at least try to escape and give some intel if there was land chaos.

They're intense and survival-crazy, but they're not unbeatable.

This article is a scare piece.

They are a disciplined and professional force with something worth fighting for. Possessing modern weapons they know how to use.

It would be a blood bath for both sides, especially for S. Korean civilians, and only a sadist would want a war. But the North would lose.

He said the ROK's (Republic of Korea) were bad ass, and always st a high level of readiness. I am sure that is still true.

They have a large army themselves. I'm more concerned with nukes, chemical/biological weapons, civilian deaths, and general incompetence in our executive branch than the number of soldiers they have.

The US forces and South Korean forces are meant as a deterrent but not a solid wall. It's much like the strategy we had in Europe against the Warsaw Pact. The invading force has overwhelming numbers and you can't possibly stop them but you can slow them down while you mobilize other forces that are technically superior to the invading force. The sad reality of this is that you are basically asking the in place forces to sacrifice themselves. As brutal and sick as it sounds Seoul also provides a firebreak against an invading NK army. It's only 35 miles from the DMZ, there are about 10M people in that area a large civilian population escaping from the fighting southward would provide a massive tactical problem to NK. Even if they don't care about how many civilian casualties there are you just can't get through that many people quickly while worrying about the US and SK forces that are harassing you not to mention what are probably a lot of guerrilla civilian forces.

The entire thing would be a blood bath on both sides but ultimately the NK supply lines would become too stretched and their invasion would get bogged down. The South is vastly different from what it was like in the 1950's the last time the North tried this, the logistics are far more complicated for them. They also wouldn't have China or Russia coming in on their side.

Just trying to find the bright side.

korean peninsula. they've gotten used to low body counts in fake wars against prostrate fake enemies.

You are now President.
You are facing the DPRK.
Keeping in mind the past diplomatic efforts and their outcome.
What do you do?

Go

"ferry" & "cargo air" said with much

China has hundreds of nuclear missiles aimed at us 24/7/365.

What do we do about that? Nothing of course.

So NK, MAYBE, might have one or two that, MAYBE, could be capable of reaching the USA so we must kill hundreds of thousands of people, leave the korean peninsula a smoking radioactive wasteland and plunge the world into a major depression over that?

I purpose we do exactly what we do with the Russians and the Chinese, talk about it.

You see the MIC and Trump are setting us up for war because that's what failing presidents and the bloody MIC do.

They look for areas of opportunity to shed poor American kids blood in some shithole country for profit.

Remember this quote because this is what the republicans are setting up right now in front of your eyes.

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

— Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

Jouas is assuming that we'd fight a war with North Korea with *only* 28k men, as if we wouldn't mobilize more...

What we WOULD lose is a proxy war with the Chinese, assuming they put everything they had behind the North Koreans again...

the chinese army took devastating loses in the korean war.. american air power would decimate chinese ground troops..if it came to that which it will not since china is against most of what the current regime in north korea stands for...

I don't think China has any interest in such a proxy war, but if they did then it seems reasonable to think they would be a huge problem. They have a massive industrial base that could pump out modern equipment that is close enough to US equivalents. They have billions of people they can mobilize. Not to mention what the problems they could cause in other areas such as with our network connected infrastructure, and what they could do economically.

Hopefully that would never happen because all sides would suffer pretty bad in that sort of situation. I'm pretty sure most of us don't want that, and I'm sure China doesn't want that either....

and supply NK.

they'll only fight against us if we launch a first strike. If NK attacks first, they'll stay out of it.

The threat by China. On top of that we don't know what weapon Russia?/China? has given/shipped to NK.

i'm assuming south korea will fight as well....in a one on one fight south korea by itself would defeat north korea assuming the north does not use nukes...south korea has superior weapons compared to the north,.. and i am assuming mass north korean defections if a conventional war happens...

Americans can't afford the trillions & trillions in costs of these wars, not even to mention the millions of deaths and the ongoing & growing needs of our Veterans & our citizens.

Those trillions need to be spent here on infrastructure, medicine, education & the sciences.

we need to remember once the WAR comes out of the box it cannot be put back in the box. NOBODY knows the final result of which country would do what. I'm talking ONLY if tRump stikes NK first here. If NK stikes first THAT'S a whole dif ballgame!! We will have NO CHOICE but to destroy them!! i feel NK is just talk, and would never first strike.