There is nothing for the NK regime to gain by an actual missile attack. The action would be suicidal. But nukes are a vaccination against regime change for these States. It is the only logical move. And there are no easy counter moves for the world on this issue at this point. The very existence of these weapons are a moral disaster.This is just one of the reasons. I think folks go quiet on North Korea because they sense the utter failure of such a regime's existence. I suspect some limited cooperation would be deadlier to the regime which feeds on confrontation than the present style of cornering but I really don't know. Sucks.

I don't know either. And yes, it sucks. I wish I had your confidence that Kim Jong Un wouldn't ever do something just because there was 'nothing to be gained' from it. After all, there's nothing to be gained from suicide bombings and they're literally...well, suicidal. To the individual who perpetrated them. But it doesn't seem to stop people. And The N Korean leaders mindset doesn't seem that much more stable than the average Jihadist lunatic to me. A little maybe, but not much.

You don't understand what I am saying. I have heard that intercepting an ICBM is like trying to intercept a bullet with a bullet. The failure rate is super high. So I just don't have any hope in those weapons and I think believing in that sort of solution makes it more likely to enter into a game of chicken with a homicidal State.

Are you saying you have know something about these weapons systems? I am happy to hear if there is some trust to be place in them. I have always heard the opposite.

Look Bub, he just called everybody nasty names for little reason five minutes ago. I thought I was being pretty reasonable. Don't give me that moral decision nonsense. We are not participating in these decisions. We aren't actually in possession of the facts about the reams of the interconnected hungers for power and control on all sides of these issues. Bill is putting up a cartoon. You won't be asked anything as a citizen in regard to these military decisions. This sort of debate is a charade whereby we vicariously pretend we are participating in our own rule by finding some part of our State's enemy that can be our enemy as well. It is not the question I am fighting. It is the use that these sorts of questions are put to.

The type of cartoon that more and more are becoming the sole decorations of the public imagination. There are a hundred lies smuggled into every one of these simplified images, left or right. They all rely on doing exactly what Bill did to the sense of history and interconnected humanity in Ann's post. I am not hiding from any of this though I do find the focus on such an untouchable situation as opposed to the actual progressing devastation of the planet's biomes suspicious. I have had nightmares since I was a young child reading Hiroshima about these weapons. They are in fact terribly hard to think about.

Please don't call me Bub. For one thing it stopped me from being able to read the rest of your post.

I don't know where you getting any confidence on my part. I don't have any. I find a North Korean ICBM to me really bad news for humanity. No idea what it will mean.

Suicide bombings don't turn the entire nation into molten rock like a US response would. And a great deal of currency is gained in suicide bombings even if it is foreign to our sense of honor and our accepted means of killing. But I hear you. KJU is unstable. My point being the question of what action actually makes the use of the weapons by that regime less likely? I suspect the answer isn't becoming the steam release valve for Trump regime which will shortly be in dire need of something to fight "out there".

It is a Mainer thing. Bub that is. Read what you want. Ignore what you wish. You asked a question in way that provoked a response. One man's bub is another man's hiding lecturer.

'And a great deal of currency is gained in suicide bombings even if it is foreign to our sense of honor and our accepted means of killing.'

I assume by 'our' here, you're referring to human beings with any shred of decency and sanity.

But I take your point about 'Bub'. Fair enough.

"Our" means that I also find suicide bombings disgusting and foreign to my imagination. But I find myself reacting that way to all modern bombardment from above and below. You know, like naplam. Dropping gel gasoline on top of living beings from airplanes and burning them alive if they happen to be in the forests you need to clear. It is remarkable how our stories function to allow a hierarchy of violences that seems so clear from the armchair. But can a primate's nervous system distinguish between the pain caused by a cruise missile and that caused by a bomb vest as the respective bits of burning metal pass through it? Does that mean I can't see the difference Islamofascism and...say...Rojava's brigades. No. I am willing to take sides. But I won't lie to myself about the levels of humanity or sanity in all of our modern weapons systems or pretend that I have any idea who is actually the "good guy" when a bomb is dropped from twenty thousand feet.

"I can only imagine how this thread will go."

Bill, the thread went the way you forced it to go. There is no Left movement here apologizing for NK or sympathetic with its regime. But by force feeding people a cartoon they eventually balked. What is it you need to hear from folks here to assure you that there is a diversity of views of the so-called left but a common ground of mostly pretty good folks who just want to leave a better world than the one they found.

'There is a diversity of views of the so-called left but a common ground of mostly pretty good folks who just want to leave a better world than the one they found.'

Atheist Amen to that Emitt. Not that it's relevant, but I recently voted for the 'terrorist sympathising pacifist' (co. every British tabloid*) Jeremy Corbyn over here. I do, and always have, consider myself 'on the left' if I must place myself somewhere.

Peace Bub ;)

And to you Bill.

And to you Ann, you lovely old lefty.

Edit: * except the Daily Mirror

I remember the Korean War when I was a child, just as Ann does. . I remember one of our chaps, a naval officer I think, captured and tortured by the North Koreans, bamboo up the fingernails (and up the bum for all I know, but he wasn't saying), something we associated with the Japanese. And I'm sure the Japanese don't do that now. As for the North Koreans, who can say?

I see nothing much wrong with the Donald's reaction to the (empty) threats of Kim Jong Fatso. And most of the North Koreans would rather live in South Korea, or anywhere.