[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Michael Ferris

Bill, I’m not an ethicist, just a fuzzy-headed occasional poet, but I think I would answer your question this way:

It is defensible for a nation to shoot down a missile that has been fired at its people. It should take care to minimize all loss of life from such an action, so over the open ocean may not be the worst option. It is not defensible for a nation ‘preemptively’ to bomb or attack another nation that it suspects may launch a missile at it in the future. (Isn’t that the infelicitous "Bush Doctrine"?) And it’s hypocritical for a nation to attack another ‘preemptively’ when the preemptive aggressor already possesses one of the world’s largest arsenals of the weapon in question.

It’s an interesting exercise to compare the list of countries that the US has bombed or invaded since 1945 with the list of countries that North Korea has bombed or invaded since 1945. Then, it’s interesting to see how many of the countries that the US bombed or invaded had nuclear capability at the time we attacked them. You can draw your own conclusions from the exercise.

Michael, Would you rather live in the US or North Korea?

Would you rather have the Don as President or would you rather have the Supreme Leader of North Korea as your President?

Two simple questions. You can answer them directly, and honestly, or you can dance around them.

The only thing in your post that I wish to respond to, for now, is:

It is not defensible for a nation ‘preemptively’ to bomb or attack another nation that it suspects may launch a missile at it in the future.

No kidding?

Has the US bombed or "attacked" North Korea? Or has the US simply demonstrated that she has far more military power than NK and that it would be unwise for NK to launch a first strike upon the US? Did you listen to the UN speech?

Please stay on target. Pun intended.

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Matt Q

OK, well that's not a view I hold, and it's also not a view I've seen expressed (though I'm not reading much of the US press) and it certainly hasn't been expressed on this thread as far as I can see. I've only ever seen negative things said about Kim Jong Un in the media, including the liberal media. Of course, I'm not saying that you can't find examples of people out there expressing the view that you attribute to all liberals. Perhaps you can. But still, every liberal? Or even the majority of them?

Thank you, yes, I am doing a group-judging thing, which is dead wrong. I'm sometimes not as careful as I'd like to be. I'd like to extend a special thanks to you for remembering that I am a nominalist, that I do not believe that universals exist as actual, real entities, and that I believe, very emphatically, that people can only be judged as individuals, NOT as groups.

YAY! Somebody remembered!

I apologize for being the thing that I hate, and being led emotionally to treat groups a real beings. [Edited in: AND for using 'being' three times in the same sentence!]

That being (ha!) said, I have yet to argue with a person on the Sphere who says they are left in their thought, and consider themselves liberals, who is saying anything substantively different from what I have been seeing in this thread, and other threads on the site.

In private, mind you, it's a bit different. Not to name names, but there are at least three senior members with whom I correspond via email who consider themselves left-ward in their thinking, but who also hold some views that would be called conservative. None of them have participated so far in this thread. They write encouraging things to me and thank me for being the odd-man-out, so to speak, while at the same time not exactly agreeing with my views, and in a few areas having views quite the opposite of mine politically.

Originally Posted by Matt Q

If I've understood you correctly, you are someone who is opposed to the idea of classes of people and wants people seen as individuals.[ > YAY!] So how about starting with some individual examples of the above view so we can assess and address these on their merits, rather than a massively sweeping, unevidenced and clearly false (if only by virtue of its generality) statement about hundreds of millions of people who've you've grouped together based solely on a very broadly shared political/philosophical view.

We, the amorphous left-leaning masses of the West, may not be who you think we are. We may even be individuals with widely differing views on a variety of topics, and some of our views, if only a minority of them, may even be quite reasonable.

best,

Matt

Well of course. Howzabout ye amorphous left-leaning masses (at least those of you on the Sphere), begin to express some of those widely differing views, right here in this thread, on this particularly touchy topic?

The one thing we can agree on, as poets, is that NONE of us have warm fuzzy feelings about the idea of bombing ANYONE, ANYWHERE. Do we agree on that?

However, if I state that the US is morally compelled, in no uncertain terms, to intercept a nuclear missile aimed toward a densely populated US city, I expect rational people to agree with me.

IF there is some reason the US should NOT intercept a nuclear missile aimed toward a densely populated US city, then I would like to hear that reason.

[Ann Drysdale]

Since you ask whether the US has attacked or bombed North Korea...

"The brutality of the Korean War* has largely been overlooked by U.S. history, but the conflict has long shaped Washington's troubled political relationship, or lack thereof, with North Korea. As President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threaten to ignite a new battle in the region, the scars of the past seem to resonate more powerfully in the Korean Peninsula than in the West.

During the course of the three-year war, which both sides accuse one another of provoking, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea, including 32,557 tons of napalm, an incendiary liquid that can clear forested areas and cause devastating burns to human skin. (In constrast, the U.S. used 503,000 tons of bombs during the entire Pacific Theater of World War Two, according to a 2009 study by the Asia-Pacific Journal.) In a 1984 interview, Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, claimed U.S. bombs "killed off 20 percent of the population" and "targeted everything that moved in North Korea." These acts, largely ignored by the U.S.' collective memory, have deeply contributed to Pyongyang's contempt for the U.S. and especially its ongoing military presence on the Korean Peninsula.

Most Americans are completely unaware that we destroyed more cities in the North then we did in Japan or Germany during World War II... Every North Korean knows about this, it's drilled into their minds. We never hear about it."

(Historian and author Bruce Cumings. in Newsweek.)

My point being that a little humility, a recognition of the past, a reaching-out, a bridge and not a wall, might lessen the likelihood of that missile's being fired in the first place. We are coming back to the basics of the Good Guy again.

*And yes, I remember this war, too. As a pre-teen I used to play in the back garden with the same-aged son of our lodgers. He was fascinated by military action and determined to join the army when he "grew up". He guzzled every media reference to this conflict and had access to many alarming "comics". He always wanted to play "K'rean War". This involved hurting me and having me cry for mercy. Nothing sexual, just a bit of throttling and tight ligatures. He used to put on a fake American accent.

I don't live in North Korea, but I can imagine what it would be like, how the US might be spoken of with suspicion and loathing, just as "The Russians" were regarded at mass media level in the US throughout another long, cold war that I have also not forgotten.

[William A. Baurle]

That's in the past. NONE of us in this conversation had anything whatsoever to do with what happened THEN!

My questions remain unanswered.

Who will have the courage to answer them correctly?

However, if I state that the US is morally compelled, in no uncertain terms, to intercept a nuclear missile aimed toward a densely populated US city, I expect rational people to agree with me.

IF there is some reason the US should NOT intercept a nuclear missile aimed toward a densely populated US city, then I would like to hear that reason.

I've edited out the rest of this post; PM coming your way, Bill.

[Michael F]

Bill,

Your post above is strident, nasty, and resorts to name-calling. I'll engage with you no further.

M

[Mark McDonnell]

Bill. Chill. Chill Bill.

You want simple non-nuanced answers? As a thought experiment, if country A (any country) launched a nuclear missile at a densely populated area of country B I would expect country B to make every effort to intercept said missile, whilst doing their utmost to limit casualties from said interception. Ann's garden analogy is lovely but flawed: there are lots of innocent people in gardens in country B who shouldn't be held responsible for the the actions of Bingo or Bozo anymore than the people whose gardens lie in the middle.

And I'd rather live in the US, lunatic Trump and all, than N Korea right now.

There. Happy? What have I won?

I sense your frustration (I'm intuitive like that) and have some sympathy. But I think maybe you frame discussions in such a way that people feel like you're setting a trap for them so you can say 'Aha! Not so lefty liberal now are ya?' Folks bristle at that...

[Ann Drysdale]

Oh, Mark - thank you. Yes. How could I have overlooked them? All my younger self's marching and placard-waving "not in my name" should have shown them to me. I was representing the B's as individuals and not as countries, which was shortsighted and narrow-minded of me.

Bill, you say "NONE of us in this conversation had anything whatsoever to do with what happened THEN!" My point was that perhaps we should. All THEN was once NOW, All THEN creates NOW. (I was aghast to find that there seems to be no mention of the Korean war in the Wikipedia entry for Curtis LeMay, so I am still trying to get my head round that in the light of Professor Cumings's NOW and THEN.)

As to "intercepting", "destroying", "obliterating", the approaching weapon? - what criteria would you use to determine a safe place for such a detonation? A less-populated area? Possibly a rural area of the US itself if the thing had crossed the coastline? It is too big a question for a weak and cowardly self-congratulating poetaster. I claim all your adjectives as my excuses.

Peace, friend.
.

[Jayne Osborn]

I don't like intervening and ''coming the heavy" unless it's called for, but I've received some PMs about this thread, so I've stepped in this time. (See post #34)

I'm not locking the thread, as has been suggested, . . . so long as the discussion continues in a polite manner, as most of you are doing. Thank you all for your co-operation.

Jayne

[Emitt Evan Baker]

I think the idea of a missile defense system seeing actual use against ICBMs in the air is horrifying to people on a couple levels. The great hope is that these horrific bombs will never be used again. Imagining anything other than that they rot in their silos is a nightmare. I have never heard anything but that air to air missile defense against ICBM's is tricky at best and a bit of a dice roll.

A conventional war with North Koreans would mean a war against a mass of enslaved soldiers, either brain washed, misdirected, or simply pressed into service to avoid executions of their families at home.

Anyone I know on the "Left" (in reality today a very multivocal hodge podge of old wine skins and new wines) finds that Regime to be among the worst abusers of its people on the planet. There just aren't any easy solutions. It isn't about courage of any kind to "stand" against Pyongyang.

You can't dismiss Ann's last post as you do an expect anyone to take you seriously.

If you imagine the political spectrum with the (maybe over-simplified) double axis of Left/Right and Bottom Up/Top Down it may help you to understand why many of the left don't recognize the cartoon you keep posting as their wanted picture. We find the Top Down forms of authority as far from our wishes as much of the so-called Right. The caste system that formed in North Korea was based on allegiance to the Top Downers and all others became part of the Hostile caste and were eliminated. All political certainties and Revolutions with a capital R are to be fought against but the fight should start with the ones in charge where you live here and now. Personally, I think your overlooking the dark tower of the home team by denying the utopian and totalizing characteristics of the capitalism(s) of the technological State which is a State you can actually engage, unlike Pyongyang.

[Mark McDonnell]

Emitt, you say:

'I think the idea of a missile defense system seeing actual use against ICBMs in the air is horrifying to people on a couple levels. The great hope is that these horrific bombs will never be used again. Imagining anything other than that they rot in their silos is a nightmare.'

Come on. Nothing that Bill has posted has suggested otherwise. I'm beginning to understand his frustration. Nobody wants to imagine these things being used but Bill is asking you to imagine the unimaginable and then make a moral choice between the lesser of two horrible, horrible evils. Is the thought of not employing the missile defence system and allowing the ICBM to hit its target any less 'horrifying to people on a couple levels'? Your answer seems to be 'I prefer not to think about it, and that makes me a good person'. Why can't you at least answer his question and then you'll have earned the right in the rest of your post to lecture Bill about his apparent political naivety.