Combating Evil

 

North Korea’s gulags are as bad as anything Josef Mengele did. We hide behind the facade that we only care about America’s interests — and that a war with North Korea is not in our interest; all we care about is nuclear weapons. We overlook the concentration camps. And this is so very, very wrong.

There are solutions — great ones. Use balloons that drop themselves or their cargo over predetermined zones in North Korea. Load the balloons with small arms, candy bars, wind-up radios, South Korean beauty magazines, and give the North Korean people food, hope, and the possibility to defend themselves in their homes and in the streets. We could do it all with nothing more than paying delivery bonuses to private companies, and letting them innovate the best solutions.

End the evil. Spread freedom. Because freedom around the world is very much in America’s interest.

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  1. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    By meeting with Kim, Trump has opened a door. Kim seems to be following up with acts of disdain. I think whatever we can do to continue to shake things up with his people, to wake them up and empower them, would be a good thing.

    • #1
  2. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    So when people start picking up the packages and getting shot, what then?

     

    • #2
  3. Jim Beck Inactive
    Jim Beck
    @JimBeck

    Morning iWe,

    I agree, we have accepted that which we said we would never forget.  I imagine the both North Korea and China would have a strong response, the North Korean government would view this as an existential threat and China wants North Korea to be a buffer state and that it is a failed state is all the better.  So if we assume some response, will we have made the situation better or perhaps worse?  The North Korean government is willing to kill great numbers and even the population understands that execution is a daily threat and that they must be very careful.

    • #3
  4. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Hang On (View Comment):

    So when people start picking up the packages and getting shot, what then?

    Drop them all over the land. Even the security forces will be tempted.

    The goal is to bring down the regime, at a minimum in bloodshed and cost. This does it.

    • #4
  5. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Jim Beck (View Comment):
    The North Korean government is willing to kill great numbers and even the population understands that execution is a daily threat and that they must be very careful.

    Drop millions of packages. North Korea cannot afford to murder all their people because stuff fell from the sky.  They NEED people, or they have nothing.

    • #5
  6. Simon Templar Member
    Simon Templar
    @

    I like it, and if there is a better plan I have never heard it.  

    • #6
  7. Nanda Pajama-Tantrum Member
    Nanda Pajama-Tantrum
    @

    Simon Templar (View Comment):

    I like it, and if there is a better plan I have never heard it.

    Was going to say, this dovetails so nicely with Winning the Peace that it’s a match made in Heaven!

    • #7
  8. Jim Beck Inactive
    Jim Beck
    @JimBeck

    Afternoon iWe,

    I think it would be best to imagine what the worst response might be and prepare for it.  North Korea would consider this type of attack  an act of war and would feel  free to respond in kind.  They might with China’s help flood the South with drones of their own design maybe hazardous and lethal.  The North has already shown that they are willing to suffer the loss of millions, how many will the South be willing to sacrifice, I doubt very many.  The North might also threaten to expose the South to radioactive material either by rocket or drone.  They might attack the grid of the South which would have horrible effects, and if the South shut down the North’s grid, the North could survive more easily. The North could say that shutting down the South’s grid was equivalent to the air drop, in that, it is not a shooting war.   If war plans are thrown away after the first shot, we better know what we will do if it becomes a shooting war.  How many of our soldiers are we willing to loose?  Will China sit passively as they are threatened with millions of refugees, not likely.  China may even see this as the pretext for attacking Taiwan, we would have to be ready for our “isolated” attack to ripple out in unpredictable ways.  Your plan cover day one only.

    • #8
  9. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    It’s not a very good idea. You don’t understand totalitarian regimes or a completely oppressed brainwashed populace. Next.

    • #9
  10. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Franco (View Comment):
    You don’t understand totalitarian regimes or a completely oppressed brainwashed populace.

    Perhaps. If arming the Nork civilian population isn’t a good idea, then why are citizens not allowed to have guns?

    • #10
  11. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Jim Beck (View Comment):
    Your plan cover day one only.

    You are right, of course, that there would be unintended consequences. There always are.

    But here’s my problem: what is going on in North Korea is a true crime against humanity – the worst human rights abuses in the world. And we need to do anything that is likely to make it better.

    We complain that Roosevelt did not want to go to war to save the Jews. We certainly don’t seem to want to go to war to save North Koreans. Why is everyone OK with this?

    My proposal gives us the best chance of changing the regime without firing shots – and if we DO end up in a shooting war, it is because we did nothing more than start to feed, educate, and arm North Korean civilians.

    • #11
  12. Jim Beck Inactive
    Jim Beck
    @JimBeck

    Afternoon iWe,

    Your are right the gulags are among the worst, and they are a crime against humanity, and the West should be ashamed because of our weakness.  However your proposal does not face the possibility of bad out comes.  You suggest that there won’t be a shooting war,  when in history,has a regime like this gone down peacefully, never.  China will never let North Korea become like South Korea, China has lost too much of their own blood to cede the North.  In the best case, China might push the northern part of the population south and take over the northern part of North Korea.  How will the South now take over all the refugees from the North?  Where does the money come from?  Will South Korea population be willing to pay the price, we have not ask them their consent.  Will our population pay the price, many folks like America first, have we ask their consent?  One can not go into a war on a dream, we have seen what happens when countries enter war thinking they will only last a short while, like WWI.  We have to plainly, bluntly tell the people of South Korea that there maybe 20 K or more dead and the expense will last more than a generation.  Similarly we must be blunt with the US population that more than 10 K of our soldiers may die to finish off the North Korean regime.  We could make the case that it would be good for the souls of both countries and our allies to do this. but if the peoples of these countries are not for it, stepping into the unknown without the consent of the citizens is a path to failure.  As Franco has suggested, the people of North Korea are not the same as the Jews of Germany.  The prisoners of North Korea have never known a civilized life, to bring them back into a free world to become productive would be a historical challenge.  Also where does this stop, injustice is nearly universal outside of the West, do we then go into another country with another air drop, it seems so painless?

    • #12
  13. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Jim, I am not talking about mere injustice. The North Korean prison camps rival anything in human history for barbarism.

    Nor am I suggesting that any of the choices are easy. But one thing is clearly NOT acceptable: the status quo. And nuclear arms are only part of the problem (though we clearly should deal with the Norks sooner rather than later because of the ticking bomb). So if there is to be war, it is MUCH better to happen sooner rather than later.

    If the Norks start shooting, the US Army is quite likely to silence the artillery very quickly, indeed. I am told that we keep their positions dialed in – Seoul would be hit by a salvo or three – not a barrage.

    North Korean is already a humanitarian disaster. The excuses for not dealing with that disaster that you list are shameful to me, and they should be shameful to the civilized world.

    We.Must.Deal.With.Evil.  If we do not, it will come back to haunt us.

    Do we wait until the Norks nuke their first city? Or, assuming we somehow peacefully stop the nuclear program, do we consider countless barbaric acts against civilians to be acceptable realpolitik?

     

    • #13
  14. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    iWe (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):
    You don’t understand totalitarian regimes or a completely oppressed brainwashed populace.

    Perhaps. If arming the Nork civilian population isn’t a good idea, then why are citizens not allowed to have guns?

    Perhaps an answer would be to drop millions of revolvers and ammo over North Korea.  An armed citizenry is a bulwark of freedom.

    I’ve sometimes wondered, what would happen if villages in Central America were all armed; would the villages band together as vigilantes to rid themselves of the armed gangs?

    • #14
  15. Jim Beck Inactive
    Jim Beck
    @JimBeck

    Afternoon iWe,

    Looking back at Iraq, we could not stop some of the scuds and we definitely could not find them, we could not find the anti-aircraft missiles until they had been fired.  Iraq did not happen as we had expected, what war does.  So extrapolate to North Korea, could they fire a nuclear missile into the South or just even radioactive material, highly likely.  None of your answers address that.  I would not even bet that we could stop the artillery that fast.  You have not addressed the problem of China as if they were not the deciding factor in the Korean War.  You make no mention of how to get the citizens of South Korea and the United States on board.  Shall we do this with a pen and a phone?  We did not get into a war with the USSR because of their gulags, even though as Solzhenitsyn said many Soviet prisoners wished we had, including a nuclear war.  The gulags there were barbaric, was our waiting through the cold war shameful then, if not, why, was freezing to death in Siberia, less ghastly, was dying in the mines or while timbering, or starving in any camp less barbaric?  We can not step into war high on emotion, or it will show we have learned little.  Kim Jong Un may think Trump just might pull the plug and go to war, and that is why he seems to want to negotiate, or maybe, like in the past, it is a stall, we will find out soon.  If we can squeeze the nukes from him without a war, that will be a good.  Without nukes North Korea will be a different country, if Un wants to live, things may change.

    • #15
  16. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):
    Perhaps an answer would be to drop millions of revolvers and ammo over North Korea. An armed citizenry is a bulwark of freedom.

    I completely agree!

    • #16
  17. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Jim, all the Nork responses you suggest are already risks. Why not have some upside?

    I am not suggesting this approach out of emotion. I am suggesting it because the blood of North Korean people is on our hands for as long as we choose to turn a blind eye.

    Yes: dealing with evil is HARD. But as history teaches us, dealing with evil sooner is invariably easier than dealing with it later.

     

    • #17
  18. Jim Beck Inactive
    Jim Beck
    @JimBeck

    Afternoon iWe,

    Maybe your not basing your approach from emotions, however your idea has not been fully thought out.

    The Chinese at a time in the 50’s when it was poorer and had less capacity to become a hegemonic power poured in over 200 K into Korea which at that time was not a client state.  For over the next half decade they have nurtured this client state and used it to create difficulties and probe our weaknesses.  And yet you have not made an attempt to reply to the problem China presents to your plan as if China would not guard their investment. So in the first six months of the Korean “police” action 14,650 Americans perished, and some how this time it will be different. No Snafus. If your idea is so good and so cheap we should drop these packages into China as well especially to the Falun Gong. so that the Falun Gong will not have to be involuntary organ donors anymore.

    • #18
  19. Nanda Pajama-Tantrum Member
    Nanda Pajama-Tantrum
    @

    Jim Beck (View Comment):

    Afternoon iWe,

    Maybe your not basing your approach from emotions, however your idea has not been fully thought out.

    The Chinese at a time in the 50’s when it was poorer and had less capacity to become a hegemonic power poured in over 200 K into Korea which at that time was not a client state. For over the next half decade they have nurtured this client state and used it to create difficulties and probe our weaknesses. And yet you have not made an attempt to reply to the problem China presents to your plan as if China would not guard their investment. So in the first six months of the Korean “police” action 14,650 Americans perished, and some how this time it will be different. No Snafus. If your idea is so good and so cheap we should drop these packages into China as well especially to the Falun Gong. so that the Falun Gong will not have to be involuntary organ donors anymore.

    To Everyone/Everywhere where human life/liberty is under threat… 

    • #19
  20. Simon Templar Member
    Simon Templar
    @

    Gary Robbins (View Comment):
    …would the villages band together as vigilantes to rid themselves of the armed gangs?

    Yes.  The Peruvians did something like this in their war against the Shining Path.  It generally worked well over time.  Although it was not always pretty – especially at first.

    • #20
  21. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    iWe (View Comment):

    Hang On (View Comment):

    So when people start picking up the packages and getting shot, what then?

    Drop them all over the land. Even the security forces will be tempted.

    The goal is to bring down the regime, at a minimum in bloodshed and cost. This does it.

    You cannot do this with balloons. First, the winds blow the wrong way to do this from launch sites that do not immediately entangle China and South Korea — so you are risking general war without planning to mitigate the risk. Second, I believe  balloons will not spread out over the whole land, because air currents.

    The idea has rhetorical power, like the old call for smuggling mimeograph machines into the Soviet Union.

    • #21
  22. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Clifford A. Brown (View Comment):

    iWe (View Comment):

    Hang On (View Comment):

    So when people start picking up the packages and getting shot, what then?

    Drop them all over the land. Even the security forces will be tempted.

    The goal is to bring down the regime, at a minimum in bloodshed and cost. This does it.

    You cannot do this with balloons. First, the winds blow the wrong way to do this from launch sites that do not immediately entangle China and South Korea — so you are risking general war without planning to mitigate the risk.

    I checked this site: Winds in the region allow for sea-launched balloons from international waters, albeit between China and North Korea. Not all the time, but some of the time. Indeed, some days showed winds from the East, allowing for launches from the direction of the Pacific.

    Second, I believe balloons will not spread out over the whole land, because air currents.

    Might depend on the day.

    Nevertheless, we do not need to actually design a solution – between balloons and both low and high altitude drones (including ideas like released gliders), there are a range of answers. One could start with cheap drones until the Norks ran out of missiles, then airdrop gift bags from aircraft designed for waterbombing.

    All the US government has to do is offer a bonus per care package, frame it as the moral crusade that it is, and let American Ingenuity answer the call. Hundreds of American companies, properly incentivized, would go for it.

    This approach certainly cuts down on Pentagon bureaucracy and delays. And it will deliver solutions much, much faster.

     

    • #22
  23. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    iWe (View Comment):

    Clifford A. Brown (View Comment):

    iWe (View Comment):

    Hang On (View Comment):

    So when people start picking up the packages and getting shot, what then?

    Drop them all over the land. Even the security forces will be tempted.

    The goal is to bring down the regime, at a minimum in bloodshed and cost. This does it.

    You cannot do this with balloons. First, the winds blow the wrong way to do this from launch sites that do not immediately entangle China and South Korea — so you are risking general war without planning to mitigate the risk.

    I checked this site: Winds in the region allow for sea-launched balloons from international waters, albeit between China and North Korea. Not all the time, but some of the time. Indeed, some days showed winds from the East, allowing for launches from the direction of the Pacific.

    Second, I believe balloons will not spread out over the whole land, because air currents.

    Might depend on the day.

    Nevertheless, we do not need to actually design a solution – between balloons and both low and high altitude drones (including ideas like released gliders), there are a range of answers. One could start with cheap drones until the Norks ran out of missiles, then airdrop gift bags from aircraft designed for waterbombing.

    All the US government has to do is offer a bonus per care package, frame it as the moral crusade that it is, and let American Ingenuity answer the call. Hundreds of American companies, properly incentivized, would go for it.

    This approach certainly cuts down on Pentagon bureaucracy and delays. And it will deliver solutions much, much faster.

    Mess with the territorial integrity of North Korea, and you bring in China on their home court. Any civilian ship attempting such launches, from the waters you suggest, would mysteriously sink. We are not going to war for an oppressed population here when we have tolerated decades of atrocities in Africa.

    I like your exploration and advocacy of unconventional ways to weaken or end the North Korean regime. I outlined another, entirely non-lethal, approach some months ago in “Deflating the North Korean Threat.” It too has lots of problems.

    • #23
  24. Simon Templar Member
    Simon Templar
    @

    Clifford A. Brown (View Comment):
    Mess with the territorial integrity of North Korea, and you bring in China on their home court.

    Assign this mission to the CIA (G-d knows they have enough money.  What they do with it is anybody’s guess.) and make it Triple Double Top Secret so that no country gets the blame/ credit.  L-rd knows that they have wasted money on dumber things then iWe’s concept.

    • #24
  25. Simon Templar Member
    Simon Templar
    @

    If China goes to war with us over ‘care packages’ being dropped in North Korea then perhaps a good war with them is exactly what we need.  If it must happen, the sooner the better.  They are getting militarily more capable by the second thanks to the technology they keep stealing from us.  Well that and the technology that “Get back to doing the American peoples’ business Clinton” gave to them for bags of campaign cash.

    • #25
  26. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    An armed citizenry is great if they can talk to each other and are informed, not brainwashed.

    People have to be incited and organized to fight. These people are in no position psychologically to come even close to rebel.

    The authorities would immediately make horrific examples out of anyone caught with these things, other citizens would inform, there’d be torture galore and much bloodshed for little or no result. 

    Kim would take that to be an act of war and may well start firing artillery on Seoul- especially if the plan started to look threatening to his regime. 

    So glad you guys aren’t in charge of foreign policy…

    • #26
  27. Simon Templar Member
    Simon Templar
    @

    Franco (View Comment):
    So glad you guys aren’t in charge of foreign policy…

    LOL.  Maybe that’s why I never got that gig!

    • #27
  28. Nanda Pajama-Tantrum Member
    Nanda Pajama-Tantrum
    @

    Franco (View Comment):

    An armed citizenry is great if they can talk to each other and are informed, not brainwashed.

    People have to be incited and organized to fight. These people are in no position psychologically to come even close to rebel.

    The authorities would immediately make horrific examples out of anyone caught with these things, other citizens would inform, there’d be torture galore and much bloodshed for little or no result.

    Kim would take that to be an act of war and may well start firing artillery on Seoul- especially if the plan started to look threatening to his regime.

    So glad you guys aren’t in charge of foreign policy…

    Kinda glad none of us are, @franco…That said, @cliffordbrown, must we let the perfect be the enemy of the possibly-good?

     

    • #28
  29. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Franco (View Comment):
    People have to be incited and organized to fight. These people are in no position psychologically to come even close to rebel.

    Agreed. But if the police came to arrest your wife and you had the means….

    • #29
  30. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Franco (View Comment):
    The authorities would immediately make horrific examples out of anyone caught with these things, other citizens would inform, there’d be torture galore and much bloodshed for little or no result. 

    It is a bit like Trump Derangement: the Norks already escalate everything so much, that it becomes pretty hard to be worse than they already are.

    If there was no potential upside to arming the citizenry, then the Norks wouldn’t mind us doing it…

     

    • #30
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