"The US must talk to North Korea – not threaten war"
.. nor should fear-mongering right-wing pushers as Alex Jones feed crap about looming war with North Korea ..
By Robin Wright September 6, 2017
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U.S. air strikes against some North Korean targets might require flying not far from the border with China, Marks warned. And China would be just as concerned as the United States would be if another country came that close to U.S. borders. “North Korea is a subset of our relations with China,” Marks told me. “What impact would a war have? Devastation of Seoul, the unravelling of world order, and China on the other side with ‘enemy’ status. And if the United States and China are belligerents, everything is up for grabs.”
The dire predictions about what a possible war with North Korea would look like are among the many reasons that current and former military officials strongly favor more diplomatic outreach—whatever President Trump says publicly. Last week, Trump tweeted, “The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!” Hours later, James Mattis, the Secretary of Defense and a former marine, publicly broke with the President. “We’re never out of diplomatic solutions,” Mattis told reporters while standing next to South Korea’s Defense Minister, Song Young-moo, at the Pentagon.
Marks told me that Mattis’s statements reflected the views of top American commanders. “There is certainly a hawkish option on North Korea,” he said, “but there is no hawkish faction at the Pentagon. Nobody wants another war in Korea.”
Gen. Barry McCaffrey: Donald Trump Could Lead U.S. To War With North Korea | The 11th Hour | MSNBC
Published on Oct 13, 2017
Saying Pres. Trump has lost almost all credibility with the international community, including our allies, Gen. Barry McCaffrey says conflict with North Korea could come in by summer of 2018.
"Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT. Good genes, very good genes, OK? Very smart: the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart. You know, if you’re a conservative Republican—if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican, they try—oh, do they do a number. That’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune. You know, I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged. But you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me: it would have been so easy—and it’s not as important as these lives are. Nuclear is so powerful. My uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power—and that was 35 years ago—he would explain the power of what’s going to happen, and he was right. Who would have thought? But when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners— now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three. And even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger: “Fellas,”—and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so you know it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so ... And they, they just killed, they just killed us."
Luckily Trump isn't making the running on the North Korean question. Also, fortunately in this case the Pentagon is much more responsible than the president.
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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