The Obama administration has sent nuclear-capable B-2 bombers to drop munitions on a South Korean island, in an unprecedented move intended to intimidate North Korea.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has repeatedly issued threats of war to South Korea and belligerently criticized the US, despite the North’s comparatively pathetic military capabilities – a deficiency Washington is fully aware of.
The US called the dramatic show of force a joint military drill with South Korea, but it is transparently understood to be a direct threat to North Korea.
“The announcement will likely draw a strong response from Pyongyang,” reports The Associated Press. “North Korea sees the military drills as part of a U.S. plot to invade and becomes particularly upset about U.S. nuclear activities in the region.”
Nevertheless, the US continues to militarily antagonize the mercurial authoritarian government in Pyongyang.
“The United States stations 28,500 troops in South Korea,” political activists Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers wrote earlier this month. “In November 2012 the US upgraded its weapons systems and announced an agreement with Japan that would allow South Korea to bomb anywhere in North Korea.”
This aggressive approach has served only to increase instability and tensions.
“Wise statesmen learn to abandon obsolete or unworkable policies,” writes Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, and Obama “needs to show the same judgment and courage by making a sustained effort at the highest level to establish something at least resembling a normal relationship with Pyongyang.”
Not only is Washington’s confrontational militarism counter-productive, it’s also an extremely expensive way to unnecessarily intimidate a weak adversary.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, the B-2 stealth bombers cost $3 billion each and have flight costs estimated to be $135,000 per hour. At a minimum, writes John Hudson at Foreign Policy, that puts the cost of flying two of these bombers to Korea at $5.5 million.
Bend over, Americans, and assume the position. YOU pay for all of this BS.
Already are. It costs an incredible amount of money for every hour of flight time for those planes. That 'exercise' undoubtedly spent millions of dollars. Good thing we aren't in a budget crisis. I guess we'll have to deny more senior citizens retirement and health care to pay for this bit of saber rattling.
US should just back out of Korea, its one more war we cant afford, leave the Peninsula to its own devices, south has massive armaments and a huge army, US does not need to be there. Why should the US taxpayer pay for a domestic war?? Thats been going on for 40years? Forget it, send our kids to college and use the billions of dollars productivlely, we do not need to be involved on the Chinese mainland, its their problem.
Seems to me N. Korea needs to stop kicking the giant awake if they want to negotiate. Threatening to nuke the US is rather counterproductive and predictable at the same time.
Not only "counterproductive" but impossible. If I didn't know better I'd suspect the North Koreans are on the CIA payroll, assets in yet another false flag op. I recall a retired CIA officer saying, "If North Korea didn't exist, we'd have to invent it."
Well the US did invent it, and a very profitable little gig it's been for the last six decades.
The giant's tiny feeble brain is aware of NK's every move, as with the troll under the fairy-tale bridge. He is wide awake at all times but his pathetic control processes are approaching a disastrous failure. The giant's body and members are not what they once were. It is only a matter of time until a child cries out that he has no clothes, even if his fist is big. We need to worry more about his death throes than we or the giant need to fuss about a flea like Kim Jong Un biting him. Didn't the beanstalk giant demolish Jack's mother's house when he fell?
Aiming their rockets at US targets was absolutely predictable, as a response to US announcing B2 bombers in the area – which is why it was unfathomably stupid for US to do so. The US got it's idiotic bluff called.
David, unfortunately, this is exactly what Prof. Michel Chossudovsky describes in detail in his fabulously revealing new book, "Towards a World War III Scenario".
The DGE (Disguised Global Empire) posing as our former country, but composed of the ruling-elite corporate/financial/militarist/media/legal and political Empire in US, UK, NATO, EU, Israel et al, undertook the exact same highly provocative and threatening move of flying B-2s with B61-11 penetrating nuclear weapons out of Whiteman AFB:
"The air campaign directed against Libya commenced on March 19, 2011. America deployed its Bat-shaped B-2 Spirit Stealth bombers operating out of the Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. Described as "deadly and effective", the B-2 was used as an instrument of "humanitarian warfare". Barely two weeks after the commencement of the war, the Pentagon announced the testing of the B61-11 nuclear bomb using the same B-2 Stealth bombers which had been deployed to Libya at the very outset of Operation Odyssey Dawn. The B-2 Spirit Stealth bomber is the US Air Force's chosen "carrier" for the delivery of the B61-11 nuclear bomb. These timely tests pertained to the installed equipment, functionality and weapon's components of the B61-11 nuclear bomb. The tests were conducted by the B-2 bombers operating out of the same Air Force base, from which the B-2 bombing raid on Libya were conducted. Is the timing of these tests in any way related to the chronology of the Libya bombing campaign? The U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command was in charge of both the JTA tests of the B61-11 as well as the deployment of three B-2 Spirit Stealth bombers to Libya on March 19 under operation Odyssey Dawn. Both the deployment of the B-2s to the Libya war theater as well as the tests of the equipment of the B61-11 (using the B-2 bomber for delivery) were coordinated out of Whiteman Air Force base."
[Source: Chossudovsky, Michel (2012-03-15). Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War . Global Research Publishers. Kindle Edition.]
This Disguised Global Empire is clearly signalling NK that it can get away with anything it calls "humanitarian intervention" — and signalling that unlike the Libya near-use, the Empire would love to see a full scale test in NK.
The extant Global Empire is essentially saying, under the guise of the "essential nation" —- "Make my day, punk".
The Global Empire would 'do them' with no hesitation — but with delight (as this demonstration on NK would clearly show Iran, and perhaps 'others') just how confident and trigger-happy the DGE is today to "get it on".
Best luck and love to the fast expanding 'Occupy Empire' educational and revolutionary movement against this deceitful, guileful, disguised EMPIRE, which can't so easily be identified as wearing Red Coats, Red Stars, nor funny looking Nazi helmets —- quite yet!
Liberty, democracy, justice, and equality
Over
Violent/'Vichy' Rel 2.0
Empire,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
We don't MERELY have; a gun/fear problem, or a 'Fiscal Cliff', 'Sequestration', and 'Debt Limit' problem, or an expanding wars problem, or a 'drone assassinations' problem, or a vast income & wealth inequality problem, or a Wall Street 'looting' problem, or a Global Warming and environmental death-spiral problem, or a domestic tyranny NDAA FISA spying problem, or, or, or, or …. ad nauseum — we have a hidden EMPIRE cancerous tumor which is the prime CAUSE of all these 'symptom problems'.
"If your country is treating you like ****, and bombing abroad, look carefully — because it may not be your country, but a Global Empire only posing as your former country."
The question is, is North Korea stupid enough to attack any western backed nation. Are they that desperate? One of the most sanctioned regimes in the world, desperate enough to be the mouse that roared?
North Korea is weak militarily but there is a report by the CIA that says a nuclear bomb is supposed to go off somewhere in the world by 2013. That is what the report says. For it to be accurate it needs to happen this year!
North korea could a lob a dirty bomb at alaska or Hawaii. That would suffice. But then America would retaliate. And what is China gonna do with their borders threatened?
The biggest question is: was US really that stupid to think that stationing B2 bombers in the area would elicit such a response? NK has nothing to lose anymore. US has everything to lose. NK wouldn't do its damage to US via ground warfare, but rocket attacks, and who know, maybe a nuke. US cannot afford another war – not to mention that if they engage NK, any hope US has to muscle Iran is completely gone for good.
David, I'm sorry to have to say this, but you are exactly wrong.
First, it's not the US per se, but the DGE (Disguised Global Empire), composed of the ruling-elite corporate/financial/militarist/media/legal and political Global Empire of those powers-that-be in US, UK, NATO, EU, Israel etc., which is merely using the convenient global super-power of the country previously called the US. It's no longer 'our country', it's the EMPIRE, and the Empire's weapons systems.
Second, like the old song says, "Nothing could be finer than to be in North Korea in the mouring". By which I mean, David, that the DGE would love to demonstrate, more than in Kosovo, more than in Afghanistan, more than in Iraq, more than in Libya, more than in Syria (which is another coming demonstration), that the DGE can 'do anyone' anywhere —- which either 'doing' NK or Iran would more completely demonstrate than those previous little, non-nuclear, demonstrations show the big guys (BRICS), that the Empire's disguise and camouflage strategy of "humanitarian war" will hold up, and that the DGE can call all the shots with impunity.
Best to you and yours, David in confronting and surviving this DGE,
Alan
PS. Zeese and Flowers are right on 'target' in their referenced article about the brutality that has already been visited on NK, and I strongly suspect that Zeese fully understands that the DGE EMPIRE would up the ante without batting an eye. Killing large numbers of NK Asians or Iranian Persians is a non-issue to this DGE — you can 'bank' on that (just don't place your bets in Cyprus, as the Russians learned).
This is insanely provocative of the North.
Yes, the North's military equipment is outdated. But they have enough of it to cause major damage to South Korea, one of the US' major trading partners. They can destroy Seoul in 72 hours and probably kill most of the US troops currently stationed there. Pentagon war games show fifty thousand US casualties within the first ninety days of a war. NK has over 120,000 Special Forces troops capable of infiltrating and causing significant damage in the South. Quite a few of them probably already are in the South, waiting for an order to go into action.
A war with North Korea is not going to be some little invasion and then some guerrilla war a la Afghanistan and Iraq – or even Iran.
I presumed for some time that the military-industrial complex elite in this country was not stupid enough to go after North Korea due to the potential disaster a hot war there could be, compared to weaker nations like Iraq and Iran. But it is beginning to seem like the US really is pushing North Korea to the brink of war for no known reason other than to profit from such a war – regardless of the cost to US soldiers and the US itself.
It seems to be in the nature of declining Empires to become self-destructive in its latest stages. Problem is in the past the world could afford its current superpower going down the tubes but when one a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and led by a bunch of mafia-like criminals, it will affect us all catastrophically.
I think you're wrong about Iran. Iran is a regional power. Going to war with them would be just as bad as going to war with North korea. The only difference is that North Korea has nukes. Iran does not. Iran is a bunch of hype from the israel lobby. North korea is a real threat, with nukes, and a reserve force of like 4 million people! I think we could defeat north korea but we would have to topple them like we did Japan. Very very foolish.
OMG, a reserve force that's smaller than east LA. How would we ever cope? Of course we have to be very frightened of such a huge power.
The best thing to do would be to just completely ignore them. Stop spending huge sums of money to keep troops in S. Korea. Let N.Korea do its thing, let some late-night comedians make a few jokes at their expense, then go on doing what we are doing.
They are lucky if they can get their nukes to even go off during a controlled test, and its highly doubtful they could hit even the side of a big barn like the continental US. The talk that they might hit a target as small as Hawaii is obvious, over-hyped, nonsense.
The key thing to remember is that there always has to be such an enemy for the crooks to point at when they come to steal more of your money to waste on 'defense' that isn't defensive and isn't needed and could be better spent making America prosperous again.
You mean it was insanely provocative of US to announce the stationing of B2 bombers in the area. NK's response was predictable – which makes the US move all the more incredibly stupid.
Re: "NK has over 120,000 Special Forces troops capable of infiltrating and causing significant damage in the South."
It seems they did learn from USA !
Clearly those backing Chuck Hagel as a moderate were wrong.
The evidence for the last decade is that the Washington power-elite wanted to take down NK in the same way as Iraq, Iran, Syria etc. and this lay behind the efforts to stop them developping nuclear weapons.
They tried this three years ago, intending to use "famine" and a Humanitarian Intervention as a cover for invasion, for which the conveniently sinking ship was a False Flag attack.
They thought China would not object to them reuniting Korea.
The Chinese reaction caused them to back off.
Is this a part of the Asia Pivot, and if so, the intimidation of China?
Richard, war is the last option of a collapsing Empire.
US and the mafia who runs it should be taken out NOW. The world cannot affort to be silent anymore. The aggressors must be eliminated by any means NOW. Every one knows who is the aggressor and who are the gullible people who support these criminals, black and white.
DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM AND ZIONISM AND ITS GULLIBLE PEOPLE.
Uncle Sam waving his red white and blue diddler from sea to shining sea.
Surely South Korea doesn't actually think that the US is going to be able to stop NK from lobbing a nuke over the DMZ into downtown Seoul. The US would surely retaliate but Seoul would be a smoldering ruin.
provocation-bullying-tweaking the nose of N korea…what a great pretext to insure that we need to spend more debt on unnecessary militarism, to keep us all in a war-like state, to throttle those pesky peaceniks and to rally the troops, the populous around a flag that is tired of confrontation, of war, of false flags that are invented for odious and insidious motives…idiots…after wiki-leaks they should have learned,after iraq, they should have learned,…
Are these idiots in Washington really falling for this pathetic circus? I guess since we are fighting a war against the planetary menace that superpower Afghanistan is (and getting our behinds kicked) and eliminated the terrifying Saddam, Gadhaffi, et al. we have got to accept the challenge by that North Korean retard. Don't we feel safer already that our military geniuses are doing everything to Fight Evil!
Can you afford another war? Iraq and Afghanistan almost made US bankrupt. And those countries are comparatively weak, compared to NK and Iran. NK doesn't need a top notch military to hit US targets with rocket barrages, and maybe a nuke…
Not to speak of having to "do something" about Iran and its pipsqueak threats. At least this is a diversion, but it may blow into a full scale confrontation with China. If you are a country who declares a regional hegemony, even taking in Tibet, then they will not sit still for a war with North Korea.
Are these idiots in Washington really falling for this pathetic circus? I guess since we are fighting a war against the planetary menace that superpower Afghanistan is (and getting our behinds kicked) and eliminated the terrifying Saddam, Gadhaffi, et al. we have got to accept the challenge by that North Korean retard. Don't we feel safer already that our military geniuses are doing everything to Fight Evil!
We've tried to intimidate N Korea since 1952 with no success. Does Washington really think a couple of non-stealth bombers r going to do it?
Those of you who accuse North Korea of provocation are way off the mark. The North Koreans are NOT stupid and full well know they are incapable of launching a nuclear attack on the United States; neither would they launch an attack on South Korea. What is to be gained? What is the purpose? Nothing, is the answer. The North Koreans, do, however, know how to push our buttons and they have done it with style this time, making the United States look juvenile. Do you have any idea what it cost to get those planes into the air? Way, way back, in the 1960s it cost $10,000 just to get the feet of a B-52 off the ground.
The United States is the dog in the Pavlovian dog experiment.
Nations don't act intelligently. Look at what was "gained" by the American invasions in Iraq. The Americans ARE STUPID. And wars are fought by STUPID people who refuse to do something other than go to war. Especially American Wars.
Don't play around with nuclear weapons and both sides appear to be doing that. But America is utterly contemptible in it's stupidity for these stupid flights.
Indeed they are, especially when they have this huge "intelligence" community that only knows how to kiss the President's ass.
This means when a single military air plane crosses by chance or mistake the border to NK, the NK military must launch its nuclear missiles, because otherwise their few nuclear facilities could be destroyed by a nuclear bomb – isn't it ?
But 0800, Secret Agent 008 Obama (licensed to kill with drones) doesn't sweat the small details like collateral damage.
What matters is a truly dramatic final scene with fire-balls, a fast get-away, beautiful women, and a Martini (shaken not stirred).
Our man, 008, doesn't mind the "shaken" part.
Intimidation? It's more likely a test of NK's readiness and capability of tracking the B2. It's also a good test of long range effectiveness of the B2s. Intimidation would have been if the planes had flown over or extremely close to disputed air space. Cost? Put that in perspective. What does it cost NK to launch a 3-stage missile and to test nuclear devices? Our economy can withstand quite a few B2 flights before our people starve to death and eat each other.
Really, we are already laying off teachers and nurses to pay for this nonsense. We are already being told that people have to lose their retirements and instead work as a greeter at Walmart until they finally fall over and die. We are already being told that we have to cut medical care for the elderly. We are already being told we have to raise taxes. We already live in an economy that's bankrupt at least partially because of decades of massive overspending on 'defense', while keeping taxes too high to pay for it and shorting critical infrastructure projects like repairing bridges or making sure the dikes around New Orleans could withstand a storm.
To me, the one thing that is blindingly obvious is that we can't afford this. That we haven't been able to afford this for some time now, and those chickens are coming home to roost, and that now especially we've got to learn that we can't afford this at all.
I obviously gave Hagel more credit than deserved for being one of the smart ones. Why in the world would you want to poke someone who, as they say is "untested" into defending his ego in front of the world? – and especially his own people. I'm no psychologist but I've read enough to know that the normal reaction of an insecure empowered person whose world view is shot down by a bully is to up the ante. Do we really want another real war on the Korean peninsula? I'm sure Japan is not interested in a radioactive dust cloud wafting across the countryside. Really stupendously stupid.
Our President is being advised by the greatest minds ever assembled to deal with Kim Jong Jr. They know that the only thing he understand is force. Just like Al Queda. That's why America remains undefeated in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and many other countries where we are at war. This isn't like Vietnam. We will defeat the bakers and herdsman in Arab countries that threaten our fiefdoms.
President Obama is a brillant man because of his giant brain. The more he intimidates North Korea, the more they are likely to back down. Everybody knows that when someone is threatening you, the best way to diffuse the situation is to threaten them even more and then they will surrender. We need to send bombers over there all the time to diffuse the situation and maybe even drop some bombs on them and then they will see that just because they drop some nuclear weapons on us, we didn't back down like in Iraq. That's why we are still at war with 60,000 troops in Iraq to prove that we won't back down and it's only been about 10 years with the greatest military ever assembled against the puny Al Queda and their turbans.
America is a very intelligent nation. Never remember that.
Very funny. Wry humor for this situation, but funny none the less, Piddy
I wonder if Brer Rabbit really cares if we throw him in the briar patch? Because I have seen satellite photos of North Korea. It is largely undeveloped and there is no sign of city lights. They lack infrastructure to be destroyed by nuclear bombs, which originally wiped out Japanese cities which were densely populated. All you can do is poison their earth, which is also our earth.
So these intimidation tactics have be somewhat futile. The little man with the rockets and the shrill voice is still going to posture, even more so as we poke at him.
He can probably damage South Korea, however. Is that what we are aiming for? Or are we hopelessly stuck in putting on a show for both Koreas? To mix a literary reference, maybe the tar baby has us and not Brer Rabbit after all.
let me walk if front of your yard with a loaded shot gun staring at you with hatred in my eyes,sneering at you while i call the cops all the time everytime you do what i do while getting away with it and see what you do????
Hagel will prove time and time again that he is not the man for the job. Sending nuclear bombers to south Korea does give the impression of provoking north Korea. Next we'll see billions of dollars spent building 5-star hotels and family housing for our troops and airmen in south Korea. Oh, i forgot…Rumsfeld and Gates already did that.
This SecDef will carry out his orders just like the other SecDefs. People are talking like Hagel as if he's now some sort of King who gets to make decisions. If Hagel wasn't willing to follow orders, then he'd never have been nominated. If Hagel ever stopped following orders, he'd be asked to immediately resign.
At least on the left, its usually hilarious how far people go to avoid putting OBAMA's name on a policy. Its the Justice Dept or the FBI or a rogue prosecutor or in this case "Hagel" is to blame, but the people who were conned into voting for Obama thinking he was a peace candidate seem incapable of saying that its OBAMA who's doing this.
And, that unless they participate in a grassroots based political revolution in this country, the same will be true of who-ever is the next Democrat to lie to them and thus gain power.
I don't think the scale of danger is fully being realized. North Korea is poised to attack at any second, based on scaled provocations by the US military. If war breaks out then the whole island of Korea will be bombed into rubble by both sides, with 100s of thousands to millions dead. And there's a threat of nuclear weapons striking Japan, Singapore, Alaska or anywhere in missile range for that matter. Obama has been a complete imbecile with regards to the situation with North Korea, and this could be THE breaking point.
THe US-South Korean military exercise was planned well ahead and well before the threats from N Korea. So far from the truth. The B2 was sent, perhaps to demonstrate to the North that it cannot continue to threat the South but the international community. We must see this conflict within that context – the international community. For anytime that North decides to attack South, the consequences will have a negative impact on the world community economically. Not just on Korea, but also on China, Russia and America. It is irrelevant that a B2 bomber was sent to exercise together with the South. It is only relevant to ask what the North is thinking and whether that thinking is a rational thinking.
Why do we always point blame to the US for the escalating problem concerning North and South Korea? If there was a war between North and South, the consequences are the death of thousands of people on both sides. The reason no war resulted in this present conflict is because the US have pressured South Korea not to retaliate. HOwever, it will be different next time because the US and South Korea have signed an agreement that gives Souths the green light to decide on its own as to whether to retaliate against North anytime it is intimidated.