gems in the trash

Thanks for making me start the day with a laugh, Left Flank. I suppose that metaphor is slightly more complimentary than one about the broken clock being right twice a day.

Each year Open Doors releases the World Watch List, a detailed analysis of Christian persecution worldwide. In this free resource, countries are evaluated and ranked according to the severity of persecution that occured in the past year.

This year North Korea again sits at the top the list.

“There is no other country in the world where Christians are being persecuted in such a horrible and systematic manner,” says Carl Moeller, President/CEO of Open Doors USA. Watch video interview>>

One expert on North Korea stated: “Christians are the target of fierce government action, and once caught, are not regarded as human. Last year we had evidence that some [of those captured] were used as guinea pigs to test chemical and biological weapons.”

Despicable.

As for your long list of open wounds America keeps cauterizing, they are nonetheless America’s fault, including Formosa. The rickety infrastructure of corporate links, captured domestic and foreign interest groups and their regulatory agencies, and military bases still can’t justify keeping the wounds bleeding. America’s main interest lies in keeping the air and sea transport links open, and nothing more. On that much, I do agree with you.

“Seemingly, Western church groups, especially, the World Council of Churches, always view South Korea or the U.S. as responsible for ‘provoking’ North Korean aggression.

“These church groups not only have been silent about North Korea’s various aggressions, including the recent torpedo attack. Even more egregiously, they are silent or even make absurd excuses for North Korea’s inhuman persecution of Christians. Western church groups often naively visit North Korea’s handful of government-run show churches in Pyongyang.

The World Council of Churches Communists has a great deal to do with the world and almost nothing to do with Church. This is unconscionable and worthy of the sternist condemnation.

There are over a million men in South Korea who are on call for the Reserve forces and I am certain quite a few of them were checking their uniforms, combat boots and dog tags when President Lee announced formally that they had found fragments of a North Korean torpedo. The reason they do not join street protests against North Korea is that they are all too aware that when the shit hits the fan, they will be called to do a whole lot more.

I do not believe anyone who has not served in a military force where combat is imminent can understand what goes on in the minds of 20 and 30-something South Korean males. The most major factor is that really really awful things happening is a major possibility and that they have a lot of stuff to do that is more urgent than shouting at a rally.

I actually agree that USFK should be redeployed. It’s a libertarian point I want progressives to support.

The imagined cost savings of pulling out US forces is a fantasy of people who do not fully understand how much Northeast Asian peace and stability relies on the unique role of the US presence, and do not have enough creativity to realize how things will precipitately go south not long after the US departure (eventually leading to a war that sucks the US in and costs the US economically in a way that negates the imagined cost savings).

The Pax Americana in Northeast Asia is good for the region, good for the US, and good for our values, but it’s as if the very success of the US presence is being used as a reason to dismantle it. Joshua’s suggestion…

Wait till things settle down and withdraw the ground forces. But the air and naval forces probably contribute more to regional stability than they cost us in political capital, and they’re far enough south that they’re much less vulnerable.

… is as far as it should ever go. Something on the ground — a substantial naval base and air base like we already have, and possibly an army base that can be used to train troops and deploy them around Asia — should remain in order to have utility and to make it absolutely clear to the usual suspects that the Korean Peninsula is hands-off.

http://atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LE26Dg01.html

And, Noam deserves our money!