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November 28, 2006

We Support Our Dupes

John Kerry tried to deny it until his own Web site tried to defend it.  Now, Charlie Rangel, even confronted with statistical evidence to the contrary, comes right out and states one of the minor premises  of the “back door draft” argument:  only an idiot with nowhere else to go would join the United States military.  It’s all right here, on video.  We all remember the dishonest suggestion, mostly just before the  2004 election,  that a Bush reelection would mean...

Categories America/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 28, 2006

More G-2 on Robert Gates

If you’re looking for reasons not to be glum about Robert Gates, Michael Barone offers a few.  Barone pictures Gates as someone with a great deal of sensitivity, and perhaps hostility, toward congressional meddling in foreign policy since its failure to confirm him as CIA Director years ago.  I was especially interested in this take on Nicaragua: “By the end of 1984, I concluded that we were kidding ourselves if we thought the contras might win. I wrote [CIA Director...

Categories U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 13, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 60

The United States and its allies are moving forward with active naval operations  to contain the North Korean proliferation threat.   The strikingly odd thing about this is that South Korea isn’t going to be one of them.  Here is a list of nations with which the United States has more diplomatic and military synergy today than with South Korea:  Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Australia, … and France.  I guess you’re officially no longer  a U.S. ally when...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Uncategorized/WMD
November 9, 2006

Chosun Ilbo’s Take on Dem Takeover Sketches Shape of New Realignment

Today is November 9th, which means that the official sulking period has ended, and it’s time to start picking your way though the banquet of bloggable delicacies of our new moveable feast.  America has moved to the left, but it’s uncertain just how far.  At the same time, Korea seems poised to move  right just, and it’s not at all clear that either side will stop to shake hands if, and when, they cross paths.  A more elemental question is...

Categories America/An Alliance?/Human Rights/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 8, 2006

Wobble Watch: Robert Gates on North Korea

A few links that may interest (or depress) you.  In 2004, Gates teamed up with Zbigniew Brzezinski to call for direct bilateral talks with Iran.  Procedurally, you can’t say that we gain much by letting the Europeans do it for us, since we certainly don’t share a common set of interests or base beliefs with Europe.  Substantively, I don’t see what you can gain by talking to a man as hell-bent as Ahmedinejad.  Especially if we show weakness in Iraq,...

Categories Diplomacy/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 8, 2006

Rumsfeld Resigns

[Update: More on Robert Gates here, and some clues to how he thinks here and .] It was probably inevitable, and if it might have been the only way to preserve any kind of bipartisan consensus on Iraq. I agree with Robert’s analysis, as it concerns Korea policy. Rumsfeld has managed the downsizing of the alliance creditably, confronting, rather than denying, the effect of the political trends there. Much of what Rumsfeld did right in Korea is owed to the...

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views
November 4, 2006

Kerry’s Website: ‘Right Either Way’

Screenshot here.  This, to me, is the money quote: Although there are plenty of well-educated people in our armed forces — Kerry was one of them — military service has long been an opportunity for those with less education and fewer skills than they need to work in the private sector.  Indeed, the military sells itself as a place to garner skills and to help pay for higher education. Ah shore m glad i kud git out of souf dakota...

Categories U.S. Military/WTF?
November 4, 2006

North Korean Spy’s Wife Was the Secretary to a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel

No information on which Lieutenant Colonel, or which unit (link in Korean).  Her side of the story is that she just kept his appointments, that he wasn’t in a sensitive position, and she couldn’t have stolen any secrets had she wanted to.   Hey, the wives of North Korean spies can have day jobs, can’t they?  If the South Koreans do what I increasingly think they  will try  to do —  a whitewash  —  then we will have a case of...

Categories An Alliance?/The Fifth Column/U.S. Military
November 3, 2006

Wobble Watch: Condi Rice Talks Tough, the Pentagon Talks Scary Tough

The Administration is trying to sound tough with the North Koreans, but I’m inherently distrustful of tough talk that comes the week before an election: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday the United States wanted “concrete action” when six-party talks resume on North Korea’s nuclear program. Rice said the starting point for the talks, which North Korea has boycotted since last November in protest at U.S. financial restrictions, would be to seek implementation of an agreement signed with...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Washington Views/WMD
October 29, 2006

Airborne Laser Leaves the Hangar

The system, mounted in a modified 747, is designed to track missiles in their boost phase.  Although it won’t be ready for test firing at a missile until 2008, it should be operational by the end of the decade.  And it looks cool. In a ceremony at the Boeing Co.’s Integrated Defense Systems facility in Wichita, the agency announced it was ready to flight test some of the low-power systems on the ABL aircraft, a modified Boeing 747-400F designed to...

Categories Technology/U.S. Military/WMD
October 28, 2006

Suspected N. Korean Spies, Shielded by Ruling Party Parliamentarian, Played a Leading Role in Anti-U.S. Protests (The Death of an Alliance, Part 58)

[Update: Welcome Gateway Pundit readers; this story is developing rapidly, and now, there’s new evidence that the North Koreans tried to help the ruling leftist Uri Party win the Seoul mayor’s race last May. Plus, more evidence of a North Korean hand in fanning anti-Americanism in the South.] A widening spy scandal surrounding several senior members of the leftist Democratic Labor Party and a U.S. citizen may have led to the resignation of the head of the National Intelligence Service...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
October 23, 2006

So Much for a Nuclear-Free Korea

Update:   A well-informed reader says the Pentagon denies this story. This should get their attention in Beijing.  As ye sow: Seoul and Washington will add use of nuclear arms by U.S. forces in response to North Korean atomic weapons in a joint operation strategy codenamed OPLAN 5027, sources said Thursday. That would mean the return of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea 15 years after they were pulled out in 1991. At the 28th Military Committee Meeting (MCM)...

Categories An Alliance?/ROK Military/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/WMD
October 14, 2006

Another Ambassador of Our Country

Give him style points, at least.  A drunken Army private walking past the War Memorial near the Yongsan Garrison and Samgakji Station couldn’t pass up the opportunity he saw in a Seoul city bus.  Seems he had gotten all the way to Seoul Station — and almost all the way back to the War Memorial — when the Korean Police caught up with him. No word on whether he stopped for passengers. The first good decision he made was to...

Categories U.S. Military/UCMJ & SOFA
October 11, 2006

MUST READ: Deterring the Arsenal of Terror

Writing in the Washington Post, David Ignatius squarely confronts what may be the greatest challenge to the security of the United States:  finding a way to deter a mass attack.  Ignatius concludes, correctly, that one must deter the sponsors and suppliers: Allison believes that the world must focus on what he calls “the principle of nuclear accountability.” The biggest danger posed by North Korea isn’t that it would launch a nuclear missile but that this desperately poor country would sell...

Categories Terrorism (NK)/U.S. Military/WMD
September 30, 2006

Fifth Column Watch: The USFK, Free Speech, and Subversion

Nothing really surprising here: North Korea on Tuesday criticized the U.S. military for giving American names to certain areas in South Korea, arguing that it is part of a ploy to “permanently Americanize South Korea.” Americanize South Korea? Perhaps you can be forgiven for suggesting that if you live in an oppressed, suffocated, isolated tyranny where reading up on current events can get you killed. Since we’re on the subject, where has the U.S. military given an American name to...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/The Fifth Column/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
September 29, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 53

The end of the Eighth U.S. Army  in Korea  comes as no surprise to me; the rumors are not new, and this is easy  to downplay as “restructuring.”  With less than one complete U.S. infantry division left in Korea, it’s hard to call it EUSA a true Army-level command, but the symbolic value of  its removal  would be very significant.  I suspect it will also mean that the USFK’s new commander will be a three-star.

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military
September 26, 2006

DOA 52 Update

Ordinarily, allies shouldn’t have to issue ultimata to each other, but in this case, it got results when nothing else did.  In a few days, you can expect to see the Roh Administration use this to play the han card for political gain and depict themselves as helpless victims of Yankee bullying.   We’ve gained a range, and Roh will gain a moment’s sympathy, but the alliance’s long-term political support will suffer.

Categories An Alliance?/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military