North Korea fires on the South, 1 dead, homes ablaze, civilians injured
 

Remember about 6 months ago when North Korea sank a South Koreans ship, killing about 50 sailors in cold blood?

Remember how I argued that we needed to respond to that heinous action?

Remember how a bunch of the forum liberals whined about how we shouldn't do anything because North Korea is so big and mean? I'm looking at you WPF and JackBauer!

Remember how I replied that if we didn't do anything, we would just guarantee future attacks from the north?

Ya, I told you so.

North Korea fires artillery barrage on South - Yahoo! News

Re: North Korea fires on the South, 1 dead, homes ablaze, civilians injured
 

The south fired back, they need to drop a few Cluster bombs on the north's gun emplacements.

Re: North Korea fires on the South, 1 dead, homes ablaze, civilians injured
 

Um, there was and remains very little the US can do unilaterally against NK. Wolfpack was angry last time because we weren't able to go to war against yet another country, which came as a huge bummer to General Wolfpack of the 101st Keyboard Commandos. Not to mention the fact that South Korea didn't appeal to us to respond militarily. Oddly, Wolfpack seemed to have failed to obtain the freshest GOP talking points, or else he would have known such a position wasn't even favored in the party he takes his marching orders from.

Further, what Wolfpack, in his infinite wisdom, doesn't seem to understand is that any deployment of force against NK risks retaliation, from the world's fourth biggest military, against one of the largest cities in the world.

Whatever response that will come will need to bring enormous pressure to bear on China, as they are the primary enablers of the NK regime.

Re: North Korea fires on the South, 1 dead, homes ablaze, civilians injured
 

The risk of retaliation doesn't mean we should do nothing, it's just one factor that needs to be considered in how we react.

That said, what we don't need is a knee-jerk reaction without any thought about the longer term effects.

If / when we react, I'd hope that our leaders have carefully thought out what some of the possible scenarios could be and what that would mean for our involvement. I hope that will be the case, but I'm not confident of it.

Re: North Korea fires on the South, 1 dead, homes ablaze, civilians injured
 

No one is advocating inaction. If you have some ideas as to what the United States can do in terms of force projection in response to this act, lets hear them.

Fact is, we're not going to respond militarily unless South Korea makes the appeal. They didn't last time; whether or not they do this time remains to be seen. It's interesting that you say the risk of retaliation doesn't mean we should do nothing. I wonder if the fact that the South Koreans will disproportionately bear the brunt of any response bears on the calculus at all?

Re: North Korea fires on the South, 1 dead, homes ablaze, civilians injured
 

re. the bolded question: Of course it does, or should.

Maybe you misunderstood what I was saying, which is simply that the possibility of retaliation is one factor to consider, not something that automatically means there should be no retaliation.

(I have no idea right now what we can or should do. I don't know what South Korea wants, and I'm not going to pretend to have the information or knowledge that would be necessary to actually evaluate the situation.)

Re: North Korea fires on the South, 1 dead, homes ablaze, civilians injured
 

That's fair enough.

Re: North Korea fires on the South, 1 dead, homes ablaze, civilians injured
 

Ask WP. He knows.

Re: North Korea fires on the South, 1 dead, homes ablaze, civilians injured
 

The ball is almost entirely in the hands of the North Koreans in terms of how this plays out. If they escalate, say by lobbing bombs in Seoul or other cities of the South, they would have to respond, escalating the crisis. If the North talks bluster but doesn't do anything else, it could stay as it is. The South did respond last time by cutting off all humanitarian aid to the North but who knows what goes on in the hermit kingdom, especially at a time of transition in leadership????

Re: North Korea fires on the South, 1 dead, homes ablaze, civilians injured
 

Is there any way the Loons can start their "racist bull*****" with this one you know that crap about "well they're not all bad" or "I have a No Korean friend *****"