Mirko

Why do you think the U.S. has been the only power to use a nuke? And why do you think none has been used since 1945? How do you think the post WW2 world might have played out if the U.S. had upped sticks and stayed home over the past 60 years?

What a load of rubbish. Does it not strike you as ironic that you are freely (and without any penalty) railing against the US government? What separates Western democracies from so called "Communist" regimes is the ability of Western democracies to a) openly criticise their governments and power structures, and b) elect their governments. I don't see such freedoms being available in North Korea. Yet the US is the tyrant?

Here is a country that has constantly violated human rights, has put the maintenance of the regime in front of the rights of it's own people, has caused countless suffering to millions of people, while the regime leaders live in luxury which is excessive even by Western standards, and yet you claim that the US is a tyrant which must be reigned in?

Articles like this really make my blood boil. This article is yet another example of what happens when theory is privileged over reality. Yes, IN THEORY, each state should have sovereign rights, and should be allowed to co-exist peacefully. In reality, when human rights abuses are occurring on an unprecedented scale, when even the most basic needs of a large section of the population are not being met, and when the ruling elite decides that they want to make erratic and dangerous decisions which affect not only their own country, but neighbouring states, then surely it is time for the world community to step in.

Gekko

I share you rage. These outbursts are thsoe of spoilt children who have cocooned from the realities of the world of the past sixty years. Of course anybody can say whatever they like about Australia, the US, Israel, etc. because they know damn well that those very societies who did all the hard work and won the Cold War are the same societies who do all the hard work in providing them with a platform and a lifestyle to bitch and moan all they want.

To solve social and power differences impose might, it being right. Well internationally anyway at home perhaps the rule of law and common human empathy operates.

America was happy with dictatorships often embracing them; similarly Saddam until his usefulness as bulwark to Iran which we had meddled in unseating democracy imposing the terror of the Shah, to whom nuclear nohow was provided stopped when the Ayatollah arrived with his brand of terror.

So N Korea a peasant society initially helped by Russia and China. Energy deprived was using Russian supplied reactors (which produced plutonium).

American stationed nuclear weapons on its borders and threats of their use.

Korea agreed to desist from nuclear path in exchange for Light Water reactors , oil diplomatic recognition and acceptance into the world scene. A peace treaty rendering finality to the war.

These were not provided and Bush on enthronement named Korea part of the axis of evil. Rapprochement was at an end.

Korea is supposed to be narco state counterfeit state dictatorship cult of the personal and more. Some of this based on US intelligence recently shown to be less than accurate indeed the Downing Street Memo reveals it as self serving inaccurate.

America has not abided by atomic niceties anymore than Korea is doing. Each see them as weapons of diplomacy though Korea was all but weaned of them by Carter and Clinton to some degree. S Korea helped.

America has even in the present been happy to embrace and help rather nasty dictators, personal egomaniacs, when suited, Central Asian republics being the latest.

But no they are them, different and thus subject to imposition of our power as solution.

But torture is in Israel too!

How nice to be big better bolder and less caring!

One recent interpretation of USA /Korea suggests a stalking horse whose use ensures American control even at the price of an arms race.

Oh well we can all go to church safe in our righteousness and those hurt pray over the waste of life, the others can enjoy the voyeurs thrill of powers mayhem!

Queen and country guys. Come to think about it, wish I had kept those other damn photographs of that gizmo in the suitcase. Used to wonder what I was doing for my country dragging that thing around 14 years ago. Have a nice weekend.

No one can challenge professor Bagaric in his impeccable ability to mount a serious argument in the sphere of morals. And I enter this discussion with great trepidation in my contention that Bagaric in this case is morally, and more so, politically wrong. To place America and N. Korea on the same moral ground, is an exercise of moral equivalence between the GATEKEEPER of civilization and its GATECRASHER(S).

Moreover, to claim, as Bagaric does, that America "is the most aggressive nation on earth", illustrating this by its intervention in Vietnam...during the Cold War, shows that Bagaric's political nous is completely erroneous.

To allow N. Korea to posses nuclear weapons is to invite Islamofascist countries to enter the nuclear club. And to "reign in the tyrant...America", is to unleash the tyrants of Islamofascism against civilization. Can Bagaric still claim a moral equivalence between the "America tyrant" and the Islamofascist tyrant?

For an answer see--http://power-politics1.blogspot.com