This Impending Doom

North Korea.

For those of you who enjoy living under rocks, North Korea decided to attack South Korea yesterday.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/11/2010112317110717125.html

Made me think of a policy simulation we did a few years ago in a foreign affairs class. I was on the North Korea team.

Of course then, it was based on the Five Party Talks regarding NK's nuclear program. Our goal was to get the US, Russia, SK, China, and Japan to let us continue to pursue development of nuclear power stations. There was an accident at the site of a plant picked up by US satellite, and the other countries were demanding answers, especially China, since we had thousands of refugees streaming across their borders and threat of fallout over the nearest regions.

It ended with us collaborating with Russia and the US, China getting pissed about being left out, and then China bombed us and started a war with the US and Russia.

Best quote of the whole thing? "W-T-F China. I thought we were friends". Pretty much summed it all up.

Real life, however, is a much different situation. North Korea is being decidedly aggressive, first flaunting their nuclear facilities, and then going on the offensive against South Korea. And of course the fucking hawks are already calling for intervention. We should act like a superpower, and go take care of this mess.

Yeah, us and what fucking army? We're downsizing the military, with what forces we do have pretty well tied up in the shit we got ourselves in in Afghanistan. Apparently they haven't learned! We don't have the power to just go in and take out a country. Let alone while we're still cleaning up the mess in other countries. 

We waste millions of dollars giving fat contracts to vendors with buddies in Congress, who could care less about spending tax-payers' money efficiently (after all, tax codes go easy on them), or the safety and efficacy of their products. Which directly affects our ability to project our military strength by providing a smaller fighting force with inferior equipment (of course, superior compared to everyone else, but definitely not worth the money we pay for it!). These profiteers just rake in the government funds, and as soon as there's another opportunity? Let's start a new war! 

There's always money to be made. And they can't be bothered with considering the human costs. Even when it's our own that they're sacrificing for their profit.