A new poll from Gallup shows that a majority of Americans, 58%, are in favor of attacking North Korea militarily if the US “cannot accomplish its goals by more peaceful means first.” Americans were split more or less evenly on whether sanctions and diplomacy could work.Couldn't win in Korea. Couldn't win in Vietnam. Couldn't win in Somalia. Can't win in Afghanistan, Can't win in Iraq. Can't win in Libya. Can't win in Syria.
This is the first time Gallup has asked about attacking North Korea since 2003. At the time, only 47% favored an attack. The shift in the last 14 years appears to have been greatly along political lines, with an overwhelming 82% of Republicans now backing war, compared to just 37% of Democrats....
Now the American public is ready for a land war in Asia?
Isn't this the definition of insanity?
AntiWar
Gallup Poll: US Majority Backs Attacking North Korea
Jason Ditz
25 comments:
They watch the news about mad Kim Jong-un and his nuclear weapons and they are scared of him. He looks like a spoilt brat too in charge of a totalitarian state so he's easy to demonise. But the US always wanted to defeat NK so they got nuclear weapons.
Obama restored the nuclear arsenal so it's probably tempting for 2-party beltway bureaucrats to to give them a try. Avoid the messy ground combat.
I don't think we ever got even with them for the Pueblo....
Then in Syria/Iran you have the hostage crisis and the Beirut Marine barracks bombing which we never got even for those things....
Still some red ink in the ledger ....
"Couldn't win in Korea. Couldn't win in Vietnam. Couldn't win in Somalia. Can't win in Afghanistan, Can't win in Iraq. Can't win in Libya. Can't win in Syria."
Oh come on Tom we certainly put the wood to all of those nations...
Propaganda works. Remember when >70% thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.
Whatever you do, don't research Black Eagle Trust.
Oh come on Tom we certainly put the wood to all of those nations...
Yes, but the US and allies didn't win. Instead they got bogged down in quagmires that some of which they had to quit because public opinion turned sour over the time frame and costs, and some of which are ongoing. Not to mention all the brushfires the US is involved in, e.g., in Africa.
Opponents win in asymmertic warfare against a much more powerful adversary by denying the adversay victory and increasing the costs. It is very costly to them, too, but they don't get defeated in the end game, which to them means winning.
The vaunted American military has turned out to be useless at winning other than pitched battles. It has shown that it cannot win asymmetic wars with the strategy and tactics it has employed and so far there is no change in strategy and tactics, nor any proposals on the table for doing so that would make winning more probabale at an acceptable cost and within a sustainable time frame.
As Gen. Shihseki said, "winning" in Iraq would require an occupatinon force of about 500K. No way the US public was going to put up with that. So they retired Shinseki and put a yes-man in.
The economic policy behind the combat has been the loser Tom... it has been very petroleum based... petroleum centric... $100+ oil too juicy to give up on have to keep the oil running at those prices...
There has been a very recent move towards HEVs and EVs at all the major auto firms this is what is going to really change things at least as far as MENA (maybe Asia too)...
Its funny at least imo you have all of these MENA nations in civil war trying to get control of the oil for their faction so they can get the USDs and EURs for themselves... its like they think they can operate the cartel and F us over better than the current crop of OPEC scum...
Meanwhile it looks like the auto firms have (finally!) woken up and are all lining up a big race to gain share of a future HEV and EV market and make the most munnie there...
The whole place over there is probably going to implode once the petroleum shipments to the west stop...
btw If you look at what is happening in the petroleum industry and associated automotive industries wrt ICE/EV plans it really lays waste empirically to economists whole "supply and demand!" rationalist theories...
The economic policy behind the combat has been the loser Tom... it has been very petroleum based... petroleum centric... $100+ oil too juicy to give up on have to keep the oil running at those prices...
There has been a very recent move towards HEVs and EVs at all the major auto firms this is what is going to really change things at least as far as MENA (maybe Asia too)...
Naive. Pie in the sky.
Ain’t no way military tanks, trucks, ships, planes, and supply chains—not to mention making meals for thousands of troops a day—will be supplied by EVs.
Exactly where in Afghanistan, MENA, Africa, etc. are they going to get a charging station? For starters.
And, oh sure, a group on patrol with the ‘enemy’ on their heels are going to stop for an hour to recharge their batteries.
What planet do you live on? Do you even bother to read real scientific papers about all this? I doubt it. BUT I DO. AND I SPEND HOURS A DAY DOING IT. Because your jejune comments about this are devoid of any intelligence. Sure, the military has been experimenting with alternative forms of energy and renewables but—unpublished in public newspapers—they’ve come to same conclusion as the Google scientists given free rein to find the solution…who determined after four years there ain’t one.
Why do you think China has outlawed gas cars 10 years hence? Hunh? Think it’s greeny-hood? Think it’s save the environment? Ever really thought about it? How about the fact that China owns the resources to all the rare earths on the planet and is intending to deprive the rest of the world, but mainly the US, of access to them. Slowly choke us off…started in 2013 if you would read their five-year plans. The US is being taken for the dupes they are. The Chinese wrote The Art of War. The successful general wins by not going to war, by understanding the weaknesses of his opponent, and we’re an open book. That is what is happening to us. But we are (1) too arrogant to realize it, and (2) have completely underestimated how China works, a galling ignorance you continue to exhibit. I think it’s an east coast disease. You all think alike.
Listen to one of the world’s acknowledged rare earth experts (if not the ONLY expert) explain it to you: Jack Lifton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRdHJsypbgg
The main thing about electricity is that it's fungible; it scales trivially
Naive. Every solar farm requires a backup energy plan equal to the output of the solar farm because the solar output is limited by the hours of sun, clouds, storage capacity, land use, and distance to grid. These are not trivial.
Currently, the largest solar farm in the world is Topaz in California--just went online. And currently generating 40 megawatts. When it’s full operational, it’s supposed to produce 550 megawatts, enough to generate enough electricity to run only 160,000 average homes. That’s it. (The population of CA exceeds 35 million.) It has 9 million solar panels spread over 9.5 square miles. It cost $2.5 billion. (Do the rough math for Hillary’s half a billion solar panels.)
In 2007, Google threw all its resources behind a project to beat, best, and conquer the renewables problem. Scientists from Stanford (all religious about the environment) had carte blanche to solve this problem. They quit in 2011, and in November 2014 decided to publish their findings. No respectable science or environmental journal would publish their paper. They finally published in the IEEE journal, the journal for electrical engineers. Not one major newspaper covered their findings. Only one British computer publication would. The headline:
Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineers
Windmills, solar, tidal - all a 'false hope', say Stanford PhDs
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/
Their conclusion:
Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms - and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.
Your argument and computations don’t show the common sense and detail of a lowly army supply/logistics clerk. You left out availability of resources, sources, political considerations, transportation of those resources, interruption of supply lines, etc etc….all exogenous necessities and constraints.
The rush for oil started as a result of WWI when it was clear that militaries run on conveniently transportable fuel. The only viableoption is petroleum — other than nuclear, which is only feasible for large ships. The race for control of oil reserves has largely been military-driven from the POV of the people making the decisions. This is not going to change anytime soon.
We produce enough petroleum domestically in North America to run our military and our air travel...
I'm not talking about "renewables", I'm talking about electrical generation from any available domestic sources... coal, nuclear, nat gas, renewables, whatever... we are off the globalwarmingclimatechangeclimate train and now on the Trump train hello....
We got rid of petroleum for electricity generation decades ago, don't need it for heating oil, and soon won't need (seemingly don't want it) it for personal or logistics vehicles...
25% of current nuclear just goes right out the cooling towers.... we could probably run our autos on that alone....
And dont buy in to some snake oil salesman selling "Peak Lithium!" stories or WTF This is the same as all the "Peak Oil!" morons 10 years ago...
MRW here look at this map:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=6510
Mid Atlantic 31% excess margin, we should at least be cracking water into hydrogen or something with this if we don't even use it... charging some batteries over night or something...
MRW,
Here these people are competent and they are going away from petroleum:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/05/volvo-cars-electric-hybrid-2019
They know what they are doing...
volvo-cars-electric-hybrid-2019
Chinese company own Volvo…
Lots of buses are going completely electric in London now. They're had hybrids for years, but now they are going fully electric. They are ultra quite at low speeds and fairly quite at fast speeds. They just have an electric motor and have no gearbox, in fact, they go where the gearbox used to be and directly drive the wheels. Large electric motors are extremely powerful. Getting rid of the gearbox and all the communication to the engine is going to really simplify things and I should imagine the engine management is much simplified too.
Of course the batteries weigh a ton and they are stored where the engine used to be in the bout. But new technology in batteries will eventually reduce their weight.
We got rid of petroleum for electricity generation decades ago, don't need it for heating oil
Matt, heating oil is created from petroleum. It’s one of the by-products of the refining process.
Here’s a broad list of what we get from refining petroleum (crude oil):
Petroleum gas - used for heating, cooking, making plastics, commonly known by the names methane, ethane, propane, butane. Often liquified under pressure to create LPG (liquified petroleum gas).
Naphtha or Ligroin - intermediate that will be further processed to make gasoline
Gasoline - motor fuel.
Kerosene - fuel for jet engines and tractors; starting material for making other products.
Gas oil or Diesel distillate - used for diesel fuel and heating oil; starting material for making other products.
Lubricating oil - used for motor oil, grease, other lubricants.
Heavy gas or Fuel oil - used for industrial fuel; starting material for making other products.
Residuals - coke, asphalt, tar, waxes; starting material for making other products.
We produce enough petroleum domestically in North America to run our military and our air travel...
In the US only.
We don’t have fuel supply depots in every city where a US plane lands globally. We rely upon local sources.
But we also have over a hundred military bases worldwide. We can’t get fuel to them on a reliable basis without going with local or regional suppliers.
For example, fuel costs an outside price of $800/gallon (2006 price) to helicopter fuel to our bases in Afghanistan. (Good thing we’re the reserve currency.) Pakistan won’t let us ship it overland in their country, and besides, not safe. Afghanistan is completely land-locked. So we have a deal with Russia that brings some of what we need in-country via an Azerbaijan route; but since we’ve now made Russia Enemy #1, that might end if Russia decides to be shitty about it.
The concern in 1973 that left our troops globally with a two-day to outside-one-week supply of fuel because of the embargo is why the US made oil National Security Item #1, and as Tom remarked above, it still is. The military was really spooked. Former Secretary of Defense and first energy secretary James Schlesinger said this in a private conversation to my extraordinarily well-connected friend in 1989 at my friend’s house in Baltimore. (His father and Schlesinger were best friends, so Schlesinger was like an uncle.) As he told my friend, the federal government doesn’t give a hoot’s ass about domestic fuel need.
The goal was to use up the world's supply before we touched our own.
Matt, the map which is over five years old shows nothing of note. (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=6510)
I'm saying we don't have to use heating oil...
We can use nat gas assisted heat pumps north of the Mason Dixon... ductwork is already installed if you currently have an oil burner...
Renault Nissan Mitsubishi:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/renault-nissan-lays-out-plans-for-12-new-evs-and-robo-global-ride-hailing-service/
Ford:
http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2017/01/03/here-details-fords-electric-vehicle-plan/96109758/
Matt, watch the first 6 minutes of the interview with Jack Lifton! Watch it! Link above. OK. here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRdHJsypbgg. Lifton is renowned globally for his knowledge of mining and technology metals--certainly rare earths--and processes. He's not an intellectual. But he is so widely respected around the world, and there isn't a serious analyst on Wall Street who isn't cowed by his pronouncements. I want you to listen to the first six minutes to put your fairy tales about EVs onto a more realistic level.
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