Ahh, we'll give them the bomb and they'll rewrite their constitution.

Japan has stepped up to the plate, finally, no doubt.

--There was virtually no consultation with Seoul,--

Rummy told them last November, don't know why it was a surprise.

They're big boys now.

We can read the polls.

Like I said the Koreans had their chance they could have said: "Please let us send a couple of divisions to Iraq." The Japs got the message. The 7th fleet will be parked between Korea and Japan.

That other sound you hear is Harry chortling about something finally dawning at the White House about having enough infantry.

Bush I was a faster learner on that subject than Bush II.

Infantry? We've got 130,000 of the buggers twiddling their thumbs in Iraq. Time to move on.

If we actually do pull the vast majority of US troops out of Korea, permanently, that'll be the best geopolitical news I've heard since the Berlin Wall fell.

The difference between Japan and the ROK is that Japan hasn't been spending its time protesting and insulting us the whole time.

This is news?

Harry:

Dont forget we have a couple of divisions in Germany to move east also.

Removing our soldiers/hostages from ROK is a sign that we are going to solve the Nork issue in the 2nd term.

Millitary options were pretty much off the table while our soldier/hostages were camped beneath Nork artillery.

Of course ROK is unhappy,

I'd say move 'em out, since I have no desire to see us involved in a land campaign in east Asia again.

But the reason we're moving them out is not that we're writing off S. Korea but that we're out of infantry and unwilling to pay what it takes to get it.

We've been here before -- in 1939, 1946, 1950, 1964, 1991. When will we ever learn?

I'd have thought, Orrin, that you'd have a softer spot for the S. Koreans, who are the only likely candidate group in east or south Asia for conversion to Christianity.

Harry, Harry, Harry. Surely the fact that the South Koreans have been begging us to leave and blaming us for the lack of reunification, and everything else, since the Kim Dae Jung administration (and before W., during Clinton's presidency as well) has a lot to do with it. We've been planning to move out of Yongsam for a long time.

We were talking of withdrawing some troops long before we went into Iraq. This is a convenient excuse for something that should have been done long ago.

South Korea is rich, and doesn't want us there, except when we're leaving. If we have fewer troops, they won't be able to blame us so much. They just might have to grow up.

Harry:

Rather the point is we have so much too much infantry we can be profligate with it, leaving them scattered across the globe.

http://www.militarycity.com/map/

Korea already modernized and is now on the downslope, a la Japan--its best days are behind it.

John:

You can't teach an old dog.... Harry thinks the next war will be like WWII.

It might. Even if not, you still need somebody to police the rubble.

The So. Koreans, or a good many of them, are more interested in a unified homeland than they are in what political system it would then run under.

In that respect, they are very like the So. Vietnamese.

"The So. Koreans, or a good many of them, are more interested in a unified homeland than they are in what political system it would then run under."

Perhaps. And if you're right, then our troops have no business being there, yes? Independent of any need for infantry elsewhere.

The Koreans really hate the fact that their country is divided. But too many of them use the US and our troops as a scapegoat, while still secretly not wanting to unify due to the awfulness of the DPRK regime, which they know (and the fear of the expense of bringing up the North's standard of living). I think that without our troops, they'll have to decide what they want to do without being able to hide.

To argue with myself, though, Seoul does have a legitimate divergence of interest with Japan and the US. To Japan and the US, a DPRK nuclear device greatly magnifies the risk to our own civilians. Seoul is toast in the case of a war anyway; a Nork nuclear device doesn't make things much worse. So the South doesn't care about stopping the nuclear program if it will risk war, while the US and Japan have naturally different interests.

Harry:

Ready to become boat people rather than be united?

Sandy P.;

Give Japan the bomb? The most important thing in building a nuclear device is precision engineering (the theory is actually quite simple). The only reason Japan doesn't have nuclear weapons is that they haven't tried to build them. Japan hardly needs us to tell them how to build one.

True, guy. Japan is full of nuclear reactors.

Orrin, there were 17 million Vietnamese in the south, 55 million in the north. How many boat people?

If the commies had had sense enough to conciliate instead of jailing and excluding the defeated, there wouldn't have been enough boat people to fill the Staten Island ferry.

Harry:

At least one million, which makes the Vietnamese the most communism averse people on record.

They came to it rather late, no?

The 1940s? You haven't come to it yet. They win.