March 19, 2003

Further reading...  

War related news/analysis of varying scope:

US forces to use depleted uranium

Plastic sheeting and masking tape

Rounding up Iraqi-Americans (via TalkLeft)

Al Qaeda attacks a "near certainty"

The rejigging of the western alliance

The hidden costs of peace

Fred Kaplan's gameday preview

Also, check out Fred Kagan's disturbing take on the possibility of further escalations from the DPRK while we're distracted. Here's the apt comparison with Pearl Harbor:
This same combination of hostility, damaging policies and military weakness convinced the Japanese that the time had come to attack in December 1941. Interestingly, they had no expectation that they could defeat us in a war then. They hoped instead to force a change in our policies by attacking when we were distracted. What might the North Koreans try in a similar vein if they, too, become convinced that an attack or its plausible threat could lead to a negotiated settlement instead of all-out war?
To me this seems like a stretch, but who knows? There are plenty of other parallels to be drawn between the Japanese of 1941 and the North Koreans of today. But I think the conventional wisdom (and it's called wisdom for a reason) is that the Koreans are looking for some bilateral negotaion here, not a war.

So it's kind of odd when Kagan concludes we need to call up more military forces to respond to the potential threat. Maybe there's less incendiary approach we could take here?

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