Reply #19: Yeah, but

[jobycom]

What does that have to do with what I said? Are you trying to prove NK has its own interests at heart? Are you trying to claim that they secretely violate weapons treaties? Are you trying to claim that they are human rights abusers who violate international conventions for the sake of national security?

I'm still looking for some significant way that they are more scary to the rest of the world than we are.

Too many Americans have homer-itis. We pretend that what we fear in other nations is not the same as what we do to other nations. Too many people watch their home team struggle and blame the refs, rather than admitting their team has no more right to win than the other guys.

The last nation we convinced to completely disarm its conventional and nuclear military capabilities, we invaded after they complied. No nation in its right mind, or even in a half-cracked paranoid-delusional mind, is ever going to trust us again, after Iraq.

And for a quick refresher course, for both Dem and Republicans: since the Korean war we have overthrown governments, including Democratically elected governments, in Iran, Chile, Panama, Grenada, Haiti, Afghanistan and Iraq; we have tried to overthrow governments in Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela and Cuba; we have invaded Viet Nam, Grenada, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq (twice); we have fired missiles or bombs into Lebanon, Afghanistan, the Sudan, Libya, and Iraq; we have propped up bloody dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Chile, Panama, in many ways in the Soviet Union, and some in the world would say in Israel; we have without explanation abandoned hard-won treaties on nuclear weapons and environmental issues; we have been caught violating the human rights of our own people (segregation, Tuskegee Airmen, the death penalty in Texas) and of others (Somalia, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and Gauntanamo); and we have knowingly violated the Geneva Conventions, claiming that they don't apply to us whenever we don't want them to.

In all of that, we have killed tens of millions of people, and caused literally immeasurable suffering. And we have nukes, and a president who has claimed he has the right to fire missiles into seven countries (North Korea included) as a first strike, without provocation.

If you were in North Korea, would you trust us?

Our record isn't very pretty, either. And Bush has proven that he will violate any treaty or agreement without a second thought, and that no death toll is too high. NK would be committing suicide by trusting Bush.