North Korea threatened specific bases in Japan and Guam

[COLOR="#cc8899"]http://news.yahoo.com/north-koreas-military-threatens-u-bases-within-target-021350990.html

http://news.msn.com/world/north-korea-th...=ansnews11

http://fox4kc.com/2013/03/20/north-korea...hin-range/

Multiple links included not based on my choice of "news" outlet but to give a bit of variety.

Ultimately, the facts that matter to me: North Korea made a point to claim its potential to strike U.S. military installations in Guam and in Japan.

Personally? I can't stop laughing. North Korea generally seems to be so far removed from the real/modern world that I just can't lend any credibility to the idea that they would actually successfully conduct a missile strike at that sort of range. I don't doubt that they would attempt it if provoked, but I'd be dumbfounded if they pulled it off.

I should probably be more concerned, given that I live on a Navy base in Japan...but I'd rather make a "North Korea is best Korea" joke.

Anyone have any insight or thoughts to share? [/COLOR]

I fear for the poor North Koreans, the moment the government actually attacks the U.S. they're gonna get wiped one way(by the U.S.) or another(by being brain washed to die for their country(sort of like japan in WWII)).

I fear for the poor North Koreans, the moment the government actually attacks the U.S. they're gonna get wiped one way(by the U.S.) or another(by being brain washed to die for their country(sort of like japan in WWII)).

The difference being that Japan had a powerful and competent Navy. The U.S. just had better infrastructure/economy to keep our military strong while Japan had difficulty sustaining its fighting capability through losses. North Korea's fighting capability is almost purely ground-war and anti-air.

Jeez North Korea is really asking for it. I don't see what they are trying to accomplish by taking on Japan, the US, and the rest of the international community. They have to realize that going through with an attack spells their doom, so I don't expect them to do anything.

It seems to me they are just increasing the scope of their bluff. "Hey world, we are going to destroy the US and South Korea." Two weeks later: "Oh btw, Japan and Guam, those are some bad dudes we are also going to level."

What's next? Threatening Australia?

Jeez North Korea is really asking for it. I don't see what they are trying to accomplish by taking on Japan, the US, and the rest of the international community. They have to realize that going through with an attack spells their doom, so I don't expect them to do anything.

It seems to me they are just increasing the scope of their bluff. "Hey world, we are going to destroy the US and South Korea." Two weeks later: "Oh btw, Japan and Guam, those are some bad dudes we are also going to level."

What's next? Threatening Australia?

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If your next door neighbor and the lady who lived down the block from you were both housing gang members who roughed up your family a few weeks ago, you'd probably consider them just as bad as the gang members themselves. That's pretty much the line of thinking they're likely going with, though I agree it would be suicidally stupid of them to actually launch an overt attack against anyone. Hell, even China might ditch their friendship with them at that point.[/COLOR]

I wouldn't exactly call this outrageous. I feel as though I can say with a fair level of confidence that the President has sat in the War Room with his advisers and laid out targets for various hostile countries in the event of an attack, or even just in a hypothetical instance. If that's not a fairly common military practice I'd be damn surprised.

At this point I feel like the news is just beating a dead horse. N. Korea does this brash show of insane bravado every-so-often to try and remind everyone "Hey, we're still relevant!" when the reality of the matter is they're just an old fly that won't get out of our hair. If they ever do attack it's game over for them, and best yet, they know that.

The difference being that Japan had a powerful and competent Navy. The U.S. just had better infrastructure/economy to keep our military strong while Japan had difficulty sustaining its fighting capability through losses. North Korea's fighting capability is almost purely ground-war and anti-air.

What? Japan lost because we placed an embargo on them which crippled them and made them go for a shot in the dark to try to demoralize us so we wouldn't participate

What? Japan lost because we placed an embargo on them which crippled them and made them go for a shot in the dark to try to demoralize us so we wouldn't participate

Hence us having a better economy?

What? Japan lost because we placed an embargo on them which crippled them and made them go for a shot in the dark to try to demoralize us so we wouldn't participate

Japan lost for a lot of reasons. They first bit off more than they could chew by having to spread out their forces between China and the Pacific and then there was that strategic blunder that was Pearl Harbor. There was also a massive resource and industrial disparity between the US and Japan and thus the Japanese were pretty doomed once the US started their counter strategy.

Not to mention that the US also had 1) allies, 2) atomic bombs, 3) a stronger will to fight, and 4) an intel advantage.

Typing on iphones suck.

[COLOR="#cc8899"]
If your next door neighbor and the lady who lived down the block from you were both housing gang members who roughed up your family a few weeks ago, you'd probably consider them just as bad as the gang members themselves. That's pretty much the line of thinking they're likely going with, though I agree it would be suicidally stupid of them to actually launch an overt attack against anyone.[/COLOR]

I really don't understand this analogy.

Hence us having a better economy?

"The U.S. just had better infrastructure/economy to keep our military strong while Japan had difficulty sustaining its fighting capability through losses."

That's not true, we placed an embargo on them which made them desperate which is why they went out of their way to decide to invade indonesia. They did one attack essentially on our pacific fleet in attempt to demoralize us from intervening. It has nothing to do with them running out of resources to fight us, they had no intention too besides demoralizing us. The 2-4 years we were fighting was just a snowball effect of them trying to keep us back while they tried to steal resources.

And so the completely off topic rant begins.

Anyways, it doesn't really matter. They try, they're f*cked. Period. Honestly, I kinda hope they go through with it, just so we have an excuse to blow them off the map (not that I want the attack to succeed, just for them to try it).

Such warmongers we have on Southperry

If they try, the US will be in a quandary. No, you can't nuke them off the map. Just because the leadership and military are insane doesn't mean that 24 million civilians deserve to die.
Said leadership is, of course, dug in deep, and can't really be taken out in a surgical military strike.
The US might bomb a North Korean military installation or two (which will have been evacuated ahead of time, of course), and say, "See? You couldn't hit our bases, but we can hit yours! So don't dare try that again!"
Meaningless posturing on both sides.

Now, if the North Korean strike actually hits something of the USA or its allies, the US might be forced to make some kind of effort to actually hurt its leadership, and that could get very complicated indeed.

I feel sorry for their civilians.

"The U.S. just had better infrastructure/economy to keep our military strong while Japan had difficulty sustaining its fighting capability through losses."

That's not true, we placed an embargo on them which made them desperate which is why they went out of their way to decide to invade indonesia. They did one attack essentially on our pacific fleet in attempt to demoralize us from intervening. It has nothing to do with them running out of resources to fight us, they had no intention too besides demoralizing us. The 2-4 years we were fighting was just a snowball effect of them trying to keep us back while they tried to steal resources.

[COLOR="#cc8899"]That's what I was trying to get at without going into the weeds of it. I suppose I oversimplified it, but the economies of both countries played a major role in the conflicts between the U.S. and Japan. We had the ability to quickly repair our carriers and replace lost/damaged aircraft and had a strong enough infrastructure that we could continue production despite the ongoing war. Japan, meanwhile, had nowhere near the capability to sustain its own production and its training programs couldn't produce quality pilots fast enough.

Midway solidified that advantage - a combination of bad intel (on the part of Japan), good intel (on the part of the U.S.), luck, and some poor distribution of forces by Japan, the U.S. gained a lot of momentum and Japan couldn't recover.

As for Pearl Harbor, that was Japan's attempt to crush our Pacific naval forces before they became a factor. Most of the critical assets that they wanted to hit, however, weren't there at the time - what was a preemptive strike to grant Japan naval dominance instead provoked us into entering the conflict.

I didn't mean to imply that the economy was the entire reason Japan lost the war, I meant to say that it was a major factor in keeping Japan from recovering from its losses after overextending.

As for the metaphor, [MENTION=8017]CrazyForDex[/MENTION]; , North Korea views the U.S. as its primary enemy as a result of the war several decades ago. Because we're still technically at war with them, Japan and Guam are enemies by extension because they harbor our military. [/COLOR]

Why would taking down their leadership be a complicated matter seeing how the whole world is behind the US at this point? I can only see the incident being a complication for China who has mixed interests with North Korea.

Why would taking down their leadership be a complicated matter seeing how the whole world is behind the US at this point? I can only see the incident being a complication for China who has mixed interests with North Korea.

and america is terrified of china.

No seriously, they outnumber us.
If we ever went to war with china, we lose by default.

and america is terrified of china.

No seriously, they outnumber us.
If we ever went to war with china, we lose by default.

Manpower isn't the only factor in winning a war, especially today. Sure they outnumber us like 5 to 1, but our tech is way superior.

Manpower isn't the only factor in winning a war, especially today. Sure they outnumber us like 5 to 1, but our tech is way superior.

Yet like half the things we own are made in china.

[MENTION=814]MasPan[/MENTION];

That made a lot more sense, thanks.

[MENTION=7450]MuscleWizard[/MENTION];

Idk what planet you live in, but imo, the U.S. is far from terrified of China.

Manpower isn't the only factor in winning a war, especially today. Sure they outnumber us like 5 to 1, but our tech is way superior.

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Absolutely wrong. China's military tech is comparable to ours in a lot of ways. [/COLOR]