*Breaking News* North Korea fires artillery on S. Korean island!

[TS12000]

The weasels in our govt. would just stand on the floor of the UN while these two did most of the fighting. My personal opinion is that the North is like a kid poking a dog with a stick. Kim doesn't want his citizens going South and seeing what it's like so he'll just keep prodding until the South decides it's had enough of that shit.

[Anton]

Honestly, the South Korean military is pretty impressive, and continues to become more advanced technologically as systems like the K2 Black Panther and K9 howitzer come online. Meanwhile, North Korea is still making copies of Chinese copies of T-55s and calling them the best tank ever. I'm not sure our presence is necessary for South Korea's defense anymore, although South Korea does need our help as far as missile and air defense goes.

[trlcavscout]

Honestly, the South Korean military is pretty impressive, and continues to become more advanced technologically as systems like the K2 Black Panther and K9 howitzer come online. Meanwhile, North Korea is still making copies of Chinese copies of T-55s and calling them the best tank ever. I'm not sure our presence is necessary for South Korea's defense anymore, although South Korea does need our help as far as missile and air defense goes.

We do have Abrahms over there, would be fun to see NK invade at night during some training activities. I thought we had more then 30k troops there though?

[Anton]

I thought we had more then 30k troops there though?

Yeah, 28,500.

http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-...0.7119104.html

[DeusExMachina]

So ronery.....I'm so ronery...

[Hoosier]

Honestly, the South Korean military is pretty impressive, and continues to become more advanced technologically as systems like the K2 Black Panther and K9 howitzer come online. Meanwhile, North Korea is still making copies of Chinese copies of T-55s and calling them the best tank ever. I'm not sure our presence is necessary for South Korea's defense anymore, although South Korea does need our help as far as missile and air defense goes.

We're there in part of historic reasons, and in part because the DPRK claims to have a million man army, and 3-5m more in "reserve." In truth of course they have 6 or 8 million uniforms, and a fraction of that is a proper armed, fueled, and fed military force. Somewhere in the last decade their threat shifted from being due to their actual military and more to do with their nuclear capability, and the critical fact that Seoul is a city of ~25million people, in traditional artillery range of the DMZ.

While it might be a great place to "bring democracy", I'm not really willing to spend more American lives and treasure doing it. We could always fix Burma or Somalia for less money and risk, but you don't see us doing that, either. We didn't get sold on going to Iraq to bring democracy, we got sold that they were a clear and present danger.

H.