Quote:
Originally Posted by boo boo
Overall, Iraq and North Korea are still two completely different situations.
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I was talking to my housemate and her friends about this at lunch, as they are all studying international relations, and one made an interesting point about the similarities and differences between the Iraq situation and the North Korea situation. It went like this (by 'the west' I mean the US, with the UK and whoever else is supporting us at that time):
1. Kim Jong-il (or whatever his name is) is a dictator of a country, a dictator who Western leaders clearly do not trust or respect. His attitude towards the west has been deemed potentially threatening and the benefit of his leadership to his own people is constantly called into question in western media, if not directly by the leadership of western nations. Him and his country are seen as a possible threat to the security of other, richer and more powerful nations and were described as part of the "Axis of Evil" by George W. Bush.
2. Exactly the same description could have been applied to Saddam Hussein before the invasion of Iraq.
3. Now, Iraq was invaded under the pretence of it being a nation in which WMD's were being developed. One of the main features of these "Axis of Evil" countries is that they are meant to be developing WMDs, so it doesn't take a genius to identify that the US, UK and other places like this might use the same reasoning to invade another country, such as North Korea.
4. Now, Iraq was invaded because it had WMDs. Or that was the official justification we were told by our Prime Minister at the beginning. The Iraqi regime said they had no WMDs, it turned out that they indeed had no WMDs, but they were invaded anyway.
5. So put yourself in the position of Kim Jong-il. The west don't like you, you are officially "evil" and even if you have no WMDs and tell them this, they will invade you to destroy your non-existent WMDs. What do you do? Well, if you're a bit crazy, you do what any sensible crazyman would do... go on make some WMDs, tell everybody you have them and tell them that you are just dying to use them. NOW he's not in the same position as Saddam Hussein was, and you know what? Saddam Hussein was overthrown, he is incarcerated and probably on track for a death penalty, so maybe in terms of his own personal benefit, Kim Jong-il isn't doing
himself any real harm with these nukes.
Allowing his country's infrastructure and economy to go down the ****ter, now that's a different story.