Well, sure… But he’s also a piece of shit.
I mean, there are lots of pieces of shit. But they are the exception, not the rule, when it comes to humanity.
Also, I think that in the case of someone like that, he has the luxury of playing to the fantasy that a stalinesque state is great… because he doesn’t live under one. For someone who actually lives in NK? They are literally being starved and murdered by their leader, while he grows fat eating imported cheese.
They don’t have the luxury of living in a fantasy world and running a website to generate ad revenue from it. For them, it’s not a game, it’s just daily suffering.
I sincerely believe this as well. Listen to anyone that has escaped to South Korea or the U.S. They describe a population that has its fanatics, but is largely full of normal folks trying to get by day to day, talking to the talk for fear of being found out.
It is actually so tragic. I linked the book “Nothing to Envy” which tells a story of two childhood friends that became lovers, and had to keep it a secret, traveling to the woods at night to spend time together. He was from a prominent family and would join the military, she was a family with japanese ancestry (lower class) and he left for military school. She was too afraid to tell him of her dreams of leaving, because he was in the military. He too had smuggled a radio and wanted to leave as well, but was afraid to tell her because of the chance he could ruin his families’ honor. They both ended up defecting, without telling one another. I’ll leave the book to tell the rest of that story, it is incredible to read.
But what you learn is that it is a society that pits people against eachother, so they can’t trust their neighbor.
I think, with the writing on the wall, and freedom in sight, most people would give up. If there isn’t a regime to punish you for defecting, then you defect. People are held due to fear, not loyalty. And once that fear goes away, I think that most would refuse to fight.
I believe the number of major war crimes and mass destruction incidents in history far far exceeds the number of times someone has refused to commit one under orders. One or two Russians apparently saved the world in crises during the cold war, but of course the US didn’t hesitate to firebomb and nuke purely civilian targets in WWII. And putting the axis entirely aside, the Soviets committed even greater atrocities. And so somehow I doubt that the North Koreans will feel any special compunction if they are asked to destroy Seoul.
Not really true, Saddam had been in power for 24 years before the invasion. That means that for virtually all of the individual soldiers, and a good number of NCO and Jr. officers in the army Saddam was the only leader they had ever know. Saddam propagandas portrayed him as the second coming of Saladin a legendary figure among Arabs.
I’ve read accounts of defectors from both Saddam’s Iraq and North Korea. The descriptions are very similar and quite Orwellian. It was not enough that you refrained from criticism Saddam, or the various Kims, you were in danger if you were insufficiently enthusiastic about their deity-like status. Thought-crimes were/are real in those countries, and the penalties are inflicted on your families. Nobody inside, much less outside can accurately predict how they’ll react.
Nevertheless, North Korea has been under the rule of the Kim’s for generations, are far more isolated than Iraqis ever were, and don’t have the traditional tribal loyalties that the Iraqis had.
But the average Iraqi wasn’t in constant danger of starving to death. Watching your friends and family starve and always going to bed hungry and generally freezing, would put damper on your willingness to believe that 3 cheeks, Chinese nickname for him, Kim Jung Un is actually a deity. Information has filtered into North Korea, I think the average North Korea understands that starvation is not the norm in other countries.
I’m not convinced, yet, that the average North Korean does in fact have that much info from outside, or if they do, that they really believe it. OTOH, it’s entirely possible that the whole Kim dynasty is a rotten house of cards that will collapse as soon as North Koreans see that the jig is up. We can certainly hope for that, but I’d be very leery about planning on it as a given.
As for Saddam, while I’d agree that Hussein’s hold on the country was pretty strong, and ruthless, I don’t really see Iraq under Saddam as equivalent to North Korea under the Kims. Though mostly a secular leader, being at least nominally still a Baathist political type, Saddam couldn’t play the living god card really, not in a strongly Islamic country. He also could draw on a degree of pan-Arabism and historical antipathy to the “crusaders,” and thus didn’t really have to manufacture stuff the way the Kims have had to. And as bad as Saddam’s rule was, and it was pretty crappy, it never quite reached the levels of batshit crazy the North Koreans have managed to develop.
The performance of the Iraqis in both wars with the US and its allies was hardly stellar, true enough. Their performance against Iran was a lot better. I’m uncertain as to how the US-North Korean matchup would correlate to the Iraqi experience, though. On the one hand, the North Koreans aren’t that much if any better served in terms of tech or quality of stuff, and the technical quality of US and ROK stuff is better now, mostly, than it was twenty years ago. On the other hand, though, the North Koreans have actually anticipated and trained for a clash with the “imperialists,” for like fifty years, give or take. They would not have the same sort of psychological shock I don’t think, if they faced the US and the ROK, though of course the impact of the real versus their expectations could well be pretty damn shocking. Still, I’d bet they’d do a lot better than Saddam’s folks.
“There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely,” Trump told Reuters in an Oval Office interview ahead of his 100th day in office on Saturday.
Nonetheless, Trump said he wanted to peacefully resolve a crisis that has bedeviled multiple U.S. presidents, a path that he and his administration are emphasizing by preparing a variety of new economic sanctions while not taking the military option off the table.
“We’d love to solve things diplomatically but it’s very difficult,” he said.
Trump lavished praise on Chinese President Xi Jinping for Chinese assistance in trying to rein in North Korea. The two leaders met in Florida earlier this month.
"I believe he is trying very hard. He certainly doesn’t want to see turmoil and death. He doesn’t want to see it. He is a good man. He is a very good man and I got to know him very well.
“With that being said, he loves China and he loves the people of China. I know he would like to be able to do something, perhaps it’s possible that he can’t,” Trump said.
Edit (also FTA):
Trump, asked if he considered North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to be rational, said he was operating from the assumption that he is rational. He noted that Kim had taken over his country at an early age.
"He’s 27 years old. His father dies, took over a regime. So say what you want but that is not easy, especially at that age.
“I’m not giving him credit or not giving him credit, I’m just saying that’s a very hard thing to do. As to whether or not he’s rational, I have no opinion on it. I hope he’s rational,” he said.
Trump, sipping a Coke delivered by an aide after the president ordered it by pressing a button on his desk, appeared to rebuff an overture from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, who told Reuters a direct phone call with Trump could take place again after their first conversation in early December angered Beijing.
That’s somewhat my point. It is literally impossible to know what the average North Korean, knows much less thinks or how they will behave because they won’t even share that information truthfully with their family much less any type of outsider.
One of the scenes, in the most recent North Korea book I read “Dear Leader”. was when the defector went back to his home town that hadn’t visited in many years since he became part of the elite. Folks are starving to death, which wasn’t the case when grew up, and the old folks are making unfavorable comparisons to previous famines. They don’t even have to have any knowledge of the outside world, just knowledge of their history, to know that the propaganda from the party about the great strides that have occurred under Kim Jung Il are lies.
This intelligence vacuum creates huge uncertainties which make the situation so dangerous.
