Wasting money: Defending South Korea

Great material on the whole money wasting topic in the media. In this post I'll talk about defending South Korea. Next post: farm subsidies.

There was an opinion piece in yesterday's (9/14/06) Wall Street Journal from a South Korean politician, opposing any reduction in the US presence there. The article was more specifically about the status of command over the Korean troops.

In a previous post I talked about the US defending rich countries. We've maintained troops in South Korea since the 1950s, i.e. for roughly 50 years.

Let's compare South Korea with North Korea. South Korea has a GDP of about $900 billion. North Korea: $30 billion. South Korea has a population of 48 million, while North Korea has 22 million. South Korea has twice as many people and 30 times as much money. Why does South Korea need us?

The WSJ article argues a few points:
1. The security situation is more fragile than ever, because "North Korea poses a variety of threats to regional and global stability" and "North Korea is still trying to develop ICBM missiles and nuclear weapons."

--I don't see where the "more fragile than ever" comes from, except paranoia. The North may pose threats to stability on the peninsula, but it doesn't threaten the stability of China and Japan as these countries are both quite stable and N. Korea is a hiccup to these relative giants. The threat to global stability is a joke. I doubt people in South America and Africa are spending much time worrying about Kim Jong Il. The "still trying to ..." reference might make the situation "as fragile as ever" but not "more fragile than ever."

2. A "transfer might encourage North Korea to step up its rogue tactics." The "transfer" refers to transferring control of South Korean troops to South Korean command.

--North Korea might "step up" its tactics? Let's see, for some time now they've been developing nuclear weapons and missiles, kidnapping Japanese and South Korean citizens, etc. What on earth would they do if they stepped things up?

Reality check -- South Korea can stomp North Korea anytime. Double the population and 30 times the economy. They don't need our help. It's long past time we brought our troops home and stopped wasting our money there.