"UPI: Poll: A third of Americans favor nuclear strike in " Topic

…North Korea scenario.

"A new survey has shown about a third of Americans would support a preemptive nuclear strike on North Korea, if it resumes long-range missile testing.

The research by YouGov and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was based on a fictional news article showing North Korea resuming the tests and gave respondents a choice on how the United States should respond, including the probability each response might provoke retaliation from Pyongyang."

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

My lack of faith in the validity of surveys makes me hope that a third of Americans aren't that wantonly self destructive.

It has been pretty clear for decades that about 1/3 of Americans are ill informed, make decisions on emotion and
believe things no educated person would deem accurate.

I chalk this one up to people no longer being aware of what nuclear weapons really do. Or anything about fallout.

In the era of fake news, most Americans are ill informed.

No, USAF, in an era of ill informed Americans, that are incapable of telling the difference of news from propaganda, when your leader makes up "alternative" facts, and some non-news media propagates state propaganda, it's no wonder that the misled public starts to accept actions that are repugnant to our nation's stated purposes.

We can honestly say most Americans are ill informed, full stop.

I completely agree Repiqueone. One of the hardest tasks I have is teaching my students to be good information consumers and to identify bias in information and information sources. It is always a fight.

Critical thinking is essential, but that means accepting facts and rejecting unprovable claims. This is crucial when dealing with science, and is required when fixing on the facts in a political argument and not "beliefs."

Making some people recognize this while FaceBook, Fox, Russia, and a variety of internet propagandists make every effort to blur reality to their dogma is very difficult. Truth does not change, but tribal understanding of it certainly does.

The propaganda is from CNN, MSNBC with their daily dose of

+1 chasseur. I retired over a decade ago. The problem is always the same;but now days it must be terribly difficult to get the kids to think though the crap. H

Lion, example?

Obama preemptively launched missiles at 4 separate nations without approval from Congress. No problem.
Trump talks about launching missiles at 1 nation. Serious problem.

Obama passes legislation (or executive order, don't remember which) which forces children of illegal immigrants to be separated from their parents. No problem.
Trump enforces that legislation/order. Serious problem.

Obama wins the Nobel Peace prize not long after getting elected, and doing nothing to earn it. The man is a hero.
Trump actually talks to the North Koreans, which hasn't happened in what, 25 years, and gets them to stop firing missiles (for a while at least). The man is unstable.

And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head. The next time you listen to a "news broadcast", doesn't matter which one, ask yourself, "who does that guy want to win the next election". If you can answer the question, then it isn't an unbiased report.

I think you may be on to something, Stryderg, especially when also viewing the number of those deported in the last 6 years too.

One guy beats out the other one, 2:1, and I'm willing to bet it's not who most people think.

Stryderg, your note is a perfect example of what Chasseur and I were discussing. Not one of the examples that either you or USAF provided pass the simple tests of critical thinking. None that you gave above are true, or supported by historical fact, or they suffer from being incomplete statements of events. Some are just vague in their intention.( Which man is unstable?). As for bias, you both provide several examples of that, albeit as own goals.

Thinking off the top of ones head seldom leads to accuracy. The test of truth are facts that are supported by evidence. Beliefs may be fervently held, but that does not make them true.

Thank you for calling me a liar.
Or maybe you are trying to apply scientific accuracy to each and every statement of a language that is flexible and inaccurate.

Let's take one of my examples:
Did President Obama win the Nobel Peace prize or not?
Did he do anything to earn it?
Did the media treat him like a hero for earning it?

Please point out the inaccuracy of my original statement.

@Stryderg

You made very cogent points in you previous post.

It's easier for him to call you a liar than it is to deal with the fact that his whole worldview is wrong.

C.

Did President Obama win the Nobel Peace prize or not?

I was pretty convinced after that farce that question 1 on the Nobel form was: Is your last name Bush?

If yes… better luck next time.

If no… here you go!

Would someone please be sure to sweep out the Dawghouse. It's'a lookin' like it's'a gonna be occupied pert soon.

North Korea does have one thing going for it in terms of protection. Japan is downwind.

Plus the Norks are really close to China so any strike would need to be communicated to them in advance or they may think we are coming for them, in which case we've made our last posts…

And I doubt the Chinese would be real happy about us popping nukes that close to them and may come to the aid of our intended target.

Or they could pile on and become the proud owners of the Korean Peninsula.

The real world is really messy especially taking into account the unintended consequences of a such a strike.

All it takes is one nuclear explosion to ruin your day.

A pre-emptive strike may sound good but what if you miss one or two or more enemy missiles?

They shoot them at you. What kind of political fall-out (no pun) would occur?

It's a bad idea and I agree that most folks don't have the knowledge to think it through.

Would someone please be sure to sweep out the Dawghouse. It's'a lookin' like it's'a gonna be occupied pert soon.

Nah, I plan on keeping it civil. It always amazes me how two people can come away with opposite reactions to the same experience. It's probably based in their world-view and what meaning they ascribe to the experience.

"…in an era of ill informed Americans, that are incapable of telling the difference of news from propaganda, when your leader makes up "alternative" facts…"

The main stream media is like "the boy who cried wolf". For the last two years there was a supposed crisis every week aimed at taking down the President. People are waking up and seeing despite all the naysayers who predicted economic collapse and war, America is as strong as ever with economy up, unemployment down, ISIS caliphate destroyed, and on and on. Facts on one side and angry emotion on the other. Let's stick to the facts.

No, Stryker, I did not call you a liar. I said your statements were good example of uncritical thinking. I specifically said that they were either not true, lacked any sourceable fact, or were incomplete statements of events. I also commented that many of the statements showed obvious bias. You could believe them to be true, which means you aren't a knowing liar, simply guilty of uncritical beliefs that do not pass the bar for critical thinking.

Let's look at your original claims of fact:

Obama preemptively launched missiles at 4 separate nations without approval from Congress. No problem.
Trump talks about launching missiles at 1 nation. Serious problem.

You give no specificity to this charge. Obama did use missiles and cruise missiles against Issis or Al Qaida within countries, but did not use them against a foreign government, namely Syria,which he thought required a vote of congress. The reason that Trump drew criticism was he did fire missiles against Syrian targets, but did so without any consideration of the will of Congress. He appears ready to do this again in Iran. I thought the Constitution gives the Congress some role.

Obama passes legislation (or executive order, don't remember which) which forces children of illegal immigrants to be separated from their parents. No problem.
Trump enforces that legislation/order. Serious problem.

THis is largely an omission of facts. Namely, the goal was to keep children out of jail environments. It was only enforced when there were suspicions of trafficking or abuse that led to separation. The conditions were far different primarily because the numbers were relatively small. What changed this was the Zero Tolerance" policy brought in with Trump as a punitive measure (John Kelley statement to NPR) and the number of children held and separated from their parents skyrocketed. Disease, death, and unsanitary conditions brought on by overloading the system have turned into a international uproar. They are not directly comparable or similarly.motivated as ompared to Obama's use

Obama wins the Nobel Peace prize not long after getting elected, and doing nothing to earn it. The man is a hero.
Trump actually talks to the North Koreans, which hasn't happened in what, 25 years, and gets them to stop firing missiles (for a while at least). The man is unstable.

This quote is largely a biased laced judgment, and has a significant misstatement .

You do not "WIN" the Nobel Prize. It is awarded by a committee of august leaders in science, Politics, and diplomacy from a list of nominees. In this case the primary criteria seems to have been that he was the first black man elected to the US Presidency after a long history of slavery and Jim Crow. It was a recognition of the extreme hopefulness of that achievement and the overcoming of a very bad aspect of US history. Most people celebrated, world wide, that this stain of US history was in some way being recognized as was the achievement of our constitutional system in belatedly overcoming these horrors.

The second sentence contains an untruth. We were in constant contact and negotiation with the NK leadership for all of the 25 years both through third parties and directly. However, we had put conditions on any meetings that were meant to cause the NK government to make some efforts at change, and we carefully consulted with our allies.

Trump lifted all of these limitations on a face to face meeting, and came back from the meeting with all sorts of unverifiable claims of success. As it is now there are no indications that any substantive changes have occured other than our South Korean and Japanese allies are NOT happy with the present situation.
I know of no expert in the region that thinks that things are better, and many fear that, given our trade war with China ( who we relied upon in this area as a go-between) things are somewhat worse.

Repiqueone- +2

USAF-I guess one could subscribe to a coinspiracy theory that all the media(Save Fox and Talk radio) are carefully constructing a web of lies aimed at bringing down the President, but given what I know about the competitiveness and check on the News media ( print, internet, and TV)there's not enough hours in a day or capability to agree on a plan that would allow this.

I always use the technique of "Occam's Razor," The simplest and least convoluted explanation is generally closest to the truth.

I agree that facts are facts. One key to critical thinking is similarly to the conditions of Godwin's law, the first person to bring up a conspiracy is usually without facts. Call it Repique's Law.

Let's look at your original claims of fact:

Obama preemptively launched missiles at 4 separate nations without approval from Congress. No problem.
Trump talks about launching missiles at 1 nation. Serious problem.
You give no specificity to this charge. Obama did use missiles and cruise missiles against Issis or Al Qaida within countries, but did not use them against a foreign government, namely Syria,which he thought required a vote of congress. The reason that Trump drew criticism was he did fire missiles against Syrian targets, but did so without any consideration of the will of Congress. He appears ready to do this again in Iran. I thought the Constitution gives the Congress some role.

Repiqueone, you have selective memory. Recall the disaster which is Libya, orchestrated by the neocons in the previous administration. He directly attacked the foreign government of Libya, which had been in cooperation with the world community on giving up pursuit of WMD. No reason to attack them.

As fare as the media, I pointed out CNN and MSNBC as highly biased. There are many other news sources I go to other than FOX. To name a few there is CBS, ABC, One American News, Newsmax, and when I travel abroad I watch a little of BBC, AlJezera, RT. The more sources one gets news from the better. And C-SPAN is probably the best; no bs commentary spin.

USAF- Thank you for the added specificity, again another minor omission that this was an international effort with the French Government taking the first attacks, and Britain, and several European allies joining in under a UN sanctioned, and supported, action. With a few exceptions few in congress objected. This was not a purely US action, and it was specifically aimed at Ghadaffi's forces that were killing Syrian civilians.

AS for Obama's actions he WAS criticized b ysome Democrats as well as Republicans, and many elements of the Press, and when faced with a later attack upon Syria with no broad allied support, he responded to that criticism and did not approve a similar attack. For this, he was castigated primarily by RW sources.

Repiqueone- Thank you for rational detailed response. Although we are clearly on opposite sides of the political spectrum there is room for agreement. For the record, I supported President Obama's decision not to attack Syria at the time despite his "red line" rhetoric. He rightly took a lot of crap for that statement, but he did not allow it to pressure him into making the wrong decision.

None that you gave above are true, or supported by historical fact, or they suffer from being incomplete statements of events.

No, Stryker, I did not call you a liar

ummm, yeah, you did. But it's cool, I forgive you.

You strike me as a person who revels in minutia. And here is where we are different. I left out a lot of details and specifics in my original comments, because I didn't see them as important, you obviously do. I used the term "wins" to describe how Pres. Obama received the NPP, you would have preferred a more exact word, it was good enough for me.

So, do you paint in the eyes of your 6mm troops? All of my 28mm troops look surprised.

No, Stryderg, I'm much more of a generalist, but learned over my career that the devil is in the details, and to ignore them leads to unfortunate outcomes. It doesn't matter whether you believe in something, if that something is fundamentally wrong, it will get you sooner or later.

One of our founders and 2nd President, John Adams, said,
"…Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence…."

All my 28mm WSS and Samurai figures are painted to the highest standard and are never surprised. They, too, benefit from good detail.

North Korea does have one thing going for it in terms of protection. Japan is downwind.

That is one of the few things preventing a massive nuclear strike on the Norks, true.

I'm also expecting the Japanese to get really grumpy about people shooting missiles over their heads, especially when said missiles have a long history of dropping short.

Plus the Norks are really close to China so any strike would need to be communicated to them in advance or they may think we are coming for them, in which case we've made our last posts…

And I doubt the Chinese would be real happy about us popping nukes that close to them and may come to the aid of our intended target.

Or they could pile on and become the proud owners of the Korean Peninsula.

The big problem is that China does not want a US ally on their border. I can understand that, but I think they are being excessively paranoid about it.

The Koreans, both North and South, do not want to be a Chinese (or heavens forbid, Japanese) puppet-state ever again, which means having a strong ally to prevent China from invading and/or replacing the government. For the Norks, that's the Russians, and for the RoKs it's the Americans.

So if the RoK wins the Korean War, China ends up with a US ally on their border, which China doesn't want.

If the RoK invades the Norks, there are 26million starving peasants incapable of working in modern factories or even modern mechanized farms that are going to flee towards China. That's a major refugee problem by anyone's definitions, and China doesn't want to deal with that, either.

I think the best answer for the Norks is to say, "keep doing that and we're going to let the Japanese invade again."

Again, I will only note that none of your statements are factually accurate, but, rather highly emotional beliefs. Apparently these beliefs are accepted by a minority, perhaps 40% of the US population. The facts will out, or we will suffer the consequences.

There you go again. And I'll restate my amazement that two people can look at the same information and come to different conclusions.
The unemployment rate is down compared to an earlier president's numbers (fact, not emotional belief).
Making inroads to lowering illegal immigration (fact, he's trying which is more than other presidents have done).
Getting us out of bad deals, ok, that one is an opinion because you can't definitively define that deal as "good" or "bad".
And ignoring the dictates of political correctness. Well, you tell me if that's a factually correct statement or not. Oh, wait, you already did.

I blame too much use of "medical marijuana", "magic mushrooms", and other hallucinogens for some of the loony talk.

Of course, there are many other reasons too.

Repiqueone thank you for your clear thinking and rational responses. It is a pleasure to read a well written and educated post. After reading your postings here I think that their is hope still and not just ones jerk conspiracy theories. Thank you sir!

You mean his bloviating?

Milton Waddams +1