The concentration camps of our time in North Korea

[Craig234]

This is an issue of awareness.

It would be unthinkable to us for the Nazi concentration camps to be in existance today, even without the mass killings, filled with innocents in horrible conditions.

Yet, not enough attention is paid to the concentration camps which do exist in North Korea.

I encourage people watch documentaries. I'll link the first part of one just below; or check for others.

http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3

It's very rare for someone to escape, but there's at least one good documentary about such a person (his friend threw himself on an electric fence so he could escape).

The situation is barbaric. For minor political violations, not only can someone be imprisoned in these starvation-filled labor camps for a life sentence - the next two generations of their families can as well for the same offense. People are born in the camps not knowing anything about the rest of the country.

It's a massive brainwashing and brutal tyranny.

We all should feel it's a moral issue that it exists. Unfortunately, nearly all of us basically never give it a thought.

What to do is not an easy question. I don't lightly suggest a need for considering overthrowing a government, but there is justification in my opinion for this country.

Of course, other avenues should be attempted first. Especially working with China, if they can help bring about change. Aid and carrots should be made available, if they'll fix it.

We should especially work with South Korea.

But I think this should be something we're aware of as a leading foreign policy moral issue, and ask our government to make it a priority to explore options.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Given that China has similar setups and they enjoy watching us squirm on our morals; do you think they give a rats tail about stopping similar issues in NK

China and NK both know that the west and UN will do nothing except pound the drum.

 

[Craig234]

Given that China has similar setups and they enjoy watching us squirm on our morals; do you think they give a rats tail about stopping similar issues in NK

China and NK both know that the west and UN will do nothing except pound the drum.

Evidence that China has similar camps and imprisonment to NK? Including descendants?

 

[Dr. Zaus]

I'd like to repoxy this on FB: But the documentary isn't focused on the title... can you offer a time to tell folks to skip to in order to gain the the information?

 

[cwjerome]

This is an issue of awareness... and unfortunately, not much else. There are several reasons for this reality.

* Incredible geo-strategic difficulties (diplomatic difficulty)
* The unstable and erratic potential of N.Korea (risk)
* The potential for high damages (cost)
* The required attention/effort (political will/capital)
* The power of the status quo (comfort)
* Lack of real threat to national interests (need)

It is true that the sovereignty of the state has diminished, in that they don't have the license to to do whatever evils they want to their own people like they used to, and that the sovereignty of the individual has risen to where basic human rights are expected and the international community is much more likely to intervene into nation states than before to protect them. That said, it's still highly situational and because of the above reasons I don't see real intervention happening anytime soon with N.Korea. They are already the world's pariah and diplomatic and economic stress has been placed upon them.

The best solution is to make deals and agreements with China that would add additional pressure to N.Korea. Any improvement there barring catastrophic loss of life and severe regional instability will have to go through China. It should be a high priority, but I'm not optimistic.

 

[Greenman]

Would any of you sanction assassination in the case of North Korean leadership? To be more specific, lets say the US was able to take out all of the NK leadership with one drone strike, would you approve of them doing it?

 

[cwjerome]

If there were reasonable expectations that N.Korea wouldn't immediately devolve into chaos and militarily lash out, or that it wouldn't trigger an international crisis with China, absolutely. It's a murderous, tyrannical, and evil regime... I would have no moral reservations over making the leadership dead.

 

[Craig234]

I'm not advocating assassination. There are moral issues, and practical issues. The US has had some history of out of control assassinating.

If people think it's ok to assassinate a leader, is it ok for them to assassinate ours? Or our citizens? If not, is there any principle other than 'whoever is better able to do it'?

We've banned assassination - at least technically however much we still try to do it by declaring the leader's residence a 'military stategic target' - for good reason.

But it is debatable, if as the poster above said, if it would help bring an end to massive suffering they are causing. But we have other options, if people get concerned.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Evidence that China has similar camps and imprisonment to NK? Including descendants?

china-labor-camp-reform

Laogai

similar camps yes.

As to the details; it is difficult to verify complaints about either; such governments are not eager to display their wares.

These are also, what is "advertised".

 

[Doppel]

Would any of you sanction assassination in the case of North Korean leadership? To be more specific, lets say the US was able to take out all of the NK leadership with one drone strike, would you approve of them doing it?

I would with qualification. I'm not sure what the end result would be, but they certainly deserve it.

I agree with Craig in great part. NK represents the unique evil of our time. There is no other government as nasty and oppressive on such a large scale. Although you'll find examples of brutal governments every bit as nasty, their reach is a not at all as expansive as NK's.

If people think it's ok to assassinate a leader, is it ok for them to assassinate ours? Or our citizens? If not, is there any principle other than 'whoever is better able to do it'?

Sure, they can try. If you're at war with somebody you go for the groin. It's like the old gentleman's agreement of not shooting officers on the battlefield. It's so absurd, really. I can't imagine international law against assassination really means much anyway.

I read those links Eaglekeeper posted about China labor camps. I see no evidence to indicate they are even in the same field of horror, or ubiquity, as NK's. If I had to go to one country's labor camps I'd pick China's in a heart beat.

 

[cwjerome]

I'm not advocating assassination. There are moral issues, and practical issues. The US has had some history of out of control assassinating.

If people think it's ok to assassinate a leader, is it ok for them to assassinate ours? Or our citizens? If not, is there any principle other than 'whoever is better able to do it'?

We've banned assassination - at least technically however much we still try to do it by declaring the leader's residence a 'military stategic target' - for good reason.

But it is debatable, if as the poster above said, if it would help bring an end to massive suffering they are causing. But we have other options, if people get concerned.

I don't see it as being much different than a dangerous lunatic holed up in a house with a dozen hostages. If you get the shot you take it.

Of course I don't expect that to happen or even really want the US to pursue that sort of thing. I'm just saying in a theoretical sense we have the moral right to do it.

 

[Craig234]

china-labor-camp-reform

Laogai

similar camps yes.

As to the details; it is difficult to verify complaints about either; such governments are not eager to display their wares.

These are also, what is "advertised".

Nothing you supplied shows the Chinese labor camps are anywhere near as bad as the ones in North Korea, that they are "similar".

Watch the documentaries on the North Korean camps, and then look for proof of anything like the degree of misery, starvation, brutality, brainwashing, and more.

There's a lot to criticize about China's - but ironically the links you posted not only don't show they're similar, they say China wants to abolish them.

Here's all the other link has to say about how they are now:

There are accusations that Chinese labor camps[72] produce products which are often sold in foreign countries with the profits going to the PRC government. Products include everything from green tea to industrial engines to coal dug from mines.

There have been reports of Falun Gong practitioners being detained at Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital, or "Sujiatun Concentration Camp". It has been accused[by whom?] that Falun Gong practitioners are killed for their organs, which are then sold to medical facilities.[73][74] The Chinese government rejects these allegations.[75] US State Department visited the alleged camp on two occasions, first unannounced, and found the allegation not credible.[76][77] Chinese dissident and Executive Director of the Laogai Research Foundation, Harry Wu, having sent his own investigators to the site, was unable to substantiate the claims, and believes the reports were fabricated

US prisoners provide labor for products that profit the government also - a practice I'm wary of but which has nothing to do with the North Korean concentration camps.

An anecdote from a North Korean camp: a young man felt like strangers to his family. There was an incident where they hid some minor offense; he went to the authorities and IIRC turned in his mother and brother, who the guards took out and shot. He said he felt no emotion. They were just strangers to him - that's the culture in the prison. His view of them was that for any rule breaking, they were criminals and it was the right thing to turn them in. That's all he knew.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

If people think it's ok to assassinate a leader, is it ok for them to assassinate ours? Or our citizens?

Do you think that anyone bad enough that we felt he/she needed to be assassinated would give up the chance to do it to us even if we disavowed it?

The NK situation is tragic. It's also something we really can't do anything about at the moment. If the Nazis had gotten nuclear weapons, those camps would probably never have been liberated either.

 

[Craig234]

Do you think that anyone bad enough that we felt he/she needed to be assassinated would give up the chance to do it to us even if we disavowed it?

That question has nothing to do with the principles at hand.

Let's say we were talking about whether you have the right to rob your neighbor and kill him.

How much use would it be for me to say 'if one of your neighbors wanted to rob and kill you, do you think he wouldn't just because you disavow it?'

However, if you DO say it's ok for you to, you really don't have much room to say that they shouldn't do it to you.

That does move it out of any morality and strictly to 'sure, why not, since we can do it'.

The NK situation is tragic. It's also something we really can't do anything about at the moment. If the Nazis had gotten nuclear weapons, those camps would probably never have been liberated either.

Yes, we, can the steps I outlined - starting with awareness and public concern and making it a priority for our government to explore options with China and South Korea.

But the 'we can't do anything' position lets a person 'feel better' that it's not that they aren't doing anything wrong - they can stick with 'libertariansm' and not feel bad.

The oft-quoted phrase is, 'all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing' - not a popular quote with libertarian types.

Edit: a quick history lesson is also in order here.

First, the US has assassinated or tried to assassinate all kinds of people not because they were 'bad' but because of some money issue (of course they were called 'bad').

Out of a lot of examples, I'll mention a couple - Lumumba in Africa and Allende in Chile.

But let's take someone 'bad' who you say would happily try to do it to us if we did it to them - Fidel Castro. Nevermind that our own anti-communist hysteria at the time led our government to spit in his face when he tried to establish friendly relations, and we cut off buying their sugar which was most of the economy - which drove them straight into the arms of the Soviets. We tried to kill Castro dozens of times - and he knew it.

But there is no evidence showing he tried to assassinate our President - in fact, some in our security establishment tried to frame him for doing just that. LBJ said he believed it.

He did, though, make the point that the US was giving others justification for doing so if they kept assassinating other leaders. But your prediction hasn't come true.

In fact, the only time I recall now of what you say happening is when Saddam tried to kill the former President Bush - but that doesn't justify our assassinating leaders.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

That question has nothing to do with the principles at hand.

Let's say we were talking about whether you have the right to rob your neighbor and kill him.

If my neighbor had a past history of robbing and killing people, and had threatened to kill me when he had a chance, I'd have every right to do it to him first.

However, if you DO say it's ok for you to, you really don't have much room to say that they shouldn't do it to you.

Well, if they have the means and can make a reasonable case that I need to be murdered because I'm systematically enslaving and killing my own people, then they are going to do it.

It's not like we're talking about killing a head of state because we don't like his hairstyle. The entire point of this, were it undertaken, would be to try to stop the abuses with a minimum of loss of innocent life.

Yes, we, can the steps I outlined - starting with awareness and public concern and making it a priority for our government to explore options with China and South Korea.

This implies that we aren't already doing all of that, which I don't think is the case.

China doesn't give a shit, IMO. South Korea cares but not enough that they're willing to go to war over it.

But the 'we can't do anything' position lets a person 'feel better' that it's not that they aren't doing anything wrong - they can stick with 'libertariansm' and not feel bad.

No, the "we can't do anything" position is based on reality -- we really can't.

The classical libertarian argument is "their problem, let them deal with it". I did not make that argument here.

The oft-quoted phrase is, 'all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing' - not a popular quote with libertarian types.

What's with the straw man attacks on libertarianism? Again, I never made a libertarian argument. I simply pointed out the reality that we can't really fix this.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Evidence that China has similar camps and imprisonment to NK? Including descendants?

china-labor-camp-reform

Laogai

similar camps yes.

As to the details; it is difficult to verify complaints about either; such governments are not eager to display their wares.

These are also, what is "advertised".

Nothing you supplied shows the Chinese labor camps are anywhere near as bad as the ones in North Korea, that they are "similar".

Watch the documentaries on the North Korean camps, and then look for proof of anything like the degree of misery, starvation, brutality, brainwashing, and more.

There's a lot to criticize about China's - but ironically the links you posted not only don't show they're similar, they say China wants to abolish them.

When playing poker; one does not show their hole cards unless the game is over and they folded.

Just like the Germans and Japanese after WWII.

Until we had a first hand look; no one had any real clue as to what was going on.

China will put up a nice face; what goes on behind the scenes for all the political prisoners ....

 

[Craig234]

If my neighbor had a past history of robbing and killing people, and had threatened to kill me when he had a chance, I'd have every right to do it to him first.

If' it's not too much to ask, read what I post instead of ignoring and posting more straw men.

Let me repeat something you ignored.

Edit: a quick history lesson is also in order here.

First, the US has assassinated or tried to assassinate all kinds of people not because they were 'bad' but because of some money issue (of course they were called 'bad').

Out of a lot of examples, I'll mention a couple - Lumumba in Africa and Allende in Chile.

Lets take the example I provided of Salvadore Allende.

How did Allende have "a past history of robbing and killing people, and had threatened to kill me when he had a chance"?

None of that is true. It is some set of circumstances you made up to avoide the issue.

Well, if they have the means and can make a reasonable case that I need to be murdered because I'm systematically enslaving and killing my own people, then they are going to do it.

'They' will? Oh, then why haven't 'they' done it to the leader of North Korea for several decades? Hm. Guess there's a question about your assertion.

Question is about whether it's right.

Now, also if you do say it's ok for those circumstances, why do you get to make all the rules? Why can't a middle eastern ruler say that our president presides over monstrous things like our having the highest imprisonment in the world (pretty much true), some of the worst drug abuse rates in the world among our young people (lot of truth to that), some of the biggest production of pornography in the world they view as devastating to people and immoral, and so on?

Why can't the President of Mexico decide that we are a terrorist threat by allowing billions a year to get into their country funding drug cartels killing tens of thousands a year?

It all comes down to the basic issue of when *the assassinating country* decided they think they have justification, if there isn't some broad ban on assassinating leaders.

It's not like we're talking about killing a head of state because we don't like his hairstyle

Hey, another straw man you made up no one has suggested. No, it's not. As I said, we're talking about assassination in many cases so some of our citizens can make more money.

The entire point of this, were it undertaken, would be to try to stop the abuses with a minimum of loss of innocent life.

Yes, if we condoned assassination. Maybe a country could assassinate LBJ for needlessly killing a million Vietnamese people, to stop the killing with a minimum loss of life.

This implies that we aren't already doing all of that, which I don't think is the case.

We're not. Sorry, not going to prove a negative, but you are going to have to prove a positive if you want to assert it. Yes, we are doing SOME relatively small efforts.

China doesn't give a shit, IMO. South Korea cares but not enough that they're willing to go to war over it.

Well, thank you for removing any need for thousands of experts and scholars on the issue to make a major effort to explore options. You have shown there aren't any. Nice of you.

And yes, that's just the sort of sarcasm we need to respond to an argument like that.

No, the "we can't do anything" position is based on reality -- we really can't.

And Mubarak and Qadafi can't be overthrown. They've been in power for decades as tyrants, obviously, if they could be, they would have been long ago.

I'm advocating awareness and government prioritization. Neither of those have happened. Both are entirely possible. You're just throwing up phony objections.

 

[cwjerome]

However, if you DO say it's ok for you to, you really don't have much room to say that they shouldn't do it to you.

That does move it out of any morality and strictly to 'sure, why not, since we can do it'.

The moral right to protect the lives of innocents applies to everyone, so yes, I would say any country can theoretically do it. Of course it's highly contextual, centering on the dynamics of the accused and accuser and a hundred variables, and not easily cut-and-dry in real life. I believe in the case of the US versus N.Korea though, there is little question that we have the right to do so, although not necessarily an obligation. But like I mentioned before, I don't think it will happen and I don't particularly want it to happen.

CK is right though, other than awareness and more diplomatic prodding of China, there is little we can do. If anyone should vigorously pursue this it's S.Korea. They need to spearhead any major "action," with the US as a close supporter/mediator.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

If' it's not too much to ask, read what I post instead of ignoring and posting more straw men.

I'm not posting any straw men. You raised the analogy of me wanting to kill my neighbor, and I made the point that in the case of North Korea, my neighbor is not a jolly good fellow.

Lets take the example I provided of Salvadore Allende.

Let's not. The thread is about North Korea. That's what I was talking about.

'They' will? Oh, then why haven't 'they' done it to the leader of North Korea for several decades? Hm. Guess there's a question about your assertion.

You're getting knotted up in your own silly analogies.

You asked me this: "However, if you DO say it's ok for you to, you really don't have much room to say that they shouldn't do it to you."

"They" in that context is North Korea, and the discussion of whether or not we should assassinate its leader. So why are you asking me why "they" haven't gone after the leader of North Korea?

Question is about whether it's right.

And my answer is: "it depends on the circumstances".

Now, also if you do say it's ok for those circumstances, why do you get to make all the rules? Why can't a middle eastern ruler say that our president presides over monstrous things like our having the highest imprisonment in the world (pretty much true), some of the worst drug abuse rates in the world among our young people (lot of truth to that), some of the biggest production of pornography in the world they view as devastating to people and immoral, and so on?

I already said they can do that. And... depending on how you define "Middle Eastern ruler".. they have, if not tried to assassinate the president, at least strike a pretty strong blow at our society.

The better question is why, if they are going to do that to us, we can't do it to them?

Why can't the President of Mexico decide that we are a terrorist threat by allowing billions a year to get into their country funding drug cartels killing tens of thousands a year?

He can. Of course, there will be consequences to his actions.

It all comes down to the basic issue of when *the assassinating country* decided they think they have justification, if there isn't some broad ban on assassinating leaders.

Correct. And IMO the "bad guys" out there will never adhere to such a ban, and we should not do so either as it unnecessarily hamstrings us while providing no reciprocal protection.

It's effectively a unilateral strategic crippling.

Hey, another straw man you made up no one has suggested.

Get real. I wasn't actually seriously suggesting anything about haircuts. It was a figure of speech.

Since you apparently need me to spell it out: the entire point is that we only should target someone for assassination if there is a good reason.

Yes, if we condoned assassination. Maybe a country could assassinate LBJ for needlessly killing a million Vietnamese people, to stop the killing with a minimum loss of life.

Wouldn't have blamed them if they had tried. Except, of course, that it would have backfired anyway.

We're not. Sorry, not going to prove a negative, but you are going to have to prove a positive if you want to assert it. Yes, we are doing SOME relatively small efforts.

Well, perhaps you could suggest some specific practical actions we could take. "Awareness" is mom and apple pie, it sounds good, everyone likes it, but it doesn't actually do anything. I think most people are aware that NK is a brutal dictatorship. I don't think that awareness amounts to a hill of beans.

Well, thank you for removing any need for thousands of experts and scholars on the issue to make a major effort to explore options. You have shown there aren't any. Nice of you.

And yes, that's just the sort of sarcasm we need to respond to an argument like that.

I was quite clearly and obviously giving my opinion. Your snarky and sarcastic response is both not necessary and not appreciated.

If you want to post like that, do it in P&N.

And Mubarak and Qadafi can't be overthrown. They've been in power for decades as tyrants, obviously, if they could be, they would have been long ago.

And if and when the North Korean people rise up, they may be able to overthrow their dictator as well. Possibly with our help.

Of course, if Qaddafi and Mubarak had nukes, they might still be in power now, hmm?

 

[Doppel]

The NK situation is tragic. It's also something we really can't do anything about at the moment. If the Nazis had gotten nuclear weapons, those camps would probably never have been liberated either.

This is a timely point because NK does not have nukes, not quite. Afaik they have nothing weaponized and no way to project those nukes at all. If there is ever, ever a time to use their government as missile practice it is now. The window is closing quickly. I don't see any internatinoal will to do so though, so all we can do is hope that NK collapses from within at some distant future.

 

[WelshBloke]

Would any of you sanction assassination in the case of North Korean leadership? To be more specific, lets say the US was able to take out all of the NK leadership with one drone strike, would you approve of them doing it?

If we could do that without causing a retaliatory strike on SK and it would guarantee a better situation in the north then absolutely we should.

I'd have no moral worries about wiping out the NK leadership. They are a bunch of monsters on the level of the Nazis or the khmer rouge.

 

[Craig234]

I'm not posting any straw men.

The topic was the more general issue of assassination and our history with an excess with it.

I raised examples to discuss of how we've had excesses.

You completely ignored the issues I raised of excesses and the examples I raised, in order to pretend they don't exist and only use a cherry-picked worst case you invented.

I pointed out how you ignored my points to make a straw man cherry picked example - you ignored Salvadore Allende and the point I was making about your neighbor, about the actual history of what's happened to try to only use a worst-case example where 'your neighbor was robbing and killing and threatening to kill you'.

It's as if our topic was a case about police use of force involving some targeted killings of individuals by the police for political reasons, and your response was 'if they were out killing innocent people and threatening to kill the police, deadly force might be justified'. Well, thanks for ignoring the topic. The point was I was discussing how allowing a precedent of assassination for someone like the North Korean leader opens the door and has historically to out of control assassinating. You simply ignored the issue.

Your response to my pointing out you ignored what I said and argued a straw man was to ignore what I said, and deny you made a straw man. How helpful.

You raised the analogy of me wanting to kill my neighbor, and I made the point that in the case of North Korea, my neighbor is not a jolly good fellow.

I raised to point out the danger the precedent has had with out of control assassinations. The neighbor anaolgy was to help you better understand our role in assassinating leaders such as Salvadore Allende, since you were ignoring that. Clearly my point was however tempting it might be to assassinate a more worst-case leader, there are issues with how it gets out of control, supported by our history. Simply ignoring the point and saying 'but North Korea's leader is a bad guy' is not responding.

Let's not. The thread is about North Korea. That's what I was talking about.

The point I was making was about the broader of assassinations getting out of control. If you don't want to discuss it, fine, but don't ignore it and pretend you responded to it.

It's as if someone took a case of a really terrible person in the US who was torturing, raping, trying to bomb people, no question, and a suggestion was made 'he's so bad and dangerous, let the police just execute him on the spot to save taxpayers a lot of money for a trial and prison'.

I then respond ointing out that putting aside the question for that person, if the police were given that power for that person, there's a danger of the power being abused and people with less and less justification being executed on the spot. I provide examples of something similar in our history showing how those abuses happened.

You refuse to answer the issue I raised, so I make an analogy to help you, and you ignore that, and just keep repeating 'but in this one case the guy is really bad'.

I reiterate the point that allowing it for that guy has a danger of it being abused.

You just keep ignoring my point to say 'but he's a bad guy'.

Yes, you want to argue that the policy can be really neat and controlled, and will never go beyond really bad guys like that one. I'm pointing out how these things actually work that there's a big risk that when you allow it for one it grows and it abused. I pointed out history supporting that with the specific example of assassination. There's a reason Carter and Reagan, after the exposure of some CIA history, said 'no more assassination', not 'no more assassination except some really bad leaders and it wont get abused really'.

You're the begging the question about the abuse that comes when the door is opened by simply refusing to discuss the issue and claiming it won't.

This is isn't all such a distant past, either - putting aside our skirting of the law on things like having it illegal to try to assassinate Saddam, and requiring any strike on a location it was believed he was at to be approved by the Secretary of defense to make sure the basis was strong enough to justify the risk to innocents, and our approving fifty targets, all of which did not hit him and killing innocents, take our approving the coup and kidnapping of the elected leader of Venezuela a decade ago.

He wasn't running 'concentration camps'. He wasn't trying to assassinate the President of the US. It was just luck the coup leaders had only flown him to an island to imprison him by the next day when the people rose up and overthrew the coup instead of having killed him with a cover story. And that's with our ban in place.

Our motive was strictly business interests we wanted to protect, and keeping a 'strongman' in power was preferable to us to do that - screw their democracy.

You're getting knotted up in your own silly analogies.

No, you're not understanding them.

'Given your tone, I'm not going to discuss this further with you.' Good luck with it.

 

[WelshBloke]

Why is assassination intrinsically worse than declaring war and invading?

At least with assassination theres no third parties harmed.

In the case of NK you could have a massive land war with possibly millions killed on each side or you could kill those responsible for the atrocities in the north with minimal deaths.

Now willy nilly assassination of anyone you don't like is bad but the same is true of any military intervention.

 

[Craig234]

Why is assassination intrinsically worse than declaring war and invading?

At least with assassination theres no third parties harmed.

In the case of NK you could have a massive land war with possibly millions killed on each side or you could kill those responsible for the atrocities in the north with minimal deaths.

Now willy nilly assassination of anyone you don't like is bad but the same is true of any military intervention.

There's a question, can you allow it for some, but not have it used willy-nilly?

In terms of just how these powers and bureacracies work?

Think about my analogy of the police executing someone who is really, really bad and obviously guilty - how you might get support for one, but can you limit it really?

How about letting the president order drone strikes on really bad criminals in the US? Of course he's a busy guy, so the power needs to get delegated, maybe down to police.

Assassination can 'seem' like an attractive option.

What does history tell us happens with it?

Especially when one nation is so lopsidedly powerful that it's the one who can go around assassinating whoever it chooses for whatever reason it chooses, but no one else can.

No chance of abuse of power there, right?

 

[WelshBloke]

There's a question, can you allow it for some, but not have it used willy-nilly?

Because sometimes it's obvious when someone is so far over the line of reasonable behaviour they make the decision easy for us.

In terms of just how these powers and bureacracies work?

Think about my analogy of the police executing someone who is really, really bad and obviously guilty - how you might get support for one, but can you limit it really?

Police analogy doesn't really work. The police have an option of taking someone into custody without bloodshed, we don't have that option with NK.

How about letting the president order drone strikes on really bad criminals in the US? Of course he's a busy guy, so the power needs to get delegated, maybe down to police.

Again there's no comparison. You wouldn't have to start a war to arrest those criminals.

Assassination can 'seem' like an attractive option.

What does history tell us happens with it?

Especially when one nation is so lopsidedly powerful that it's the one who can go around assassinating whoever it chooses for whatever reason it chooses, but no one else can.

No chance of abuse of power there, right?

What's to stop the powerful nation from militarily steamrollering whoever it chooses for whatever reason?