It's easy to distill these issues and hold a self-righteous opinion, but I personally find most too complex to form anything resembling an educated opinion.
Take land mines. I've heard that they play a critical role in South Korea's defense, which was a major reason Clinton didn't sign. Military experts talk about how it's an effective tool that, when used responsibly, can benefit civilians more than harm them.
They also kill and maim people.
Intellectually, both sides seem reasonable to me. Of course, emotionally, one is passively helping people (or so we are told), while the other is actively harming them, so, ya, I lean towards being anti land mines. But, I fundamentally can't shake the feeling that I have no clue what's going on, so maybe I shouldn't be too quick to judge.
Further, there is a big difference between long term persistent land mines out of a plane into a civilian area (what the treaty is meant to stop), and keeping a careful inventory of (mostly wire controlled) mines in a controlled area just south of the border.
The former will kill tons of non-soldiers and persist long after the war is over. The latter will kill NK soldiers moving south and can be easily collected in the event they are no longer necessary.
> It's easy to distill these issues and hold a self-righteous opinion, but I personally find most too complex to form anything resembling an educated opinion.
Ah, yes, complexity explains everything from the role of private oil companies in Iraq to the ties of the Bush family with the Bin Laden family.
> But, I fundamentally can't shake the feeling that I have no clue what's going on, so maybe I shouldn't be too quick to judge.
I think a very safe way, given the histoy over the last decaded, to form an opinion, is to consider everything the US defense industry-slash-ministry proclaims an outright lie and only accept very small points as true when they have been verified.
> It's easy to distill these issues and hold a self-righteous opinion, but I personally find most too complex to form anything resembling an educated opinion.
The problem is the other extreme of not expressing an opinion where you have reasonable doubt will lead to leaving the discussion to everyone else. And there will always be a huge crowd of people who will voice their very uniformed opinion no matter what.
Even worse, you become extremely susceptible to malign publicity tactics. For example I would not see it beyond the US government[1] to argue with South Korea's defense even if the land mine treaty explicitly had an exception for these well cataloged mines in narrowed down locations [2]. They would of course word their public statement carefully so they can later refuse to acknowledge a causal connection between the two in case their bluff is called.
[1] And my government on other topics.
[2] I'm assuming the best case here. I don't know how the mines along the border are actually distributed, or even if there are mines at all.
Point being (I believe), it is expensive to take a moral position. It costs you money and thoughtful action. You could secure the South Korean border without landmines. It just would cost a lot more money.
You could do a lot of other things (or rather not do them), but it might cost you your political standing.
So point being - playing the moral high card, as the US do around the world, should not follow the line from a Genesis song:
"Do as I say, don't do as I do..."
At least in my humble opinion (the same goes for my Governement, the German one by the way.)
The point being whatever you want to make of the similarities in the human rights records between the US and North Korea.
Perhaps you think what North Korea does is the proper way to interact with the world, perhaps you think that the US should be the moral lead for countries like the Sudan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Afganistan, and Croatia instead of the moral follower.
Take land mines. I've heard that they play a critical role in South Korea's defense, which was a major reason Clinton didn't sign. Military experts talk about how it's an effective tool that, when used responsibly, can benefit civilians more than harm them.
They also kill and maim people.
Intellectually, both sides seem reasonable to me. Of course, emotionally, one is passively helping people (or so we are told), while the other is actively harming them, so, ya, I lean towards being anti land mines. But, I fundamentally can't shake the feeling that I have no clue what's going on, so maybe I shouldn't be too quick to judge.