“Betrayal! Betrayal! Betrayed me!”Hurt
Extract from ‘The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Iran’ by Zoreh Rahimi
In March of 2003, Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nail’s ‘Hurt’ was released as a single and quickly topped the charts. It was quite an anomaly, as the song’s emotional and depressing themes would have usually ensured lower sales. However, one likely reason is that it provided catharsis for the Battle of Tehran, the horrifying battle that would kill more Americans than in any one battle since World War Two. The song would become an anthem both of the anti-war movement and of the veterans of the War on Terror. While ‘In Too Deep’ may have been the ‘Long Way to Tipperary’ of the American soldier, ‘Hurt’ was his ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’. Cash would never comment on his opinion of the war and stayed apolitical, though he did not file a complaint with anyone using the song for anti war sentiments.
On March 12th, the Battle of Tehran officially began, the same day that Bush called for a national day of prayer ‘For our brave soldiers and for the Iranian people’. While over 90% of civilians had been successfully extracted from the city as a result of both Iranian army and American pressure, roughly 500,000 still remained inside either through refusing to leave their loved ones in the army, those who refused to leave their homes, or those who didn’t want to live in a world without the Tehran they loved. The US army had never concentrated so much of its forces in living memory in one spot. The Bush Administration had prioritised Iran over North Korea and Iraq owing to the ease in finding domestic parties to do the heavy lifting, while few in Iran ever dreamed of cooperating with the Americans on anything other than a non-intrusive basis and no ‘Free Iran Army’ was ever created. Thus the Americans needed all the help they could get, with significant British and Turkish help on the side alongside a litany of reluctant partners who mostly wanted to get the conflict over with. The Coalition owned a sky cloaked with F-16s, had roads overflowing with Abrams, but everyone knew that all the kit and men in the world wouldn’t stop the imminent battle from being something straight out of Satan’s nightmares.
House to house fighting, going door to door in a city of a peacetime population of eight million proved an infuriating and mentally overwhelming task. Fighters would burst out of closets and basements in non-descript quiet flats, turning the paranoia of American troops up to eleven. This more than anything else is what the veterans recall: the readying to enter a door that may be filled with men already pointing guns at you, or perhaps the door’s rigged to blow the moment you kick it, all the while you can’t hear yourself think from the sound of constant explosions around the city. As one draftee veteran and purple star winner at the Battle of Tehran, Doug Walker, would later and simply tell college students regarding his experiences that, “I did it so you didn’t have to.” The Coalition played ACDC, Iron Maiden and Metallica music at full blast around the city to try and disorient the Iranians. On one occasion, members of the Iranian army sent a message to the Americans to play certain metal songs that they liked, which the Americans promptly agreed to. However, the IRGC had to poison the well and, to the disgust of the Iranian army, frequently set up their bases in mosques in full knowledge that the Coalition would not target them from the air due to the inevitable outcry. As one Iranian soldier recalled, “All that bullshit about religion, about how they were better than us because they ‘had God’ and we didn’t, only to see them turning mosques into military centres and putting them in danger - what does it tell you when an atheist like me thinks the IRGC was being disrespectful to God?” Reportedly, the Iranian Army began snitching to the Americans on the location of IRGC bases, so bad had the rivalry gotten, with further rumours even alleging the IRGC did the same. The Americans were no angels either, using (despite years of later insisting that they didn’t) white phosphorus against enemy positions in contravention of the laws of war, insisting that the Iranians simply couldn’t have been beaten any other way.
IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) had become something of a work of art to the Iranians, who had used them with great effect on the Coalition convoys all throughout Iran. Now they had laced one of the largest cities in the world with enough explosives and booby traps to send the whole thing to rubble. The first few probing attacks by American forces at the beginning of April were repelled with high loss of life. Eventually, with high trial and effort and a lot of handiwork from the British owing to their experience battling the same thing in Northern Ireland, systems began to be created to rectify the situation. One increasingly common tactic the Americans used was that if they suspected a row of houses or an alleyway were booby-trapped then it would be better to simply blast whole streets to ruin and just walk over the rubble.
Several Iranian civilians recorded their experiences in the doomed city on their cam-recorders, showing the smoke and debris slowly moving closer to their house day after day until the recovered camera had no more footage left to show. Civilians continued to perish in the chaos along with Tehran itself, as it began to look more like Berlin in 1945 than the Tehran of 2002. Those who looked upon Tehran late that April would see a vision that looked like it came from a fever dream: a whirl of smoke and rubble stretching to space above and seemingly all the Earth below. It was like something out of the Book of Revelations, and all the Iranians (and indeed any onlooker) sitting on the sidelines could do was watch and weep. As the Johnny Cash song said, all that was left was an empire of dirt.
Excerpt from ‘Broken Dreams: How the War on Terror Changed America’ by Linda Reins
Paul Wellstone had burned much of his bridges with the Democrat Establishment owing to his willingness to criticise American decision-making during the War on Terror. In fairness, he had always been a black sheep among the Democrats for his relatively heavy liberalism, if he could even be called a Democrat owing to his technically being a member of the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party, the Minnesotan party in affiliation with the Democrats, much like Eugene McCarthy and Walter Mondale. Wellstone was a hero to the American Left for his consistent support of liberal issues, be it on economics or social policy. He was adored by the ACLU, Sierra Club and the AFL. Still he was quietly liked by many (including Republicans) for both his casually wit and implacably Minnesotan pleasantness, hence his designation among many as ‘The Conscience of the Senate’. One wouldn’t have thought that he was a former wrestler.
His support of previous wars had actually been quite partisan, objecting to the Gulf War under Bush Senior while supporting the interventions in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia under Clinton. Given the unique conditions of each segment of the War on Terror, Wellstone wisely adjusted his rhetoric accordingly, supporting the intervention in Lebanon, cautiously endorsing the Iranian intervention before encouraging a ‘separate peace’ with the Iranian army, full condemnation of the Iraq intervention and full support of South Korea’s ‘Right to defend itself’, while saying they had to provide North Korean citizens with more hope for the future. At first, it proved a dangerous strategy, including physically with at least one serious death threat calling him an ‘America-hating Kike’.
However, when the Draft began, Wellstone made it the central issue of his political commentary, calling it ‘The slaughter of our youth’. Promoted by late-time TV presenters like Jon Stewart, he would have an eager audience of young men in America who felt that there was someone who cared about them. Wellstone’s declaration that, ‘If we can’t convince young people to fight for America and have to shove them into machine gun fire with a gun at their back, we deserve to lose this war’ sparked major controversy, and the undying ire of the Fox News Channel. However, the draft’s unenthusiastic support would do little to push back against the anger many young Americans felt. On top of that, with gas prices soaring, economic indicators worsening and a very bleak future ahead, many were increasingly attracted to an economic program that would help provide them a safety net in the form of higher minimum wage. As the protests and riots escalated in the fall of 2002 and into early 2003, Wellstone did his best to try and walk the tightrope between appearing to oppose lawlessness and being sufficiently radical to members of the Anti-War Left. Ultimately, Wellstone would realise he had to act sooner rather than later to consolidate his support before it dissipated into chaotic collapse as many a protest movement had done in the past. When Wellstone began talking about his 'faith' (Wellstone was a generally irreligious Reform Jew and his kids were raised Christian like his wife) to avoid claims of atheism by the Right-Wing media, everyone could already see what was coming.
On February 1st 2003, exactly one year after the bombing of Iran began, Wellstone announced that he would be running for President in 2004. Anticipating the active war would soon be over, he ran on a platform of making America ‘A Home for the Brave’, with massive investments into veterans’ healthcare and job opportunities, as well as fairly (for the time) revolutionary stuff on mental illness and health. Saying the draft would have to end immediately and that American troops should be brought home ‘yesterday’, Wellstone demanded an end to ‘Us acting like we’re the world policeman’, alleging that the war was imploding America’s public image around the world. Given that in a recent speech the overwhelmingly popular Hugo Chavez in Venezuela took an American flag and used it to wipe his backside mid-speech, on-stage, to the wild cheers of his supporters, this was something that was quite easily believed by many Americans. He quickly earned the endorsement of Jon Stewart, Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders, Al Sharpton, Al Franken and a litany of other liberal figures alongside recent Reform Party Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura. He became the official face of the Anti-War movement. At the same time, the face of the Democratic Establishment was his fellow Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry, who would earn the endorsement of the Clintons, Joe Biden and Joe Libermann. The question wasn’t simply who was going to win, but if the Democrat Party would even be a functioning body by next year owing to the gigantic fight that was about to ensue, and what front was about to get harshest: the Iran, Iraq or Iowan front?
Extract from ‘The Last Days of Saddam’ by Briar Forger
On March 8th 2003, the Free Iraqi Army (FIA), with pronounced but not overwhelming American support, would begin their march towards Baghdad in attempt to surround the city. American tanks raced through the desert to try and surround the city, running into stiff resistance at Abu-Ghraib. All the same, with the help of the FIA, Baghdad was completely encircled by March 15th, initiating the Siege of Baghdad. While the Americans focussed on making sure Baghdad went smoothly, the FIA went ahead in an attempt to prove their individual mettle and charged upon Fallujah. Here, the Sectarian differences in Iraq began to bubble up, with the overwhelmingly Sunni city scared of what the overwhelmingly Shia army would do. In a staggeringly short-sighted move, or perhaps long-sighted if you consider him to be that Macheavellian, Saddam had invited Sunni Islamist insurgents from Jordan, Afghanistan, even Chechnya. They were freed from Russian jails since Russia didn’t want them and offered them a chance to escape to exile, which caused significant cooling in US-Russia relations. Among the most infamous Jihadists was the Jordanian group ‘JMT’, under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a man whose name causes shudders across the Middle East to this day. The JMT were infamous for their sectarianism, hating the Shia far more than the Americans and saying that since the Shia were ‘Apostates’ and ‘Flame Worshippers’ that they were therefore worthy of death - Sunnis who tried to help their Shia neighbours were likewise considered ‘Apostates’ for the same reason. That Zarqawi and Saddam had come to an understanding had been considered unthinkable in prior years, Saddam formerly having gone to war with Iran on the basis of defending secularism. However, the desperatness of the situation and Saddam’s anger at the Basra government forced him to make a deal he never would have before. Some in retrospect believe Saddam was deliberately sowing the seeds to destroy Iraq to ensure the country would not survive much long after he did.
The result of the First Battle of Fallujah on March 25th was a surprising Saddamist win, owing to the well-experienced and fanatical resistance of the Sunni Jihadists. The FIA on the other hand were often only fighting for the pay-check and had little love for the corruption of the Basra government, or their connection to the Americans. This instantly upset the Siege plan, as now the Americans needed to send troops to cover their flank. This led to the Second Battle of Fallujah on April 2nd with the significant augmentation of American troops. The battle would end on April 15th after significant house-to-house fighting and high American casualties that further convinced the Americans against a full charge into the second largest Arab city on Earth after Cairo. Instead, the Americans decided on sending anyone but themselves into Baghdad, telling Al-Maliki that if he wanted to charge into Baghdad, he better find some guys who were willing to do it. Unfortunately, Al-Maliki had just the guys.
Kata’ib Jihad [1] was a union of various Pro-Khomeini militia groups within Iraq, loyal to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and viscerally opposed to American and Israel. However, Saddams’s desecration of Shia shrines had proven an impossible pill to swallow, and so with extreme reluctance, the group agreed to a temporary ceasefire with the Americans and ‘Occupational Government’, with some arrested members even offered amnesty for a chance to get back at the Saddam regime and attempt to take Baghdad. The move proved extremely controversial in America, owing to the group’s connections to Hezbollah, but Bush was conscious of the casualty numbers and wanted any excuse he could get to lower them. It was justified to a war-weary American public that it would further ‘kill two birds with one stone’, something that horrified those who worried about the potential of violent sectarianism in the streets of Baghdad while millions had simply tuned out and stopped caring. The Shia militias were jokingly referred to as ‘The Suicide Squad’ by American troops in Iraq, a reference to the characters in the DC Comics universe, in similar reference to their disposability.
While the residents of Baghdad (Sunni, Shia, and indeed the significant minority of Christians and others) prayed to survive the incoming war, one person had decided he wouldn’t stay until the bitter end: Saddam Hussein himself. Saddam retreated to Tikrit, his birthplace and home of substantial support. At the same time, the Jihadists he had invited to Baghdad now patrolled the terrorised streets in conjunction with the Fedayeen Saddam. In one of the most callous betrayals of Saddam’s career, he had essentially handed the keys of Baghdad to the jackals in order to save his skin. His hope was to inspire a Sectarian conflict that would force the other Sunni Arab states to his side and save his skin. To that end, having the Kata’ib Shia groups march into Baghdad proved a perfect chance, in his warped worldview.
On April 19th, members of the Kata’ib Jihad marched past a group of Saudi soldiers on the way to Baghdad. As one American witness, draftee Joe Vargas recalled, “If looks could kill, all of them would be six foot under. I didn’t really understand at the time, but deep inside, a part of me knew we’d done fucked it up.” The Saudis and the UAE had pointedly told Al-Maliki that they would gladly turn their guns on the Kata’ib the moment they heard of sectarian atrocities committed against Sunni civilians, something that the Kata’ib were made fully aware of, with Al-Maliki assuring King Fahd that the FIA would shoot the Kata’ib themselves if they shot their fellow Iraqi citizens. It was on April 19th that the first altercation on the perimeter of Baghdad would occur between the Kata’ib and the Saddamist defenders, some of whom were indeed Shia and got into altercations with some of the foreign Jihadists that Saddam had invited. While the Battle of Baghdad is often remembered as a cauldron of Sectarianism, the truth is that this was more of a feature of the Iraq of the coming years. The Baghdad of 2003 simply did everything they could to survive, first through Saddam’s increasing insanity, then the bombing, then the arrival of the foreign Jihadists, and now the final battle. Baghdad had never had so much thrown at it since the days of the Mongols, and the residents generally tried to work together to survive, as they tried to avoid becoming the collateral damage of two Jihadist groups whose members were generally ignorant of the religion they purported to uphold. Unfortunately, the aftereffects of the battle would soon reap a bitter harvest.
Meanwhile, to the Americans watching helplessly from the sideline, their mission was simple in that there was only one way to end this war before Baghdad would see the same destruction as Tehran already had. They had to get Saddam Hussein, dead or alive.
Extract from ‘Date with Destiny: The War that brought Korea and Japan Together’ by Kaori Makimura
The Fall/Liberation/Annihilation of Kaesong in December was followed in January 2003 with another major battle - the Battle of Kumchon at the Ryesong River. This was the last major natural obstacle that separated Pyongyang from ROK/UN forces. Every bridge had already been blown, with the North Korean forces on the other side of the river consisting primarily of the regiments that had crossed in the Paju region, the location whose infamous massacre had first enraged the South Koreans so much. Many of the North Koreans, now having realised their mistake and expecting the same treatment that North Korea would have for crimes of even a tenth the severity (all the while state propaganda would display the very real recordings of enraged South Koreans wishing for the annihilation of the North) would be too scared to surrender. While there has been a myth created by film and video game portrayals of the war as one between rightfully enraged Southerners and fanatical Imperial-Japan style believers, the true believers were already mostly dead or wounded after the cataclysmic invasion towards Seoul while the ones in 2003 were mostly terrified that they would be tortured or killed by the South Koreans, something not helped by occasional retribution on North Korean soldiers and civilians by the ROK army.
Of the 800,000 troops that had initially invaded South Korea, it was estimated that by year’s end that 300,000 were dead and 400,000 were seriously wounded while about 50,000 were prisoners of war, casualties far and away larger than what the Iranians or Iraqis were suffering. The appalling medical situation ensured an equally appalling ratio of dead to wounded in a disaster that would recall Napoleon’s Grande Armée’s evisceration in Russia. This figure only included those involved in the initial charge south and not the many conscripts and civilians who died later by shrapnel or sickness which would put the ‘dead’ number into seven figures. Given that of the remaining 50,000, a large portion (30,000) had been ordered to hold the line at Kumchon, Kim knew precisely what he was doing; getting the soldiers he knew were the most desperate and putting their backs to a bridgeless river. Kim would place blocking squads on the other side of the river tasked with shooting anyone in South or North Korean uniform who tried to swim across.
The South Koreans had been made aware that much of the perpetrators of the Paju Massacre were located in Kumchon. After dropping leaflets and ordering civilians to flee (many of whom couldn’t leave because North Korea shot them if they tried to leave) and launched an artillery barrage so monumental that as one soldier recalled ‘I wondered if they were going to simply dam the river with rubble’. Ultimately the 30,000 soldiers in the town generally didn’t have to worry about how the South Koreans would treat them, as the South Koreans simply wiped the town to its foundations with the help of their own, the American and Japanese Air Forces. The approach was increasingly criticised in other countries for its generally indiscriminate nature, especially after one South Korean official simply replied, “This is a Communist country where everything is collectivised, including the civilians. The civilians are as much a part of the North Korean infrastructure as the soldiers. Too many South Koreans have died already and we need to prioritise them. This approach is no different to that which the Russians have taken in Grozny.” The official was fired but Bush began speaking to President Lee to rein in the South Korean army before there was a rupture in American-ROK relations. On January 27th, the South Koreans crossed the Ryesong River and placed their flag over the ashes of Kumchon. Surviving civilians were processed, with the members of the units associated with the Paju Massacre being arrested. In at least one case, one South Korean sergeant who had lived in Paju found his dead wife’s missing wedding ring in the pocket of one of the North Korean soldiers. The sergeant repaid the act by breaking the soldier’s four limbs in multiple places and drowning him in the bloodied water of the Ryesong River among the other North Korean corpses. The sergeant was declared innocent on subsequent investigation.
The Americans would quickly understand the same urge. On the outskirts of Sariwon in February, South Korean soldiers would be surprised to see an American officer approach them at camp. He was an old man with a bad cough and accompanied by two younger soldiers. Assuming that they must have been on their side because they were all White, on at least two instances winning over the trust of the South Koreans with their fantastic Korean and getting them to spill information on their forces, the Americans suddenly raised their guns and massacred their new friends. Around the same time, a different old man came running through the forests, eyes wide with fear as he ran in terror for his life. The South Koreans saw him staggering towards them and raised their weapons to fire, only for their jaws to drop when they saw that he was White. While it was possible that he was a recent POW making a run for it, his age definitely ruled that out. “Can you please keep this quiet and not tell anyone but your superiors?” was the first thing the strange man said, in perfect Korean. Agreeing, the strange American gave his best attempt at a salute while covered in cuts and bruises.
“This is Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins, I defected to North Korea back in 1965,” he said. “And I have to inform you that James Dresnok, another defector, is currently on the front lines somewhere in American uniform along with his sons, working for the North Koreans. I accept whatever punishment you want to give me, but I want you to know that my wife and daughters will be in danger if it turns out I’ve gone back, so please, don’t tell anyone you don’t have to tell.”
Barely wrapping their minds around what was happening, Jenkins was quickly detained on site, the information making it to Seoul and the Oval Office within the hour. The NIS were called in and quickly tried to save the situation, faking Jenkins’ death and photographing the supposedly dead body while giving an international announcement. At the same time, the warning call was sent out all along the Sariwon area that a trio of White people working for the North Koreans were pretending to be friendly. Unfortunately, one South Korean duo of soldiers met the trio before the news reached them. Initiating the same small talk, the South Koreans started to laugh along with the American trio. The elder Dresnok, in love with himself for his own disguise, called the South Koreans his ‘Dong-mu’ or ‘friends’ (동무), at which point the eyes of the South Korean soldiers flashed in realisation - while Dong-mu casually meant ‘friend’ in North Korea, it also had been used to mean ‘comrade’ and it was thus purged from the South Korean vocabulary in favour of 'chin-gu' (친구). The South Koreans raised their rifles while the Dresnoks open fired back, resulting in both the Dresnok sons and one of the South Koreans dying. Dresnok crumpled to the floor in agony after getting shot in the shoulder, after which he was gangpiled by incoming South Korean backup.
Dresnok would fall into depression in detainment while being forbidden alcohol and cigarettes owing to his unhealthy lifestyle - he didn’t seem to care much about the death of his sons, his wife even less so who had died in 1997. His wife was a Romanian citizen kidnapped in Italy who had been forced to marry Dresnok - while unconfirmed, Dresnok’s documented brutality would almost certainly have meant it was an abusive relationship. Charles Jenkins and Dresnok went far back, including starring together in a North Korean television drama. Dresnok was known for being a true believer in the North Korean project, regularly betraying and punishing fellow American defectors and prisoners for not obeying the edicts of their captors. Dresnok took particular delight in bullying Jenkins, whom he saw as weak and submissive.
Jenkins had also been forced to marry another kidnapping victim, Japanese citizen Hitomi Soga, taken at age 19, and had two daughters with her. However, unlike Dresnok, Jenkins knew he had made a mistake in his defection, and furthermore treated his imposed wife Hitomi with genuine affection. Despite the forced conditions, the two would genuinely fall in love with each other and pull each other through the brutal hard times of the 1990s. After the Megumi case, surveillance of abducted citizens and hostages would increase, with Hitomi and her daughters ordered in early January to a prison camp in the far north to ensure North Korea would still have leverage. Jenkins was ordered under Dresnok’s command to sabotage and kill South Korean and American troops behind the front lines. At their farewell, Hitomi whispered into Jenkins’ ears, “We all decided that we want you to escape”. Wrestling with his desires and fears of how his family would be punished, he finally decided to honour his wife’s wish to escape. Jenkins managed to convince Dresnok to let him do his work independently, leading to Jenkins surrendering to the South Koreans and ultimately being transferred to the Americans.
Dresnok was defiant to his new captors, refusing to cooperate at any stretch along the way. Nursed back to presentable health in March, he was given a court-martial for his desertion, as well as his killings of American-aligned troops for a country at war with America. Dresnok was hated at home and by the court itself for his rudeness and arrogance on top of his alignment with one of the great evils of human history. In an act of extreme pettiness, he refused to speak English while in captivity, only using Korean. To that end, the court decided to go all out, and sentenced Dresnok to death for treason. This would be the first American soldier executed by court martial since World War Two. Dresnok’s age resulted in many wanting to push the verdict back to life imprisonment, leading to heated death penalty debates that the Bush Administration would enter in favour of the execution. Dresnok was executed by firing squad on May 5th 2003. One of the shooters, a young draftee by the name of Noah Antwiler would recall, “You wouldn’t think you had it in you to shoot an old man - but to see forty years of betrayal in front of you, you realise you can do anything.” Dresnok’s final words while tied to the wooden post were, “Long live the Workers’ Party of Korea! Long live the great Marshall Kim Il-Sung!” Dresnok’s remains were cremated and scattered into the Sea of Japan.
In November 2003, Jenkins was revealed as alive, in a plot twist that shocked most of the world. However, he still needed to take his court-martial in Camp Zama, Japan. He approached the lieutenant and said, “Sir, I’m Sergeant Jenkins, reporting in, sir”, the longest resolved desertion in US history. Given his help and cooperation with US and South Korean officials, he was ultimately given no more than twenty days confinement and let off due to good conduct after two weeks. His autobiography became a best-seller, which he began writing while undercover. But that wasn’t what was most important to him. The most important thing to him was that he was told his wife and daughters had survived the war. Taken on a jet to Sado Niigata, his reunion with his wife and daughters at his wife’s childhood home proved a similar media sensation to the Megumi Yokota case. He would eventually decide to live in Japan in Sado’s childhood house, becoming a local celebrity after opening a local bar, who would be asked for pictures sometimes at a rate of 300 people an hour. But one fact that isn’t known is that before he met his wife in person, he actually talked with her over the phone just before he went into detainment for his court martial sentence. His wife now safe and well as much as he was, he told her that since they were now both safe, and that their marriage had been forced, he entirely understood why she might consider the marriage null and void and that it would be dissolved without complaint on his end. She returned just two words that answered the question, however indirectly:
‘Ai-shiteiru’/‘I love you’. [2]
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kata'ib_Hezbollah. The group was known OTL as the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah but that would be too on the nose here.
[2] - The story of Jenkins is mostly true with some dramatic flourishes - him and his wife both escaped to Japan and decided to continue living as husband and wife.
Bush vs. The Axis of Evil - TL
RideauArcott
Banned
Hugo Chavez is talking mad shit for someone whose entire government is only being propped up by the fact the USA's wars made oil prices skyrocket and the sludge Venezuela produces profitable.
Also, having a hard time imagening much of a resistance against giving a traitor who sided with a government that makes Stalins Russia look tolerant the bullet. It sounds like the sort of thing that would be popular in extreme progressive areas like inside college campuses but not with anyone on the street. Even the anti-war camp doesn't seem like they would give him the time of day since he was killing conscripts and civilians.
Also, having a hard time imagening much of a resistance against giving a traitor who sided with a government that makes Stalins Russia look tolerant the bullet. It sounds like the sort of thing that would be popular in extreme progressive areas like inside college campuses but not with anyone on the street. Even the anti-war camp doesn't seem like they would give him the time of day since he was killing conscripts and civilians.
The people opposed to this would more likely be the people generally opposed to the death penalty. Wasn't there once this case in the USA about I think it was a school shooting? Where the defense lawyer basically went: "My clients are horrible people, they should be locked away forever, but I believe not even they should be killed."
Opposition to the death penalty in general sounds like a far more defensible position to take.
Quick correction: It is Book of Revelation, not Revelations, even Christians constantly make that simple mistake.
Dresnok...man. Probably the most famous American defector to North Korea. With Iraq ready to bleed even more, how (un)stable is Saudi Arabia? Their own Shia populace must be itching to rebel. I feel it is a way hypocritical that Americans can level city blocks, but dare to criticize South Korea for copying this. I wish someone in the U.N. had the stones to call this type of warfare out in general. It is a serious war crime.
The Neo-cons whole invasion of Iraq and Iran are war crimes. The whole administration is lead by a man whose leading two wars of aggression against two populations that had nothing to do with 9/11 (in Iraqs case the ruling power doesn’t even know why they are being attacked except oil). It’s all war crimes lead by a man who loves oil more than his own people. Saudi Arabia unlike Iraq has the majority in Sunni population so they are getting ready for any attempt at rebelling. U.N. can’t do anything except criticize it and lead weak sanctions.
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Also Dubai might not become the popular tourist destination it's known for today with all the violence going on.
Correct, but more importantly it's because of the last year's failed CIA coup d'etat launched against him, assuming it happened anyway ITTL. ->https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_attempt
And good riddance to Dresnok the Juche Fanboy.
Keep in mind that going into Iraq WAS a major Neo-Con goal. Pretty much the whole White House staff from Cheney on down had signed off on a mid-90s "White Paper" from a Neo-Con think tank that stated that "regime change" in Iraq was the key to Middle East peace and stability. (And keep in mind that no one from that "think tank" or the signatory people every bothered to actually talk to a Middle East expert
)It was something the Neo-Cons had been pushing for over a decade at this point as THE thing the US had to accomplish at some point.
9/11 was an excuse opportunity they simply could not pass up. TTL they also go after Iran for similar, if not worse reasons. And North Korea acting out is simply icing on the cake as it were for the Neo Con agenda.
Randy
From what I read that entire coup radicalized him to become the man he's known as today. Had the US not do that the country would've turned out so different.
Especially as quite a few future celebrities could end up conscripted (if not outright killed) during the war, now you mentioned it.
Regarding the idea that Chavez should keep his mouth shut because he depends on American money for his oil, that would be even worse in the sense that if the United States suddenly decides to "punish" him by stopping buying his oil, the reaction will not be to conclude that such perhaps he was wrong to "insult the United States." But it shows that the United States is such an immensely imperialist and evil regime that it believes in starving people simply because they can't tolerate criticism.
America "punishing" an enemy leader for being offensive is a ridicilous casus belli for both Democrats and Republicans. They're imperialists, but not utterly dumb.
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Sooner or later I wouldn't be surprised if Bush pressures other NATO countries to institute the draft, with predictably horrendous results.
Unless Bush wishes to trigger a diplomatic crisis by alienating NATO countries who don't have mandatory conscription, he won't risk it. He doesn't want to worsen his problems than they already are.
RideauArcott
Banned
Why would they bother? Once the conflict in Iran and Iraq winds down a bit and global conditions improve the oil prices will go down and Chavez one trick pony economy will go down with it just like OTL.
True, there are already ANZAC forces with the other Commonwealth forces in Korea.
