Why do Americans seem to be so confused as to whether or not the Kim regime in N.Korea is evil?

I’m pretty sure we do want to do something but we have nations with teeth telling us not to. I don’t think americans are confused just wary of any new conflict.

I don’t think I have ever met or talked with anyone that thought he was a good guy. The difficult thing is how to deal with it.

Nobody liked Saddam Hussein either. And look where that got us. North Korea is a lot more complicated than Iraq. Especially if you live in South Korea or Japan.

No confusion here… I agree…

We’re good on this. He’s an evil sonuvabitch with a cowed military and a starving population. There are ambitious generals under him that would be acceptable to both China and the US. A direct confrontation is out of the question and not necessary.

This screams for psyops. Getting China on board is imperative. In the meantime, our best policy would be to continue to lobby for more economic sanctions which strengthens our position with our allies and further weakens the Kim regime. Ignore the bullshit coming from Trump and Kim. That is schoolboy shit that will come to nothing.

Nobody doubts how bad the regimen is.

But what is dangerous is the childish idea he is evil like a James Bond villain, who will nuke us for laughs.

This is very reminiscent of 2002, when the administration succeeded in pushing everything but Iraq out of the news. The press reported idiotic rhetoric like“they hate us for our freedom” with a straight face, and Congress went along.

And now Republicans are in charge and they’re pushing us into another disaster.

The US is still losing the Iraq war 14 years on. And people don’t learn.

Some people might confuse sanely confrontational (evil/satanic) with insanely suicidal.

I don’t understand the premise of the question. There’s no lack of consensus in this country regarding the repugnance of the Kim regime. The fact that even Trump “gets it” is proof positive that there is little to be “figured out”. And it’s a mistake to view the primary trait of Kim and his crowd to be evil. It isn’t evil that propels the regime to behave the way it does. The driving force behind Kim’s behavior is an overpowering fear and insecurity so severe that it’s difficult to appreciate. We look on it as paranoia, but that is a mistake, because the regime’s fears are fully justified. Kim sits on a population that would literally tear him to pieces were the truth of its suffering revealed. And he is universally loathed and despised outside his own borders. What’s more, he is correct in assuming that his best chance against external overthrow is to nuke up as quickly as possible. Kim and his predecessors have skillfully survived so far through holding yhe civilian population of Seoul as hostage, and blackmailing China with the prospect of his own civilians overrunning Chinese bordersvin desperation.

@Call_Me_Jay That’s right. People don’t learn or, at least, are reluctant to learn. If you want to win a war, you have to fight to win.

About the only US citizen that doesn’t view the Kim regime as evil is Dennis Rodman. And he is batty.

We are doing quite a bit it would seem. Military action (aka “War” if you’re not marketing it) is really all that’s left undone.

And here’s the thing. The Kim family has been assholes for a long time, that’s not new. The US isn’t debating military action because they’re assholes and we want to save North Koreans from them.

We’re thinking about military action because we believe they may actually have the power to affect us. That makes people uncomfortable.

The marketing has begun, but let’s be real though. It’s not an altruistic debate of good vs evil.

He is not “good”. He runs a repressive regime that causes suffering on a great scale for the majority of the people who live in it. Is he any worse than the dictators we have supported in the past when it suited the purposes of the businesses that control our government? No, and there in lies the rub. Repressive dictatorships are all fine and dandy as long as “we” can make money off them. If they refuse to cooperate with our corporate overlords then we have a problem with them.
Of course, that is also true of democracies and any other form of government. Either bow to our will or suffer the consequences. Our difficulties with Iran can be traced back to the overthrow of a democratically elected government and the installation of a Shah by the US government back in 1953.
I would even hazard a guess that the majority of our problems, including those with NK are of our own making or rather the making of our own government in pursuit of corporate profits.

Do something, as in what? Take it upon ourselves to start a war and invade those countries? Try some “for good” assassination attempts?

Is it really the place of the USA to go to war against everyone it’s sure is evil in the world? Because we have an awfully poor record on that? Especially during the Cold War, we tended to be supporting and/or ignoring quite a large number of pretty obviously evil dictators and regimes “to fight communism”(tm).

Also, violent attacks on other nations don’t just do good, even when they succeed. They kill large numbers of people who are not part of the problem and create chaos and can lead to more wars, and are far more expensive than major social issues in the USA, etc, etc.

If you’re seeing pushback and disagreement about North Korea, I think it’s not that people disagree that the situation there is mostly horrible what with the death and suffering and so on, and that we’d love it to be fixed. The disagreement is, I think and hope, or at least in my case, that I think war is a major undertaking and could lead to more and worse wars and all sorts of other problems, and would not be guaranteed at all to end up being a net positive thing. Also I think there are major political things going on that are not about whether NK has an evil situation, but are more about trying to get people to think positively about war with NK, which I think has a less clear actual agenda behind it. It’s not good guy USA versus bad guy NK. More accurate is the anonymous entities which pull the strings and represent most of the wealth and power in the West find the chaotic nations who resist their financial manipulation to be undesirable, and so are using the news monopolies to try to eradicate the last remaining unowned loose cannon states, such as NK and Iran and apparently Syria (I don’t entirely get that scenario, or what’s really going on with Russia and China), and so we hear a lot of not entirely believable misinformation about all of them.

Because y’all are a bit thick…mostly.

How can I make a definitive judgment? I never met the man. All I know about him is what American media tells me.

@Pachy You have access to news media from all over the world that will confirm Kim’s brutality. This isn’t the 1950’s.

Do we ever think about finishing the wars we’re in before ratcheting up for another one?

I don’t doubt that the Kim family is evil; just don’t believe a military solution is a good one. I also don’t think it is America’s job to take them on. And I doubly don’t trust the leader we have to be effective.

I think the position that we are the saviors of the Western world is a dangerously flawed one.

Sad that there are some Americans that are confused about the evilness of Kim Jong Un.

The UN is not confused about Kim Jong Un. The UN currently want him to stand trial for crimes against humanity. Of course that will likely never happen as North Korea’s big and powerful brother (China) is there to defend its little evil brother.

The US could remove Kim Jong Un from power any time but at a tremendous cost in South Korean lives (likely many millions). The cost/benefit is not good.

I say let North Korea develop any weapon that they want. North Korea well knows that if they ever use their weapons on any country, then the civilized world will very quickly step up and level their country to the ground.

I don’t think the Kims are evil.
I think they’re just fucking crazy.

Americans are very much aware of he evil of the N Korean leader to the point of making threats to blowing them away. I’ve never heard one single person on the news or the Whitehouse suggesting otherwise.
If anyone on here admires him I’d like to hear the reasons.