{"id":61514,"date":"2015-08-22T08:12:02","date_gmt":"2015-08-22T12:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=61514"},"modified":"2015-08-22T05:29:22","modified_gmt":"2015-08-22T09:29:22","slug":"us-south-korea-exercises-halted-maybe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=61514","title":{"rendered":"US-South Korea Military Exercise Halted &#8211; Maybe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In response to the DMZ incident yesterday, the US and South Korea <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/US\/wireStory\/us-halts-military-exercise-south-korea-33228770\">reportedly halted their annual joint military exercise Ulchi Freedom Guardian<\/a>. \u00a0This year&#8217;s exercise\u00a0had begun on Monday, 17 August 2015 and was originally scheduled to end on Friday, 28 August 2015.<\/p>\n<p>It is not clear whether the exercise has resumed, might be resumed, or if the remainder has been cancelled outright. \u00a0 Some reports <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/world\/2015\/08\/21\/north-korea-were-quasi-state-war\/32101537\/\">indicate that the exercise has indeed been resumed<\/a>. \u00a0Others only indicate it has been halted.<\/p>\n<p>The halt\u00a0occurred after an exchange of artillery fire across the Korean DMZ.\u00a0 US defense officials publicly announced the halt, while asserting that they were \u201cmonitoring the situation\u201d.\u00a0 Later claims were that it was a &#8220;planned halt&#8221; and a halt to consult with South Korea regarding the DMZ incident.<\/p>\n<p>Hmm. \u00a0I guess sabre-rattling \u2013 even with a needle-thin, weak, and unreliable tool\u00a0like the one ND:tBF waves around publicly from time to time \u2013 can be effective if your opponent lacks both\u00a0backbone and guts.\u00a0 Gee, who&#8217;d a thunk it?<\/p>\n<p>Well done, Obama Administration. \u00a0You just caved, and gave the Dork of NorK \u2013 AKA Fatboy Kim \u2013\u00a0<em>exactly what he wanted<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Why in the hell do you think the DPRK <em>chose this week<\/em> to lob a few shells southwards? \u00a0North Korea has tried for years to get annual US-ROK exercises cancelled or halted; they&#8217;ve occasionally been successfu at doing that.\u00a0 By making this halt public &#8211; and by appearing confused and uncertain about what you were doing &#8211; you just handed North Korea a major propaganda victory on that score.\u00a0 That&#8217;s true even if the exercise was only halted temporarily.<\/p>\n<p>But don&#8217;t worry, folks; everything will be all right. \u00a0After all:\u00a0 caving and giving a sabre-rattling despot exactly what he wanted\u00a0worked perfectly well back in the 1930s, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In response to the DMZ incident yesterday, the US and South Korea reportedly halted their annual &hellip; <a title=\"US-South Korea Military Exercise Halted &#8211; Maybe\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=61514\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">US-South Korea Military Exercise Halted &#8211; Maybe<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,9,84,214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teh-stoopid","category-foreign-policy","category-military-issues","category-north-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}