Trump
Relishes Annihilation Like a Hors D’Oeuvre
By
Finian Cunningham
August
09, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- It really is saying something when US
President Trump's latest threat against North
Korea draws a rebuke from John McCain -
America's most hawkish lawmaker.
McCain said Trump's comments about striking
North Korea with "fire and fury" were not
helpful in the current spiral of tensions.
Other
members of the US Congress deplored Trump's
reckless rhetoric, even comparing the president
to the North Korean leader Kim Jung-un,
who is commonly regarded as "a nut-job"
by American politicians and media.
That
comparison is saying something about Donald
Trump's own state of mind.
Speaking before dinner this week at this private
golf club in New Jersey, Trump
warned North
Korea that the country would "face fire and
fury, the like of which the world has never seen
before". Such words coming on the 72nd
anniversary of the US dropping two atomic bombs
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — killing over 200,000
people — are grotesque.
Do
American political leaders have no shame
about the past criminal deeds of their country?
Speaking about ordering genocide as if it's
like ordering a hors d'oeuvre.
Even
in the gung-ho political culture of the United
States, Trump's casual belligerence and threat
of annihilation caused a shock among some
politicians and media. One lawmaker, New York
Representative Eliot Engel, called Trump's
rhetoric "unhinged".
The alarm
is well founded. Given numerous threats already
from the US that it is prepared to use
pre-emptive military force against North Korea,
the words from Trump implying a catastrophic
attack worse than the horror of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are indeed criminally reckless.
North Korea quickly
responded that
it was ready to carry out a pre-emptive attack
on the US airbase on the Pacific island of Guam,
which would "envelope it in fire". Pyongyang
uses this kind of melodramatic rhetoric all the
time, regularly threatening to turn the US and
its allies in South Korea and Japan into "a sea
of fire".
But now,
even more alarmingly, we have the American
Commander-in-Chief indulging in a treacherous
spiral of warmongering threats, where one
misstep, one misunderstanding, could launch a
nuclear war in the region.
Russia and
China have both called for calm and for dialogue
to resolve the long-running conflict on the
Korean Peninsula, which has seen recurring
tensions ever since the end of the Korean War
in 1953.
However, Russia and
China bear a measure of responsibility for the
latest flare-up. Both countries
supported US
calls last weekend to pile on more economic
sanctions against North Korea, when they voted
unanimously at the Security Council. Those
sanctions were imposed in response to North
Korea's defiance of previous resolutions banning
the testing of ballistic missiles and nuclear
warheads. Last month, North Korea launched two
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs),
which many analysts believe are capable
of hitting the US mainland.
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But
by piling on more sanctions against North Korea,
the move has inevitably inflamed tensions.
Pyongyang
denounced the
latest round of sanctions as an outrageous
violation of its sovereignty and its right
to develop military self-defenses. After all, it
points out, the US has thousands of nuclear
weapons capable of hitting North Korea.
Washington has also installed this year a new
missile system, the THAAD, in South Korea, which
gives it a first strike advantage.
Moreover,
the latest sanctions signed off at the UN last
weekend are, on the face of it, deeply punishing
against the North Korean economy and its
populace. The nation's top exports of coal,
minerals and seafood are to be banned, which
would axe its already paltry export revenue
by one-third, going from $3 billion to $2
billion a year.
Given the
array of American offensive military forces, the
repeated verbal threats of "all options on the
table" and now the latest ratcheting up of
sanctions, is it any wonder North Korea
perceives an existential danger? Then we have
Trump making shockingly grotesque comments
about the prospect of ordering an annihilation
right on the anniversary of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, while he is about to have dinner
with his wife.
Russia
and China made a huge mistake in backing more
US-led sanctions against North Korea last
weekend. That move has only escalated tensions
and has emboldened the Americans in their
incorrigibly aggressive mentality.
Moscow
and Beijing, more than anyone else, should know
that sanctions are a counterproductive policy.
They are a weapon of war-making and a baleful
substitute for diplomacy.
In the
case of Korea's historic conflict, the only
solution is to recognize that America is part
of the problem. Ever since the end of the Korean
War, the perennial presence of American military
forces on the peninsula is a never-ending source
of conflict.
Russia and China
are right to
insist
on immediate all-party talks for the region,
involving the two Koreas. But slapping sanctions
on one side is wrong, especially given the
ongoing war threats issued by the US. Only days
ago, the US flew nuclear-capable B-1 bombers
from Guam over the Korean Peninsula. Why should
North Korea, the region and the world for that
matter accept such American aggression
with impunity?
Russia
and China have a crucial role to play in order
to make the US come to its senses and scale back
from a catastrophic war. But given the American
hubris and self-righteousness to wage criminal
wars, and given the twittery state of mind
of its Commander-in-Chief, the task of making
the US behave like a normal law-abiding nation
is foreboding.
It's not
North Korea that needs to be sanctioned. It is
the world's biggest rogue state, the USA, that
should be sanctioned and prosecuted many times
over. Until it reserves the right
to unilaterally threaten and attack any nation,
including with the use of dropping of atomic
bombs on civilian centers, the world will always
be in grave peril. Joining US calls
for sanctions on North Korea is like feeding a
monster.
This
article was first published by
Sputnik
-
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
