North
Korea, An Aggressor? A Reality Check
By
Felicity Arbuthnot
“ … war in our time is
always indiscriminate, a war against
innocents, a war against children.”(Howard
Zinn, 1922-2010.)
“All war represents a failure of
diplomacy.” (Tony Benn, MP.
1925-2014.)
“No
country too poor, too small, too far
away, not to be threat, a threat to the
American way of life.” (William
Blum, “Rogue State.”)
August 24,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- The
mention of one tiny country appears to strike at
the rationality and sanity of those who should
know far better. On Sunday, 6th August,
for example, The Guardian headed an editorial:
“The Guardian view on sanctions: an essential
tool.” Clearly the average of five thousands
souls a month, the majority children, dying of
“embargo related causes” in Iraq, year after
grinding year – genocide in the name of the UN –
for over a decade has long been forgotten by the
broadsheet of the left.
This time
of course, the target is North Korea upon whom
the United Nations Security Council has voted
unanimously to freeze, strangulate and deny
essentials, normality, humanity. Diplomacy as
ever, not even a consideration. The Guardian,
however, incredibly, declared the decimating
sanctions: “A rare triumph of diplomacy …”
(Guardian 6th August 2017.)
As US
Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson,
the US’ top “diplomat” and his North Korean
counterpart Ri Yong-ho headed
for the annual Ministerial meeting of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
in Manila on 5th August, a State
Department spokesperson said of Tillerson:
“The
Secretary has no plans to meet the North
Korean Foreign Minister in Manila, and I
don’t expect to see that happen”
Pathetic.
In April, approaching his hundredth day in
office, Trump said of North Korea:
“We’d
love to solve things diplomatically but it’s
very difficult.”
No it is
not. Talk, walk in the other’s psychological
shoes. Then, there they were at the same venue
but the Trump Administration clearly does not
alone live in a land of missed opportunities,
but of opportunities deliberately buried in
landfill miles deep. This in spite of his having
said in the same statement:
“There
is a chance that we could end up having a
major, major conflict with North Korea.
Absolutely.”
A bit of
perspective: 27th July 2017 marked
sixty four years since the armistice agreement
that ended the devastating three year Korean
war, however there has never been a peace
treaty, thus technically the Korean war has
never ended. Given that and American’s penchant
for wiping out countries with small populations
which pose them no threat (think most recently,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) no wonder North Korea
wishes to look as if it has some heavy
protective gear behind the front door, so to
speak.
Tiny North
Korea has a population of just 25.37 million and
landmass of 120,540 km² (square kilometres.) The
US has a population of 323.1 million and a
landmass of 9.834 MILLION km² (square
kilometres.) Further, since 1945, the US is
believed to have produced some 70,000 nuclear
weapons – though now down to a “mere” near 7,000
– but North Korea is a threat?
America has fifteen
military bases in South Korea – down from a
staggering fifty four – bristling with every
kind of weapons of mass destruction. Two bases
are right on the North Korean border and another
nearly as close.
See full details of each, with map at (1.)
North
Korea also has the collective memory of the
horror wrought by the US in the three year
conflict on a country then with a population of
just 9.6 million souls. US General Curtis Lemay
in the aftermath stated: “After destroying North
Korea’s seventy eight cities and thousands of
her villages, and killing countless numbers of
her civilians … Over a period of three years or
so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the
population.”
“It is now
believed that the population north of the
imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third
its population of 8 – 9 million people
during the 37-month long ‘hot’ war, 1950 –
1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of
mortality suffered by one nation due to the
belligerence of another.” (2)
In
context:
“During The Second World War
the United Kingdom lost 0.94% of its
population, France lost 1.35%, China lost
1.89% and the US lost 0.32%. During the
Korean war, North Korea lost close to 30 %
of its population.” (Emphasis
added.)
“We went
over there and fought the war and
eventually burned down every town in North Korea
anyway, some way or another …”, boasted
Lemay.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur
said during a Congressional hearing in 1951 that
he had never seen such devastation.
“I
shrink with horror that I cannot express in
words … at this continuous slaughter of men
in Korea,” MacArthur said. “I have seen, I
guess, as much blood and disaster as any
living man, and it just curdled my stomach,
the last time I was there.” (CNN, 28th July
2017.)
Horrified
as he was, he did not mention the incinerated
women, children, infants in the same breath.
Moreover,
as Robert M. Neer wrote in
“Napalm, an American Biography”:
‘“Practically every U.S. fighter plane that
has flown into Korean air carried at least
two napalm bombs,” Chemical Officer Townsend
wrote in January 1951. About 21,000 gallons
of napalm hit Korea every day in 1950. As
combat intensified after China’s
intervention, that number more than tripled
(…) a total of 32,357 tons of napalm fell on
Korea, about double that dropped on Japan in
1945. Not only did the allies drop more
bombs on Korea than in the Pacific theater
during World War II – 635,000 tons, versus
503,000 tons – more of what fell was napalm
…’
In the
North Korean capitol, Pyongyang, just two
buildings were reported as still standing.
In the
unending history of US warmongering, North Korea
is surely the smallest population they had ever
attacked until their assault on tiny Grenada in
October 1983, population then just 91,000
(compulsory silly name: “Operation Urgent Fury.)
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North
Korea has been taunted by the US since it lay in
ruins after the armistice sixty five years ago,
yet as ever, the US Administration paints the
vast, self appointed “leader of the free world”
as the victim.
As
Fort-Russ pointed out succinctly (7th August
2017):
“The
Korean Peninsula is in a state of crisis not
only due to constant US threats towards
North Korea, but also due to various
provocative actions, such as Washington
conducting joint military exercises with
Seoul amid tensions, and which Pyongyang
considered a threat to its national
security.”
This month
“massive land, sea and air exercises” involving
“tens of thousands of troops” from the US and
South Korea began on 21st of August
and continue until 31st.
‘In
the past, the practices are believed to have
included “decapitation strikes” – trial
operations for an attempt to kill
Kim Jong-un and his top Generals
…’, according to the Guardian (11th August
2017.)
The
obligatory stupid name chosen for this
dangerous, belligerent, money burning, sabre
rattling nonsense is Ulchi-Freedom Guardian. It
is an annual occurrence since first initiated
back in 1976.
US B-1B
bombers flying from Guam recently carried out
exercises in South Korea and “practiced attack
capabilities by releasing inert weapons at the
Pilsung Range.” In a further provocative (and
illegal) move, US bombers were again reported to
overfly North Korea, another of many such
bullying, threatening actions, reportedly eleven
just since May this year.
Yet in
spite of all, North Korea is the “aggressor.”
“The nuclear
warheads of United States of America are
stored in some twenty one locations, which
include thirteen U.S. states and five
European countries … some are on board U.S.
submarines. There are some “zombie” nuclear
warheads as well, and they are kept in
reserve, and as many as 3,000 of these are
still awaiting their dismantlement. (The US)
also extends its “nuclear umbrella” to such
other countries as South Korea, Japan, and
Australia.” (worldatlas.com)
Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
who also attended the ASEAN meeting in Manila,
did of course, do what proper diplomats do and
talked with his North Korean counterpart Ri
Yong-ho. Minister Lavrov’s opinion was summed up
by a Fort Russ News observer as:
“The
Korean Peninsula is in a state of crisis not
only due to constant US threats towards
North Korea, but also due to various
provocative actions, such as Washington
conducting joint military exercises with
Seoul amid tensions, and which Pyongyang
considered a threat to its national
security.”
The
“provocative actions” also include the
threatening over-flights by US ‘planes flying
from Guam. However when North Korea said if this
continued they would consider firing missiles in
to the ocean near Guam – not as was reported by
some hystericals as threatening to bomb Guam –
Agent Orange who occasionally pops in to the
White House between golf rounds and eating
chocolate cake whilst muddling up which country
he has dropped fifty nine Tomahawk Cruise
missiles on, responded that tiny North Korea
will again be: “… met with fire and fury and
frankly power, the likes of which the world has
never seen before.”
It was
barely noticed that North Korea qualified the
threat of a shot across the bows by stating
pretty reasonably:
(The US)
“should immediately stop its reckless military
provocation against the State of the DPRK so
that the latter would not be forced to make an
unavoidable military choice.” (3)
As
Cheryl Rofer (see 3) continued, instead
of endless threats, US diplomacy could have many
routes:
“We
could have sent a message to North Korea via
the recent Canadian visit to free one of
their citizens. We could send a message
through the Swedish embassy to North Korea,
which often represents US interests. We
could arrange some diplomatic action on
which China might take the lead. There are
many possibilities, any of which might show
North Korea that we are willing to back off
from practices that scare them if they will
consider backing off on some of their
actions. That would not include their
nuclear program explicitly at this time, but
it would leave the way open for later.”
There are
in fact, twenty four diplomatic missions in all,
in North Korea through which the US could
request to communicate – or Trump could even
behave like a grown up and pick up the
telephone.
Siegfried Hecker
is the last known American official to inspect
North Korea’s nuclear facilities. He says that
treating Kim Jong-un as though he is on the
verge of attacking the U.S. is both inaccurate
and dangerous.
“Some
like to depict Kim as being crazy – a madman
– and that makes the public believe that the
guy is undeterrable. He’s not crazy and he’s
not suicidal. And he’s not even
unpredictable. The real threat is we’re
going to stumble into a nuclear war on the
Korean Peninsula.” (5)
Trump made
his crass “fire and fury” threat on the eve of
the sixty second commemoration of the US nuclear
attack on Nagasaki, the nauseating irony
seemingly un-noticed by him.
Will some
adults pitch up on Capitol Hill before it is too
late?
Notes
1. https://militarybases.com/
south-korea/
2. http://www.globalresearch.ca/
know-the-facts-north-korea-
lost-close-to-30-of-its-
population-as-a-result-of-us-
bombings-in-the-1950s/22131
3. https://nucleardiner.
wordpress.com/2017/08/11/
north-korea-reaches-out/
4. https://www.commondreams.org/
news/2017/08/08/sane-voices-
urge-diplomacy-after-lunatic-
trump-threatens-fire-and-fury
Featured image is from Socialist Project.
