The Banality of Evil on Sanctions
By Jacob G. Hornberger
March 25, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - -
The banality of evil
within the mainstream press when it comes to
actions carried out by the U.S.
national-security establishment never ceases to
amaze me. The latest example appears in the
New York Times in an
investigative piece
that absolutely stunned me. The piece consists
of a video that details an extensive
investigation into a ship that was suspected of
violating the system of economic sanctions that
the U.S. government and the UN have imposed on
North Korea.
The video was put
together by what the Times calls its
“Visual Investigative Team.” The video,
according to the Times, “examines the
maze of connections behind secret oil deliveries
to North Korea, in defiance of international
sanctions.” There are five staff members who
were assigned this task. They say that they
“spent months reviewing ship-tracking data,
corporate records and satellite imagery to
uncover one way North Korea evades strict
international sanctions.” They didn’t say how
much their investigation cost but my hunch is at
least a few million dollars.
To which I ask:
Who cares? Or to put it another way: Why
shouldn’t North Korea evade those “strict
international sanctions”? What’s wrong with
doing so? Why should their attempts to evade the
sanctions be investigated and reported on by the
U.S. mainstream press?
I can’t help but
think that those types of questions never enter
the minds of the people serving on that
investigative team. Their assumption is
undoubtedly that since the U.S. and UN imposed
the sanctions, they must be legitimate and,
therefore, that it is illegitimate for North
Korea to be violating them.
No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is
Independent Media
After all, that
investigative team could have instead spent
their time, efforts, and money studying the
horrific effects of the sanctions on the people
of North Korea. For example, an extensive study
of the deaths from starvation would have been
edifying. So would an examination of how the
sanctions have contributed, in combination with
North Korea’s socialist economic system, to the
economic impoverishment of the North Korean
people.
There is another
important point to consider about what the
Times has done with its investigation: Its
research into how North Korea evades the
sanctions could assist the U.S.
national-security state to clamp down on such
evasive efforts. Clamping down would, of course,
help to bring about more deaths and more
suffering among the North Korean people.
The mindset of
those investigators is obviously mired in the
notion that the U.S. and UN are the “good guys”
and North Korea is the “bad guy.” The “good guy”
has imposed the sanctions. The “bad guy” is
evading the sanctions. So they do an extensive
investigation into how the “bad guy” is evading
the “good guy”’s sanctions. If the investigation
helps the “good guy” to enforce his sanctions,
so be it. After all, he’s the “good guy.”
That’s been the
mindset of most of the mainstream press ever
since the U.S. government was converted to a
national-security state after World War II, with
the ostensible mission of preventing the United
States from being enveloped by what U.S.
officials said was an international communist
conspiracy that was supposedly based in Moscow,
Russia. (Yes, that Russia — the same
Russia with which U.S. officials and the
mainstream press are still so obsessed today.)
North Korea was
supposedly part of that supposed international
communist conspiracy. That’s why the U.S. and UN
intervened in the Korean civil war in the early
1950s. The idea was that if North Korea were
permitted to win the war, the Reds would soon be
taking control of the United States.
It’s also why the CIA
had such an easy time recruiting assets within the
U.S. mainstream press as part of its secret
Operation Mockingbird. Publishers, editors, and
reporters considered it a big honor to be serving
the CIA as a trusted asset in the global war on
communism.
The mainstream
mindset is the same when it comes to Cuba. The U.S.
government has maintained a strict economic embargo
on that country since 1959. In combination with
Cuba’s socialist system, the embargo has squeezed
the lifeblood out of the Cuban people.
Yet, how often have
we seen the mainstream press over the past several
decades objecting to the evil and immorality of that
embargo? Rarely. The assumption has simply been that
the “good guy” has the legitimate authority to
impose an embargo on the “bad guy.” Even when some
in the mainstream press now call for ending the
embargo, more often than not it’s because they
“haven’t worked” rather than the fact that they are
evil and immoral.
And why is Cuba
considered to be the “bad guy.” Because it is ruled
by a communist regime. In the eyes of the U.S.
national-security establishment, that automatically
makes it the “bad guy” and, therefore, subject to
sanctions and embargoes that kill and impoverish its
citizens. For that matter, it also means that the
“good guy” wields the authority to assassinate
people serving in the regime of the “bad guy.” Of
course, a dark irony in all this is how the
mainstream press praises these “bad guys” for
developing and maintaining such socialist programs
as government-provided old-age retirement benefits
(i.e., Social Security), government-provided
healthcare (i.e. Medicare and Medicaid), and
government-provided education for children (i.e.,
public schooling).
The fact is that from
a moral, legal, and constitutional perspective, the
U.S. government and the UN have no legitimate
authority to impose sanctions or embargoes on North
Korea, Cuba, or anyone else. For that matter, the
U.S. government and the UN never had the legitimate
authority to involve themselves in the Korean War
and kill millions of Koreans in the process. The
U.S. government also never had the legitimate
authority to assassinate any Cuban official,
including Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro.
Moreover, North Korea
has the legitimate authority to use nuclear weapons
to deter or defend against another U.S. military
attack on their country, especially given the
willingness of U.S. officials to use nuclear weapons
on populated cities. Under what authority do the
U.S. government and the UN deny people the right of
self-defense? Let’s not forget, after all, that the
United States is still formally at war with North
Korea given that no peace treaty was ever signed to
end the Korean War. Let’s also not forget that the
U.S. war is illegal under our form of government,
given that Congress has never declared war on North
Korea, as the Constitution requires.
These are the types
of points that unfortunately the mainstream press
rarely raises. They just assume that the U.S.
government and the UN must be in the right and that
their targeted regimes must be in the wrong. They
are unable to break out of that
pro-national-security state mindset, which is why
they waste their time, efforts, and money in
studying how people are violating sanctions rather
than pursuing the moral high ground by investigating
and reporting on the horrific consequences of
sanctions, with the aim of bringing them to an end.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president
of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and
raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in
economics from Virginia Military Institute and his
law degree from the University of Texas. He was a
trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also
was an adjunct professor at the University of
Dallas, where he taught law and economics.
https://www.fff.org
Registration is necessary to post comments.
We ask only that you do not use obscene or offensive
language. Please be respectful of others.
|
