US
Protection Racket Root of Korea Conflict
By Finian Cunningham
April 03,
2013 "Information
Clearing House" -"PTV"
- The
best way to understand the seemingly reckless, recurring
threat of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula is this: the
East Asian region is being run like a Mafia protection
racket. And the criminal Mafia is the US.
The
conflict emanates from Washington and is perpetuated by
Washington. Why? To justify what would otherwise be seen as
simply outrageous US militarism in the Asia Pacific hemisphere,
and in particular a criminally aggressive agenda towards the
main geopolitical targets of Washington - China and Russia.
Korea’s conflict is not primarily about North and South “enemy
states”. It is, as it has been for the past 68 years since the
end of World War II, about Washington using military force to
criminally assert its hegemony on the global stage.
But
you wouldn’t know this from a casual reading of the Western
news media. No, we are told over and over again that the US
is “protecting” South Korea and its other Asian allies. The
military presence of the US is “serving” as a “deterrent” to
aggression from a “sinister” North Korea. In this depiction,
the US is the good guy, while North Korea is the menacing
reprobate that is a scourge on everybody’s well-being and
security. Kim Jong-un is the embodiment of the Axis of Evil.
That
so-called “quality” news media such as the BBC, New York
Times and Guardian can get away with seriously
presenting this situation in terms portraying the US as a
benevolent force is an astounding feat of reality inversion and
brainwashed mind control. The irony is that such media
implicitly mock North Korea as a Stalinist “Big Brother” state,
where critical thought and expression are forbidden. Yet, these
media display the very same habit of mental conformity that they
disparage North Korea for.
As noted above, the only way of properly interpreting the recent
weeks of threat and counter-threat of all-out war in Korea is to
recall scenes from the classic Mafia movie, The Godfather.
You know the drill. The mobster goes around the neighborhood
demanding loyalty, respect and tributes “for protection”. If the
residents don’t conform to the racket, then the boss arranges
self-fulfilling violence to rain down on those who dare to
reject his magnanimous “protection”.
The exact same arrangement applies in Korea under the tutelage
of the US. The Peninsula was unilaterally partitioned in 1945 by
Washington into North and South statelets because the US could
not abide the fact that the Korean population at that time was
strongly anti-imperialist and yearning for socialist democracy.
That egalitarian sentiment helped the Koreans resist the
occupying Japanese imperialists prior to and during World War
II.
Tellingly, in order to assert its hegemony over Korea and the
Asia Pacific, the US worked the neighborhood over assiduously in
order to defeat the popular movement for independence and
democracy that the Korean people exhibited so boldly. Washington
achieved this by installing pro-Japanese collaborators as the
rulers of newly formed South Korea. Think about that one. The US
fought a war allegedly to defeat fascism and imperialism, only
to immediately collude with the same political forces to defeat
Korean democracy.
The
dropping of the atomic bombs by Washington on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki was part and parcel of American efforts to
demarcate a postwar hegemony in the Asia Pacific to the
Soviet Union and China - and this is why Korea was also
fractured into two alien states that were then precipitated
into war between 1950-53.
That war -
in which a third of the northern Korean population were
exterminated by American indiscriminate carpet-bombing and
napalm incineration - has never officially ended. The armistice
signed in 1953 under Washington’s dictate is technically only a
ceasefire. For decades, North Korea’s demand for a full peace
treaty has been repeatedly rejected by Washington and its South
Korean client state. In other words, Washington has retained the
implicit prerogative to resume its aerial bombardment of the
North Korean population at any time it chooses. That constitutes
a constant threat, or a policy of state terrorism by Washington.
The threat from the US towards the Korean population has and
continues to include nuclear annihilation. During the Korean
War, the US air force would regularly fly nuclear-capable B-52
bombers over the Peninsula. People on the ground would recognize
the aircraft, but they did not know what the operational intent
was. Can you imagine the terrorism that this conveyed? - barely
five years after the US vaporized the civilian populations of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki and at the same time that US military
were compelling Koreans to live in caves as the only way of
escaping mass destruction from conventional bombing.
This same thuggish behaviour by the US government is consistent
with its authorization during this past week for the flying of
nuclear-capable B-2 and B-52 bombers over the Korean Peninsula.
The dropping of “inert bombs” by these aerial monsters has to be
seen as a heinous calculation in Washington aimed at heightening
the terrorism.
Yet, absurdly, the Western propaganda organs, otherwise called
news, portray this American state terrorism as “protection”.
The New York Times, for example, quoted one so-called
“expert” as explaining North Korea’s response to the latest
American provocation by saying: “The North Korean populace has
to be regularly reminded that their country is surrounded by
scheming enemies. Otherwise, they might start asking politically
dangerous questions.”
The laugh about this brain-washed expert thinking, and the
New York
Times promoting it, is that the people of Korea are indeed
surrounded by a scheming enemy - the US - and if the wider
international public and media were to start thinking about that
fact then there would be “politically dangerous questions” such
as: what gives the US the right to conduct annual military “war
games” off and on the Korean Peninsula for the past six decades,
including the deployment of nuclear annihilation?
The people of Korea, North and South, deserve and desire peace.
Despite the antagonism and belligerence highlighted in the
Western propaganda media, the majority of people of North and
South Korea have in fact no wish for war. The consensus among
ordinary Koreans is for peace and a democratic resolution to
decades of conflict imposed on their homeland from outside. But
they won’t obtain that reasonable condition as long as
Washington continues to run its “protection racket”.
And, unfortunately, the American government will not, cannot
stop its criminal behaviour - because domination, aggression and
terrorism are the hallmarks of Washington’s Mafia regime.
