OMNI
NORTH KOREA NEWSLETTER #7,
October 29, 2017
Threatening War, Seeking Peace
Compiled
by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice.
(#1 July 19, 2012;
#2 April 13, 2012; #3, Jan. 19, 2016; #4, Feb. 10, 2016; #5, March 12, 2016;
#6, July 9, 2017).
What’s
at stake: “Throughout
[post-WWII] there was a huge invisible lacuna in the official imagination:
thinking about how to make peace. That
is what a Cold War is about; even though we are at peace we do not think about
preserving peace, but about making war.
Perhaps it is easier, because making war depends precisely on technical
skills with material objects, whereas making peace means dealing with fellow
human beings. Not so easy, Not as satisfying, if domination is the
objective.” Diana Johnstone in From Mad to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear
War Planning by Paul H. Johnstone (pp. 29-30).
Contents:
North Korea Newsletter #7, October 29, 2017
Threatening
War
Dick
Bennett: Headlines Threatening War: the White House/Pentagon/Mainstream Media
Complex
Jon
Schwartz and Suki Kim on NK in The
Intercept
Dick
Bennett: Peace Achieved 1991-2, and Again 2016-17?
Kim Il Sung/Jimmy Carter/Kim Jong Un and
Bill Clinton/Jimmy Carter/Donald Trump
Dick Bennett: Summary: BombasticTit for Tat.
Seeking Peace
Art Hobson: Make Peace with North
Korea
Jimmy Carter Offers to Meet With
Kim Jong Un
Dick Bennett: See the World as Others
See It—J. William Fulbright and the Role of Empathy in Making Peace
Stop Anti-Ballistic THAAD
Innovate! Valerie Plame: Use the System to Stop War-Mongers
Take Action with PeaceAction
NK Newsletter #6
WE
HAVE LEARNED NOTHING: SHOWS OF FORCE--TRUMP,
PENTAGON, CORPORATE MEDIA
US
bellicosity turned up in August, continued into September and October 2017, and is fully displayed untampered,
unbalanced in Arkansas’ statewide war newspaper. Were the headlines intended to inspire war
spirit or to frighten the enemy? If the
latter, they failed completely, if the former they were successful as measured
by the passive public..
NORTHWEST ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE,
HEADLINES, SEPTEMBER 2017
“U.S.,
S. Korea Jets in Show of Force” 9-1
“Japan
Debates Pre-Emptive Strike” 9-3
“U.S.
Warns N. Korea of ‘Massive’ Response” 9-4
“U.S.
Near End of Rope with Kim, U.N. Hears” 9-5
“Russian
Rebuffs N. Korea Sanctions” 9-6 (not about this but mainly compiles US and SK
threats and why NK will continue to nuclearize)
“Trump
Spurns Talk with North Korea” 9-7
“North
Korea Broke Rules, U.N. Says” 9-10
“Sanctions
‘No Big Deal,’ Worse Awaits North Korea, Trump Says” 9-13
“Korean
Tensions Remain High” 9-14
“N.
Korea Vows No Nuke Slowdown” 9-14
“South
Korea Says North Has Fired Another Missile…Over Japan” 9-15
“U.N.
Berates N. Korea Over Latest Launch.” 9-16
“N.
Korean Says Goals in Reach. Kim Touts
Missile Test” 9-17
“Trump
Mocks North Korea’s ‘Rocket Man’” 9-18
“U.S.
Jets Join S. Korea, Japan in Drills” 9-19
“N.
Korea Risks War, Trump Says at U.N.” 9-20
“Trump
Steps Up Sanctions on N. Korea” 9-22
”Trump,
Kim Trade Digs: ‘Madman,’ ’U.S. Dotard.’’”
9-23
“U.S.
Bombers, Fighters Fly Closer to N. Korea.”
9-24
“N.
Korea Claims Right to Fire on U.S. Warplanes.”
9-26
Headlines
from other media:
“At U.N., Trump warns U.S. may have to 'totally destroy'
North Korea” by Steve Holland and Jeff Mason.
Reuters, Tuesday, September 19, 2017.
Jump
ahead to October 2017.
“Get Americans Out Drill Set in S. Korea.” 10-17.
Kim Tong-Hyung.
(AP). “U.S. Reaffirms N. Korea
Effort.” 10-19.
“U.S. Carrier Visits S. Korea After Drills.” (AP). 10-22.
ziDD Tpms;f Trshsm
“N. Korea Nuke Threat Growing, Mattis Says. U.S. Will Repel Any Attack, He Tells S.
Korea.” 10-29.
On the same day p. 7A:
Matthew Pennington (AP), “Russia Voice Grows in N. Korea.”
Threatening
War
Jon Schwarz. “Undercover in
North Korea: ‘All Paths Lead to Catastrophe.”
The Intercept (September 4,
2017).
Foto: Suki Kim
THE MOST ALARMING aspect
of North Korea’s latest nuclear test, and the larger standoff with the U.S., is
how little is known about how North Korea truly functions. For 70 years it’s
been sealed off from the rest of the world to a degree hard to comprehend,
especially at a time when people in Buenos Aires need just one click to share
cat videos shot in Kuala Lumpur. Few outsiders have had intimate contact with
North Korean society, and even fewer are in a position to talk about it.
One of the extremely rare exceptions is
novelist and journalist Suki Kim. Kim,
who was born in South Korea and moved to the U.S. at age 13, spent much of 2011
teaching English to children of North Korea’s elite at the Pyongyang University of
Science and Technology.
Kim had visited North Korea several times
before and had written about her experiences for Harper’s Magazine and the New York Review of Books. Incredibly, however,
neither Kim’s North Korean minders nor the Christian missionaries who founded
and run PUST realized that she was there undercover to engage in some of
history’s riskiest investigative journalism.
Although all of PUST’s staff was kept under
constant surveillance, Kim kept notes and documents on hidden USB sticks and
her camera’s SIM card. If her notes had been discovered, she almost
certainly would have been accused of espionage and faced imprisonment in the
country’s terrifying labor camps. In fact, of the three Americans currently
detained in North Korea, two were teachers at PUST. Moreover, the Pentagon
has in fact used a Christian NGO as a front for genuine
spying on North Korea.
But Kim was never caught, and she returned
to the U.S. to write her extraordinary 2014
book, “Without You, There Is No Us.” The title comes from the lyrics of an
old North Korean song; the “you” is Kim
Jong-il, Kim Jong-un’s father.
Kim’s book is particularly important for
anyone who wants to understand what happens next with North Korea. Her
experience made her extremely pessimistic about every aspect of the country,
including the regime’s willingness to renounce its nuclear weapons program.
North Korea functions, she believes, as a true cult, with all of the country’s
pre-cult existence now passed out of human memory.
Most ominously, her students, all young
men in their late teens or early 20s, were firmly embedded in the cult.
With the Kim family autocracy now on its third generation, you’d expect the
people who actually run North Korea to have abandoned whatever ideology they
started with and degenerated into standard human corruption. But PUST’s
enrollees, their children, did not go skiing in Gstaad on school breaks; they
didn’t even appear to be able to travel anywhere within North Korea. Instead
they studied the North Korea ideology of “juche,” or worked on collective farms.
Unsurprisingly, then, Kim’s students were
shockingly ignorant of the outside world. They didn’t recognize pictures
of the Taj Mahal or Egyptian pyramids. One had heard that everyone on
earth spoke Korean because it was recognized as the world’s most superior
language. Another believed that the Korean dish naengmyeon was seen as the
best food on earth. And all of Kim’s pupils were soaked in a culture of lying,
telling her preposterous falsehoods so often that she writes, “I could not help
but think that they – my beloved students – were insane.” Nonetheless,
they were still recognizably human and charmingly innocent and for their
part, came to adore their teachers.
Overall, “Without You, There Is No
Us” is simply excruciatingly sad. All of Korea has been the plaything of
Japan, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China, and like most Korean families,
Kim has close relatives who ended up in North Korea when the country was
separated and have never been seen again. Korea is now, Kim says, irrevocably
ruptured:
It occurred to me that it was all futile,
the fantasy of Korean unity, the five thousand years of Korean identity,
because the unified nation was broken, irreparably, in 1945 when a group of
politicians drew a random line across the map, separating families who would
die without ever meeting again, with all their sorrow and anger and regret
unrequited, their bodies turning to earth, becoming part of this land … behind
the children of the elite who were now my children for a brief time, these
lovely, lying children, I saw very clearly that there was no redemption here.
The
Intercept spoke recently to Kim about her time in North Korea and
the insight it gives her on the current crisis. MORE https://theintercept.com/2017/09/04/undercover-in-north-korea-all-paths-lead-to-catastrophe/
You should read her dark revelations of NK’s
totalitarian rigidity, and her and Schwarz’s notes about how it became that
way. For example, from Schwarz: “Essentially
no Americans know what happened between 1945 and the start of the Korean War.
And few Americans know what happened during the war.” [Syngman Rhee, the
U.S.-installed ultra right-wing South Korean dictator, massacred tens of
thousands of South Koreans before North Korea invaded in 1950. Rhee’s
government executed another 100,000 South Koreans in
the war’s early months. Then the barbaric U.S. air war against North
Korea killed perhaps one-fifth of its
population.]” [Much of this history is
cited in my six newsletters on NK, #6: http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2017/07/omni-north-korea-newsletter-6-korean-war.html
For one source especially see Bruce
Cumings’ books on NK and the Korean War.
–Dick
Is Peace or Domination
the Goal? North Korea
(NK) and US: 1991-2 and 2016-17, Kim Il
Sung/Kim Jong Un and Bill Clinton/Donald Trump by Dick Bennett. September 2017.
Joseph Gerson in Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the
World, briefly but densely traces the dangerous confrontation between Kim
Il Sung and Bill Clinton and its relaxation during 1991-2 (“Clinton and Korea,”
225-232). The story of two histories contains
many lessons for the US today. 1. US
(mainly) and NK nuclear war threatening and 2. Diplomacy, occasionally but once
crucially and briefly successfully. (Pages
225-6 offer significant background leading up to the Clinton administration.)
Cold War
Ends:
NK loses Soviet
protection and Soviet and Chinese subsidies.
US threatens sanctions and nuclear strikes. NK begins and then expands its nuclear
research at Yongbyon. President Bush I
withdraws US nuclear weapons from SK, but US retains nuclear capable Tomahawk
cruise missiles, its Seventh Fleet armada, and 45,000 troops in some 100 US
installations across SK.
1991: Bush I
labels NK a “nuclear rogue” state. Pentagon chief Cheney cancels scheduled US
troop reductions in Korea. Chicago Tribune calls for preemptive US
attacks against NK’s nuclear infrastructure.
US OpPlan 5007
for conquering NK and unifying Korea, though little was understood of the
unimaginable, cataclysmic consequences of US nuclear attack.
Bill Clinton
Becomes President 1991
In Feb. CIA
Dir. Woolsey: NK “the most grave current concern.”
“Team Spirit”
military exercises targeting NK resumed.
March: “tens of thousands of US warriors, B-1 and
B-52 bombers, and warships armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles” deployed around
NK. In response Kim Il Sung announced NK
“would withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.” [Kim Il Sung remembered:
“…it was we ‘who first
produced and tested’ the bomb, we who were ‘the first to raise its
destructiveness to a new level with the hydrogen bomb…and we alone, so help us
God, who have used the weapon in anger against others, and against tens of
thousands of helpless noncombatants at that.’”
Jonathan Schell, The Gift of Time:
The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now.
26.]
Joint Chiefs
warn Clinton: no negotiations; punish NK.
US State Dept.
officials with Ambassador Robert Galluci and NK’s UN delegation leaders meet
and frame possible US assurances (pledge to cease threatening, continue
dialogue), if NK would tone down and remain in NPT.
SK leaders outraged
over not being consulted. IAEA access to
Yongbyon not ensured.
Clinton visits
SK and standing at the DMZ threatens: if ever NK used nuclear weapons “’it
would be the end of their country as they know it,’” undermining ongoing efforts
at diplomacy.
Nevertheless,
NK informed Galluci NK “would decommission its graphite nuclear reactors if the
US replaced them” with reactors limited to nuclear power. Galluci supported the NK proposal, but it was
rejected by the Washington establishment.
UN’s IAEA announces
NK won’t permit inspections. UN General
Assembly orders immediate access. SK’s
military head said a military intervention might be necessary. Les Aspin falsely accuses NK of massing
forces along the DMZ. Clinton says NK
could not develop a nuclear bomb, seeming to imply US was preparing
attack.
US Ambassador
to SK James Laney warns Washington the militarist rhetoric and saber-rattling
“could lead to an ‘accidental war.’”
Preparations for next “Team Spirit” war games begin. A NK officer at Panmunjon told his counterpart that “if war breaks out, it will be a sea of fire” for SK. SK’s president puts it on TV.
Preparations for next “Team Spirit” war games begin. A NK officer at Panmunjon told his counterpart that “if war breaks out, it will be a sea of fire” for SK. SK’s president puts it on TV.
Galluci
compares the crisis to the events triggering WWI.
CIA: NK might
be able to manufacture atom bombs with the fuel rods it possessed.
Kim Il Sung
and Clinton fiercely opposed over sanctions.
In June 1991 Pentagon
and Clinton prepare for war, with approval of majority of US public.
The Turn to
Peace
Suddenly, NK’s
chief negotiator proposes NK “would dismantle its nuclear reprocessing plant “
if US provides “light water reactors.”
Then utterly unexpectedly, Kim Il Sung invites former President Carter
to come to NK to explore solutions.
Clinton accedes. And Carter is
successful. The agreement: US end sanctions,
US provide light water reactors, IAEA inspectors to remain, NK nuclear program to
be dismantled.
Clinton/Pentagon/Congress were “furious” they had not been consulted,
but an agreement was signed, though neither side ever “fully honored their
commitments.” (Page 231 recounts the
cliff-hanging climax.)
On the one hand, the US proclaimed a
policy of “full-spectrum dominance” through threat of massive retaliation. “’Running the world’” especially “required
threatening nuclear attacks against North Korea, China, Libya, and Iraq.”
On the other, after losing Soviet
protection and subsidies and suffering mass famine and isolation, for the NK
“possession of a small deterrent nuclear arsenal was seen as a means to ensure
the regime’s survival.”
The US needed a Department of Peace instead
of the Pentagon/White House truculence.
But thanks to Galluci and Carter and other advocates of negotiation, for
a short period of seeing the world as others see it, these two centers of unequal
power and antagonistic perceptions of “enemies” were able to live together
without terrifying each other and the world.
As I wrote these words I remembered a
passage in J. William Fulbright’s book, The
Price of Empire. He was reflecting
on the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iran’s elected prime minister Mosadeq, his replacement
by the shah, and the eventual takeover of our embassy in Teheran by Iranians.
“Outraged as we inevitably were by the seizure of our hostages, we were
in no mood to reflect on the possibility that our intervention and subsequent
support of the shah had perhaps not been such a good idea, or the possibility
that our idea of a good society did not appeal to the Iranian people”
(170). Similarly in 2017, US leaders
wish to replace the NK government with one more agreeable to their views of
good and evil, even though it might cause nuclear catastrophe.
(Empire
and the Bomb can be found at the
Mullins Library, UAF, in the Main Library:
U263 .G47 2007 and as an Internet Resource.)
Dick Bennett: Bombastic Tit for Tat . Who Will Eat Grass? A Summary.
During
August and September the NADG swaggers
or maybe staggers with the US and allied threats and NK missile and nuclear
development. For example, the U.S.
Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said the “Trump administration would seek
the strongest possible sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s regime. Kim was ‘begging for war’ after testing what
he claimed was a hydrogen bomb.” More
threats will be cited below.
The report of September 6 untypically reveals NK’s perspective. In reply to US/ allied threats Putin warns that the North Koreans “will eat grass” before they give up their nuclear program, “unless they feel secure.” But US/allies offered insecurity, threats, pressure. Therefore US and allies’ “policy of whipping up war hysteria” is futile and extremely dangerous, “and could lead to a ‘global catastrophe and a huge number’ of human casualties.”
Jon Schwarz’s interview of Suki Kim in The Intercept (Sept. 4, 2017) says the same: “SK: Regime change is what they fear. That’s what the whole country is built on. JS: Even with a different kind of regime, it’s hard to argue that it would be rational for them to give up their nuclear weapons, after seeing what happened to Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi. SK: This is a very simple equation. There is no reason for them to give up nuclear weapons. Nothing will make them give them up.” [See her 2014 book, Without You, There Is No Us.]
The report of September 6 untypically reveals NK’s perspective. In reply to US/ allied threats Putin warns that the North Koreans “will eat grass” before they give up their nuclear program, “unless they feel secure.” But US/allies offered insecurity, threats, pressure. Therefore US and allies’ “policy of whipping up war hysteria” is futile and extremely dangerous, “and could lead to a ‘global catastrophe and a huge number’ of human casualties.”
Jon Schwarz’s interview of Suki Kim in The Intercept (Sept. 4, 2017) says the same: “SK: Regime change is what they fear. That’s what the whole country is built on. JS: Even with a different kind of regime, it’s hard to argue that it would be rational for them to give up their nuclear weapons, after seeing what happened to Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi. SK: This is a very simple equation. There is no reason for them to give up nuclear weapons. Nothing will make them give them up.” [See her 2014 book, Without You, There Is No Us.]
Similarly the North Koreans loathe Japanese
threats. Japan “backed the U.S. ,“ and Prime
Minister Taro Aso told reporters in Tokyo: “There’s no chance of talks progressing
without increasing pressure.” But the Koreans
have not forgotten the Japanese pressure during many years of brutal military
occupation.
So
what is the solution? To Suki Kim, no
solution is possible if the US and allies insist upon regime change or
relinquishing the nuclear weapons. Putin
is less absolute: “’There’s no other
path except for a peaceful, diplomatic resolution of the North Korean nuclear
problem.’” Putin as peacemaker is a role seldom reported
by the still Cold War US newspapers. In
contrast to Putin, the US gives tit-for-tat military force demonstrations.
NK wants pressure, force? We’ll
give it to them, just as we have earlier to Japan, Iraq, Libya, by freeing SK’s
military from restraints imposed “since the 1970s”: allow SK to “ratchet up”
its “defense” capabilities, “lift restrictions on South Korean missiles. .
.allowing Seoul to improve its pre-emptive
strike capabilities against the North.” [!!] And we are reminded that back in 2012 SK was
allowed “to increase the range of its weapons from 186 miles to 497 miles” (to
allow SK “to potentially target the North’s underground facilities and shelters”), and the US removed “a 1,100- pound warhead
limit on South Korea’s maximum-range missiles.”
Not only are the US and SK preparing missiles and bombs for offense, but
in nuclear war defense is offense, because missile defense is essential to first strike readiness. “In addition to expanding its missile arsenal
and holding military exercises, South Korea is strengthening its missile
defense, which includes the high-tech Terminal High Altitude Area Defense
battery [THAAD] deployed in the
southeastern county of Seongju.”
The
more numerous and the closer the THAAD shield gets to NK, the more urgently
they perceive their development of more and better missiles and bombs; e.g.,
the “multistage, long-range missile to…carry smaller versions of those bombs.” On the 4th NK detonated its sixth
nuclear bomb and in July launched two
intercontinental ballistic missiles, which, “when perfected, could target the
U.S. mainland. The North also threated
to launch a salvo of Hwasong-123 intermediate range missiles toward” Guam,
which NK perceives as a gigantic base for attacking it, with good reason, for
its nuclear planes are in easy range of NK.
NK feels surrounded. SK has
about 28,000 US troops. And SK and NK
have been in a “technical state of war since the Korean War ended in 1953.”
The US and NK are repeating their
tit-for-tat adolescent threatening of 1991 except that the stakes are immensely
higher and no Galluci or Carter to compensate for the absence of a Department
of Peace. Instead we have the Department
of War: President Trump, Pentagon Secretary (of War) , and both houses of
Congress! --Dick
STOP
THREATENING, MAKE PEACE
www.nwaonline.com/news/2017/oct/10/art-hobson-make-peace-with-north-korea-/
. U.S. policy helps increase tensions in world. By Art Hobson.
Posted: October 10, 2017 at 1 a.m.
Jimmy Carter Offers to Meet With Kim Jung Un to Avoid
New Korean War. Jeong Yong-Soo and
Sarah Kim, Korea JoongAng Daily. Reader Supported News. 11 October, 2017, AM. [See Dick’s Peace or Domination above.]
Excerpt: "Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has expressed a desire to visit Pyongyang as a messenger between the United States and North Korea, Park Han-shik, an emeritus professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, said Sunday."
READ MORE
For World Peace, See the World as Others See It By
Dick Bennett. Broadcast on KPSQ Sat. July 22 about 8:50 A.M
Usually discussion of empathy is personal and
local. But it is also important for national and international affairs,
and for world peace. Fayetteville’s native son, J. William Fulbright, exemplifies that
belief. Fulbright was briefly president of the Univ. of Arkansas and
later a U.S. senator and chair of the Senate’s Foreign Relations
Committee. He is perhaps best known for his international educational
exchange program, partly based upon a philosophy of empathy defined as “the
identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, etc.,
of another.” In his book The Price of Empire Fulbright
explained his commitment to empathy in the conduct of national relations.
His final chapter is titled “Seeing the World as Others See It,” and his
“Afterword” describes “Changing Our Manner of Thinking.” “Why is
it,” he asks, “that so much of the energy and intelligence of nations is used
to make life painful and difficult for other peoples and nations, rather than
to make life better for all?” His answer is: insufficient ability
to perceive and feel the experience, the outlook, the feelings of others,
including official national enemies. He notably opposed the Vietnam War
and other US invasions, such as the Dominican Republic and Guatemala, and his
opposition arose partly from his belief in the power for peace and justice in
empathy.
Thus it seems natural to ask how Fulbright might respond now to the
confrontation between the United States and North Korea. An aspect of
empathy is that knowledge of the other is essential. We must know the
history, the feelings and thoughts of North Koreans. But our leaders make no effort
to see the world as Kim Jong Un sees it, or as his father and grandfather saw
it, despite the ample evidence of their worlds. Many books
and articles give us the history of the ancient culture of Korea, by which we
can know where the Kims are coming from, why for example they detest the
Japanese who brutally occupied their country, and with whom the U.S. has formed
a military alliance opposed to North Korea. At least five books—by I. F.
Stone, Bruce Cumings, Hugh Deane, Martin Hart-Landsberg, and Charles
Hanley--and many articles explain why the Korean War and its horrendous
decimation by the United States of N. Korea’s cities and towns have such a
powerful hold over Kim Jong Un’s mind.
Armed with knowledge and understanding of the feelings and thoughts of the
North Koreans, our leaders could break the present dangerous pattern of
threatened nuclear devastation.
Solidarity
Peace Delegation to South Korea
No to THAAD in Korea, Yes to
Peace through Dialogue
Solidarity Peace Delegation of
the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific
and the Channing and Popai Liem Education Foundation, July 2017
Under cover of darkness a Terminal High Altitude Area
Defense (THAAD) missile defense system was installed in Seongju City, ROK
in April 26 this year, in spite of daily and growing
opposition from local villagers and their nation-wide supporters and without
official deliberation by South Korea’s governing bodies. Protesters correctly
fear that its deployment will strain their country’s already delicate
relationship with China, embolden militaristic and anti-democratic political
forces in their own country, and exacerbate tensions between North and South
Korea. They also worry about potential negative health and environmental
effects associated with the operation of the THAAD radar system, and defilement
of sacred lands like the nearby pilgrimage site of the Won Buddhist community.
U.S. and some ROK officials claim the THAAD system will
protect South Korea from the threat of North Korean missiles. However, because
it is stationed 135 miles south of Seoul, virtually all observers agree that
the 25 million Koreans living in the capital city area fall outside THAAD’s
protective shield. Even more damning, missile defense expert, MIT physicist Ted
Postol, adds there is no demonstrable evidence that THAAD is effective under
live fire conditions with multiple incoming missiles and decoys. On the other
hand, THAAD radar in South Korea has the capacity to monitor missile systems in
China, which many suspect is a chief U.S. objective in insisting on stationing
it in Korea. China has voiced its opposition to THAAD in Korea in no uncertain
terms, enacted economic retributions against South Korea, and threatened an
accelerated arms race.
The U.S. THAAD deployment in South Korea is part of the
U.S. “pivot” to the Asia Pacific. It expands the already significant network of
U.S. missile defense systems encircling China and Russia. This effort to boost declining U.S.
political and economic influence in the region comes at a high cost, however,
to the American people. It diverts billions of dollars away from critical
domestic needs at a time of decaying infrastructure, unprecedented economic
inequality, and limited access to basic human services. It also compromises the
principles as well as safety of peace-loving Americans by intensifying regional
military tensions, fuelling a new arms race, and threatening a renewed outbreak
of fighting on the Korean peninsula, this time involving nuclear weapons with
unimaginable consequences for human life.
The U.S. deployment of THAAD also complicates North/South
Korean relations at a time when North Korea has offered to freeze its nuclear
weapons program in exchange for an end to or significant reduction in annual
U.S.-South Korea war games. This proposal was routinely rejected by the Obama
administration. But today a growing number of respected U.S. officials and
policy analysts such as Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign
Relations, Jane Harman, former congresswoman and head of the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, and William Perry, Secretary of Defense
during the first Clinton administration, have expressed support for considering
a freeze and halting war games as a first step toward addressing North Korea’s
security concerns as well as those of the U.S, its allies, and China and Russia
in light of North Korea’s progress in producing nuclear capable ICBMs.
Most Americans know nothing about THAAD, the opposition of
South Koreans to its deployment, or recent diplomatic overtures by North Korea
to reduce tensions on the peninsula. Even fewer remember the Korean War, are
aware that the U.S. retains war time control over South Korea’s armed forces,
or understand the desire of the Korean people to achieve the peaceful
reunification of their country. Yet, these unknowns should be of vital concern
to people in the United States. Should the fragile armistice agreement that
halted the fighting but did not end the Korean War give way to renewed
fighting, we, along with Koreans in the North and South and countless others in
the region will suffer untold losses. In the words of U.S. Secretary of
Defense, James Mattis, “…if this goes to a military solution, it is going to be
tragic on an unbelievable scale…”
At this critical moment, the U.S. and South Korean
governments can continue to fuel the fires of war in Korea by further
militarizing South Korea or take steps to create international conditions for a
lasting peace in Korea. Whichever path the U.S. adopts will be done in the name
of the American people. It is, therefore, incumbent upon citizens of the U.S.
to engage and work with the people of Korea to arrive at mutually agreeable,
peaceful means to resolve hostilities in the region. Beginning this collective
work is a primary goal of our delegation.
The Solidarity Peace Delegation travels to South Korea to
express the solidarity of peace-loving Americans to those in Korea fighting the
THAAD deployment and seeking a fundamental resolution to conflict on the
peninsula and in the region. We aim to strengthen mutual understanding about
how to achieve these objectives with the goal of aligning U.S. policy with the
desire of the Korean people to achieve a lasting peace on the peninsula
and, ultimately, the peaceful and independent reunification of Korea.
Recognizing the immense social and economic costs of
increased militarization of Korea for both the American and Korean people, the
Solidarity Peace Delegation calls upon the governments of the United States and
the Republic of Korea to:
1.Remove THAAD from South Korea.
2.Halt the arms race on the Korea
peninsula by ending the U.S.-South Korea war games in favor of an agreement by
North Korea to freeze its production of nuclear weapons and missile testing.
3.Engage in diplomacy with North
Korea to end the Korean War with a peace treaty, normalize relations with North
Korea and support all efforts by the Korea people to achieve the peaceful
reunification of their country.
Finally, we state our intention to build solidarity in the
U.S. for the struggle against the stationing of THAAD in South Korea and the
expansion of U.S. militarism in Asia. We also call on peace-loving people in
the United States and globally to join us in this effort. . . . [This important warning should have included
the first-strike danger of all
anti-ballistic missile systems, which might tempt a nation to attack first. –Dick]
IMAGINE, THINK WAY OUTSIDE THE BOX. Try every kind of idea
to stop nuclear war. Valerie Plame would
buy a chunk of Twitter to restrain Trump’s war-mongering.
|
Va
Let's #BuyTwitter and stop nuclear war
Dear Dick,
The crisis with North Korea has me on edge. I’ve no doubt
this is the closest we’ve come to nuclear war in my lifetime. What happens
next hinges on the judgment and temperament of two volatile, authoritarian
men, and we can’t just sit back and hope for the best.
It’s unfair to say this is all Donald Trump’s fault — Kim
Jong-un is a despotic and dangerous leader, and his nuclear capabilities are
catching up with his violent rhetoric — but Trump’s reckless bravado makes a
bad situation worse. When Trump started tweeting threats about “locked and
loaded” military options and the devastating power of the U.S. nuclear
arsenal, I knew I had to do something.
I quickly discovered Twitter has a whole set of rules against
violent threats and intimidation — rules that company executives have clearly
failed to enforce against Donald Trump. Shareholder
pressure can change that.
That’s why I launched this effort to acquire a big stake in
Twitter and shut down Trump’s account before his tweets trigger a
catastrophe. Over the last 48 hours it’s taken off in a huge and surprising
way: New donors are
chipping in every minute from all over the world, and we’re raising more than
$1,000 every hour! Can you help us keep up the momentum?
www.gofundme.com/buytwitter . . . .
Global
Zero is the international movement for the elimination of all
nuclear weapons.
Sent by GLOBAL ZERO | 1342 Florida Avenue NW | Washington, DC 20009 USA email us. |
|||||||||
Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121. Follow instructions to reach your Senators and Representatives.
Tell them:
1. The U.S. should stop the reckless brinkmanship and start talks now. Suspend future US/SK military rehearsals for war in exchange for NK’s halting of nuclear and missile testing. Why is that so difficult for Trump, and Cotton and Boozman?
2. The U.S. must drop its unrealistic precondition that NK agree to completely denuclearize before talks can begin. NK is not demanding equivalence--the removal of all US troops and ships and planes from eastern Asia. Start the peace process now towards signing a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War.
CONTENTS: North Korea Newsletter
#6
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2017/07/omni-north-korea-newsletter-6-korean-war.html
HISTORY I: The Korean War
Publisher’s
Review of I. F. Stone’s The
Hidden History of the
Korean War: 1950-1951 (1952)
Bruce Cumings’ Preface to the 1988 Reprint of The Hidden
History.
Hart-Landsberg’s Rev. (2000)
of Hugh
Deane’s The Korean War,
1945-1953 (1999).
Publisher’s Review of Korea:
Division, Reunification, and
U.S. Foreign Policy (
Hauben’s Review (2007) of Stone’s Hidden History.
Garner’s Review (2010) of Cumings’ The Korean War: A History
(2010).
Dick’s Rev. (2017) of Cumings begins with Chapter
Six, Air War.
Related
Books
END NORTH KOREA
NEWSLETTER #7
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