As long as the US Empire can be funded and
maintained on the backs of its taxpaying public, the chance of de-escalation of
tensions not only on the Korean peninsula, but throughout the world are
practically nil. And, as long as the nation’s current interventionist
ideology holds sway, it will only be through a financial meltdown that the US’s
role as global policeman will come to a much-needed end.
The most recent example of the
world’s biggest bully escalating matters is its on-again, off-again badgering of
North Korea. In contrast to Western/CIA media reports, the November 28
launch of what appears to be an intercontinental ballistic missile, the
Hwasong-15, was not unprovoked. Instead, the North Korean test firing was
in response to the unexpected announcement of further US/South Korean military
drills to take place starting on December 4. The exercises are, in part,
to show off the latest mass murdering “product” of America’s military
industrial complex, the USF-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet.
Before the latest launch, the
Kim Jong Un regime had not fired a missile for two months and was in
discussions with other intermediaries about how tensions could be lessened on
the Korean peninsula. For the bellicose US, however, not even an uneasy “truce”
can be tolerated. The next American scheduled drill was not to take place
until the spring of 2018, yet, while negotiations were taking place, the US
abruptly, and to the outrage of everyone involved, renewed exercises.
Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, explains:
We have been working
with Pyongyang. Then,
all of a sudden two
weeks after the United States
had sent us the signal
[about readiness to dialogue],
they announced
unscheduled drills in December.
there is an impression
that they were deliberately
provoking [North Korean
leader] Kim Jong Un to
make him break the pause
and gave in to their
provocations.*
This, of course, is not the
first time that the US has acted with duplicity in foreign matters. Its
barbaric dealing with two Middle Eastern strongmen (Saddam Hussein, Muammar
Gaddafi) are grisly examples of what happens to those who run afoul of the US
Empire, especially those who do not possesses a nuclear deterrent.
North Korea, too, has witnessed
the wanton destructive capabilities of the American military during the so
called “police action” of the early 1950s:
The US Air Force
estimated that North Korea’s
destruction was
proportionally greater than that
of Japan’s in the Second
World War. . . . American
planes dropped 635,000
tons of bombs on Korea . . .
including 32,557 tons of
napalm, compared to
503,000 tons of bombs
dropped in the entire Pacific
theatre
of WWII.**
The loss of life was, to say
the least, catastrophic as 10% of the population, some 3 million people,
perished due mostly to American bombing while the destruction of property was
equally brutal. “By the end of the war,” North Korean sources assert,
“only two modern buildings remained standing in Pyongyang.”***
Is it any wonder that the North
Korean leadership gets a little antsy when the US scramble its jets. It
does not want a repetition of the holocaust inflicted on it by the merciless
American Air Force.
Of course, these inconvenient
facts are rarely if ever spoken about in the Western media, academia, and
certainly not by war-mongering politicos like U.N. Ambassador Nikki
Haley. They are simply ignorant of history or pretend not to know.
The US Empire only accepts
peace if it favors its interests. For the Korean Peninsula that means
that Kim Jong Un must disband his nuclear program. Such a move, however,
would mean a premature death to Un and the eventual carpet bombing of his
country. The North Korean strongman will do no such thing.
The Trump Administration may
huff and puff all it wants and enact greater sanctions on the North, but unless
it wants to risk a nuclear confrontation that may spread into a general world
war, it has little options.
Instead of another round of
destabilizing military maneuvers, maybe President Trump and his foreign policy
team should try to engage in genuine negotiations to bring about an equitable
solution to the matter.
Why not “give peace a chance?”
