On 9/25/17, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
We talk about our modern civilization? Let's pause a moment in our
civilized lives and ask our civilized selves what we would do if we
saw our nine year old son and the nine year old boy next door tossing
lit firecrackers at one another.
Of course you are right. We'd immediately step between them, ordering
them to drop the matches and the fire crackers. And then, depending
upon how our parents handled such matters, we'd apply some discipline
to the seat of their pants.
But what would we do if the neighbor boy's dad came roaring out
snorting and pawing the ground and shouting insults at our son, while
urging his boy to "Aim to Kill! Blow that little snot nose off the
face of the Earth!"
Is that what we would call Leadership? Perhaps we could grab up our
cell phone and call 911. But what if our neighbor was the county
sheriff?
One thing for sure, we need to come up with a better answer than to
charge in and begin tossing more fire crackers.
But this is exactly what Donald Trump is doing, charging in, shouting
threats, bragging that he can wipe a nation off the face of the Earth.
Does he believe that this bluster will cause nations to stop their
pushing and shoving? It sure doesn't seem that he responds favorably
to the threats directed toward himself.
What has become of those wise leaders who can explain to President
Donald Trump that shouting threats never brings about peace or
cooperation. Threats only cause Fear. And Fearful People are more
concerned with developing methods of defense, rather than to make
peace.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/25/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
https://socialistaction.org/2017/09/21/trump-we-will-totally-destroy-north-korea/
Trump: “We will totally destroy North Korea”
/ 4 days ago
Oct. 2017 Trump UNBy BARRY SHEPPARD
Trump made this unprecedented threat not in a tweet or off the cuff
remark but in a written speech before the United Nations General
Assembly. No other country in the U.N. has ever openly stated its
intention to destroy another country.
Coupled with his earlier threat to rain down “fire and fury” on North
Korea, this threat must be seen as one that at least includes the
possibility of a nuclear attack.
It is true Trump set conditions for this to be carried out, specifically
that North Korea would threaten the U.S. or its allies. But he left
vague what this means. He has repeatedly said that the U.S. would not
tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea with the ability to deliver a
weapon to the United States.
North Korea is already a nuclear-armed state. Its recent missile tests
demonstrate that it is well on its way to be able to hit the U.S., and
it already has the capacity to hit Guam. North Korea has repeatedly said
it will continue its nuclear and missile program unless the United
States finally puts an end to the Korean War by signing a peace treaty
with the North.
No U.S. politician, from Bernie Sanders on the left to the most extreme
rightist Republican (take your pick), is ready to do anything that even
moves in that direction. On the contrary, with bipartisan support the
U.S. just completed its annual belligerent “war games” in South Korea,
whose aim is to threaten the North. These “games” include the South’s
army, but that army is under the command of the U.S. occupying force.
South Korea’s new president, Moon Jai-in, was elected on the promise of
seeking dialog with the North, and restricting the deployment of the
U.S. Thaad anti-missile system. But Trump bullied Moon into reversing
himself on both. Now the South is deploying a special commando with the
avowed public goal of assassinating the North’s leadership.
One purpose of Trump’s threat to destroy North Korea is to force China
to stop supplying oil to the North, which would devastate its economy,
in the hopes that this would force the latter to abandon its nuclear
program. In all likelihood, this will not come to pass.
China does not want the North to collapse, which would be the case with
an oil embargo for any length of time. That would lead to a U.S.
invasion resulting in a united Korea as a militarized client state of
the U.S. on its borders. Even if Xi groveled before Trump and cut off
the oil, a desperate North, facing collapse, is likely to strike back.
It should be recalled that when President Roosevelt imposed an oil
embargo on Japan as part of the intensifying rivalry between the two
powers at the time, Japan replied by striking at the U.S. naval base at
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, triggering WWII in the Pacific.
It is obvious that the increasing tensions between North Korea and the
U.S. pose a very serious danger, and Trump has just upped the ante with
his U.N. speech.
North Korea has solid reasons for fearing a U.S. attack, given
Washington’s hostility going back to the end of WWII. After the defeat
of Japan, which had been the colonial power in Korea, the U.S. tried to
occupy the peninsula as the spoils of war. However, it was only able to
occupy the southern part of Korea, since the USSR occupied the northern.
This stalemate explains why there are two Koreas.
What became South Korea was ruled by the U.S. military directly from
1945 to 1948. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union withdrew its armed forces from
the North. In 1948 Washington’s military staged phony elections in the
South, installing the first in a long line of dictators up until 1987.
At the end of the war, the U.S. also tried to occupy parts of China,
much of which had been occupied by Japan. China was the big prize the
U.S. coveted. However, this plan had to be scrapped because of a mass
uprising in the U.S. armed forces called the “bring us home” movement,
which balked at invading what was viewed as a U.S. ally. The U.S. had
influence with the government run by the Nationalists.
Then in 1949 the Chinese Revolution completely tore the country out of
the U.S. imperialist’s hands. China now became Washington’s enemy. The
U.S., using hostilities between North and South Korea as the pretext,
invaded Korea in 1950 and quickly moved deep into the North and
threatened to continue into China. China countered by sending its army
into Korea, blocking the U.S. advance.
At that point U.S. President Truman considered using atomic weapons
against the Chinese and North Koreans. Nine nuclear bombs were
transferred to the U.S.-occupied Japanese island of Okinawa, along with
bombers to deliver them. Fortunately, Washington decided against using
them, which would have meant a major war with China and the Soviet Union.
The war continued until 1953, when a cease-fire recognized that it had
become a stalemate. The North and South were again divided along
basically the same lines as before the U.S. invaded. An armistice was
signed, but not a peace treaty. The U.S. and its puppet regime in the
South remain in a state of war with the North.
China withdrew its troops from the North, but the U.S. has maintained
its occupation force in the South up to the present. Washington
continued its hostile stance toward the North since, including its “war
games” practices for invasion of the North.
In 1958, the U.S. stationed tactical and strategic nuclear weapons in
the South, aimed at the North, which would also be used against China
and the Soviet Union in case of a general nuclear war. At its height,
there were 950 U.S. nuclear warheads in South Korea. The U.S. weapons
were removed in 1991 as part of the Strategic Arms Reduction treaty. The
U.S. threat against the North then resided in the atomic weapons in the
U.S. Naval fleet in the western Pacific, as well as other parts of
Washington’s nuclear arsenal.
Beside the enormous inequality between small North Korea and the heavily
armed U.S., there is the gross hypocrisy of Washington. The U.S. was the
first country to develop atomic weapons and tried at first to keep a
monopoly on them. That began the nuclear arms race.
The U.S. is the only country to unleash atomic weapons against
civilians, in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The purpose of
those bombings had nothing to do with Japan, which had already been
defeated, but to demonstrate that the U.S. had the inhumanity and will
to repeat such bombings of cities, first as a threat against the Soviet
Union before the latter developed its own nuclear weapons, then also
against China, which did likewise, but also against any potential enemy
of the U.S.
The U.S. has never renounced the first use of nuclear weapons, and is
opposed to any possible treaty to abolish such weapons.
Trump’s belligerent “America First” speech at the U.N. aimed at the rest
of the world included much more than the threat destroy North Korea. He
made stepped-up threats against Iran, Cuba, Syria and Venezuela among
others, but that is beyond the scope of this article.
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September 21, 2017 in Anti-War, East Asia, Trump / U.S. Government.
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