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. ![https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif]()
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 Zerois 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’sThe 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) ofHugh 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