http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47767.htm
An Isolated Tyrannical Regime – Not Pyongyang, It’s Washington
By Finian Cunningham
September 08, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - If
Pentagon chief James Mattis was seeking to reassure the world of
American restraint in the North Korea crisis, he clumsily did the
opposite. The US Defense Secretary was speaking after intense
discussions with President Trump and other senior military officials in
the White House Situation Room following the sixth nuclear test carried out by North Korea on Sunday.
Mattis emerged from the meeting to say that
any threat from North Korea to the United States and its allies would
be met with an «overwhelming military response». He then added – with a
weirdly presumed ethical tone – that the US «was not looking to the
total annihilation of North Korea».
That
was supposed to mean that the US military would exercise restraint – by
not obliterating a country with a population of 25 million. Well, we
should be so grateful. That’s so goddamn generous of the Americans!
How
reassuring that the United States with a nuclear arsenal of 5,000
warheads should express an apparent reluctance to annihilate. So, US
rulers are bragging about hitting North Korea with overwhelming military
power, but at the same time Washington expects to be given moral credit
for stating that it is not looking to annihilate a whole country.
The implicit logic here articulated by Mattis shows how depraved American leadership is.
In
any case, the words of «reassurance» from the Pentagon chief do little
to assuage fears that the US will indeed recklessly incite a war with
North Korea involving weapons of mass destruction.
Trump,
Mattis and other senior White House officials have repeatedly
threatened over the past two months to carry out a pre-emptive military
strike on North Korea, including the deployment of nuclear weapons.
Recall
last month the casual way that Trump – while having lunch at his
private golf resort – warned he would unleash «fire and fury on North
Korea like the world has never seen before». And those words were
uttered on the 72nd anniversary of the American atomic holocaust of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On Sunday, following news reports that North Korea had conducted a sixth underground nuclear test, Trump reportedly «reaffirmed
the commitment of the United States to defending our homeland,
territories, and allies using the full range of diplomatic, conventional
and nuclear capabilities at our disposal». In other words, again, the
nuclear option is very much on the American table, as if it’s as mundane
a thing as a bottle of ketchup.
Trump also remarked: «North Korea’s words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States».
What
is acutely worrying is that the US leaders have now set a highly
dangerous subjective threshold of «perceived threat» from North Korea as
a criterion for unleashing military force. And as we have heard
repeatedly, that US force will undoubtedly include the use of nuclear
weapons.
Trump and his generals seem to have lost all reasonable cognitive connection with the world.
We
see ample evidence of this disconnect with regard to the rapid
breakdown in bilateral relations with Russia. The American authorities
keep pushing the envelope of provocation toward Russia with sanctions
and the unprecedented seizure of diplomatic properties – all on the
spurious grounds of alleged Russian election meddling or alleged Russian
threats to NATO allies.
That
is just one sign of how divorced from reality the US leadership has
become. They seem to have become a victim of their own sensationalist,
unhinged propaganda.
With
regard to North Korea, similar to Russia, the Americans are infused
with a mentality of demonization. They seem to read everyone else and
every situation in debased terms of racial prejudice, existential
threat, and paranoia. Thus, Vladimir Putin is the alleged «new Hitler»
with designs of conquering Europe; North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is
viewed as a «nutcase» who wants to «nuke us».
The Trump administration has also the added volatility of incoherent policy. Last week when North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile over
Japanese territory, Trump blurted menacingly that «talking was not the
answer». That could have been taken as meaning imminent military action.
Then Trump’s Defense Secretary James Mattis moved to calm the rhetoric
by saying that «there was still room for diplomacy».
Trump
has declared that he will not give notice of any military action. That
puts the situation on a hair-trigger. What is North Korea to think when
the US and its South Korean ally are carrying out massive war drills off
the Korean Peninsula premised on a decapitation strike against Kim
Jong-un?
It’s not just North Korea that is second-guessing Washington. Trump’s latest rebuke to
South Korea for «appeasing» North Korea has unnerved the government of
President Moon Jae-in, fearing that the US might be willing to sacrifice
its supposed ally by starting a pre-emptive war. Moon has previously
said that he received assurance from the Trump administration that it
will not take military action without consulting Seoul. The Trump
administration has not publicly confirmed that. South Korea is fearful
that the Americans would sacrifice large numbers of its people in a
reckless act of trying to destroy North Korea.
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Washington’s
psychopathic mentality is encapsulated in the Pentagon chief saying
that his country «was not looking to annihilate North Korea». To even
utter such barbarity as being a possibility shows how degenerate
official American thinking is. Such psychopathic thinking, however, is
fully consistent with how American military force has laid waste to
countless countries and their civilian populations down through the
decades, from Hiroshima to Raqqa in present day Syria. After all, Marine
General James Mattis earned his nickname «Mad Dog» from overseeing the
destruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, with the use of white
phosphorus incendiary bombs.
The
height of American criminal insanity is its insistence that the Korean
crisis must be dealt with by either economic warfare through
strangulating sanctions on North Korea and freezing and starving its
people – or by overwhelming military force.
Grotesquely,
the Americans talk about the world standing together against North
Korea. More to the point, the world must stand together and insist that
Washington takes the only morally viable option of conducting diplomacy
for a peaceful resolution.
As
Russia and China have both urged, the US has to talk with North Korea
without preconditions. Given the decades of American militarism on the
Korean Peninsula and threats of nuclear annihilation, North Korea has
legitimate concerns about its security. North Korea needs and deserves
security guarantees and economic cooperation, not deepening isolation.
Its weapons program is its only leverage. To portray North Korea as
being an irrational threat to world peace is to succumb to American
demonizing propaganda.
The world must explore the diplomatic, legal, civilized option. It must totally reject the American diktat for conflict.
There
is a viable peaceful way to resolve the Korean crisis. But it requires
all sides to abide by diplomacy and international law. America’s
self-proclaimed prerogative of waging war and destruction on other
nations is central to the problem, and must be repudiated by the
international community.
But
the profoundly disturbing thing is that there appears to be no-one in
the American leadership that can even vaguely conceive of the obligation
for committing to peace, diplomacy and civility.
The world is being railroaded by a violent tyranny – and it’s not in Pyongyang, it’s in Washington.
Finian
Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with
articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in
Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal
Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in
newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly
20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media
organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.
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