Brian4Liberty
07-09-2017, 10:23 AM
Why Imperial Washington Should Cool it On North Korea (http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/july/08/why-imperial-washington-should-cool-it-on-north-korea/)
By David Stockman
The threat of nuclear war has again sharply escalated owing to North Korea’s apparent successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), albeit one that traveled only 600 miles, not the 6,000 miles needed to reach California.
Likewise, it was only a two-stage ICBM not the three-stages needed for extended range delivery. And there was no testing at all of the missile’s capacity to drop a guided warhead through the intense heat of reentry without burning up.
Nor did this week’s test involve any evidence that the clunky A-bombs Pyongyang has tested underground have been successfully miniaturized in order to fit atop its rockets.
So while any actual threat to the US mainland is still years away, the bellicose response of Imperial Washington and the mainstream media is the more pertinent aspect of the current contretemps. It shows that the Washington War Party has completely captured the Donald—–even as it has no clue about why the Fat Boy of Pyongyang keeps rattling the nuclear sword or what it would take to get him to stop.
In this regard, we heard General Wesley Clark on the War Channel (CNN) this AM rattling on with the usual establishment propaganda. That is, the claim that America had kept the peace for 64 years on the Korean peninsula, that it must remain nuke free at all costs and that the only solution is an enhanced package of sanctions, UN resolutions, diplomatic pressures and threats of military action.
Oh, Puleese! Imperial Washington has been doing that for years, but it hasn’t worked yet and a more robust version — ornamented with tweets and bluster from the Donald —won’t work now.
That’s because Washington’s half-century long occupation of South Korea and its current 29,000 lethally armed troops stationed there have not actually kept the peace; they have merely prolonged the political division of the peninsula and provided the external threat that has kept the miserable dictatorship of the Kim family in power since the 1950s.
...
...the South Koreans themselves attempted to normalize the peninsula and pave the way for an end to the American occupation.
As indicated above, between 1998 and 2006 they diligently pursued what they called the “sunshine policy”. And it did begin to thaw the tensions between north and south for the first time in 50 years—including humanitarian aid from the South, family reunifications and the beginnings of cross-DMZ flows of trade and investment.
At length, the policy failed, but there should be no confusion as to why. The bloodthirsty neocons of the George W. Bush administration killed it in the cradle by naming North Korea to the axis of evil, when, in fact, it was an accident of history long past its sell-by date.
Rarely has there be a stupider act of foreign policy than the hideous refrain inserted into Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address by a speechwriting twit named David Frum, who apparently invented the “axis of evil” from whole cloth.
...
Much more: http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/july/08/why-imperial-washington-should-cool-it-on-north-korea/
By David Stockman
The threat of nuclear war has again sharply escalated owing to North Korea’s apparent successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), albeit one that traveled only 600 miles, not the 6,000 miles needed to reach California.
Likewise, it was only a two-stage ICBM not the three-stages needed for extended range delivery. And there was no testing at all of the missile’s capacity to drop a guided warhead through the intense heat of reentry without burning up.
Nor did this week’s test involve any evidence that the clunky A-bombs Pyongyang has tested underground have been successfully miniaturized in order to fit atop its rockets.
So while any actual threat to the US mainland is still years away, the bellicose response of Imperial Washington and the mainstream media is the more pertinent aspect of the current contretemps. It shows that the Washington War Party has completely captured the Donald—–even as it has no clue about why the Fat Boy of Pyongyang keeps rattling the nuclear sword or what it would take to get him to stop.
In this regard, we heard General Wesley Clark on the War Channel (CNN) this AM rattling on with the usual establishment propaganda. That is, the claim that America had kept the peace for 64 years on the Korean peninsula, that it must remain nuke free at all costs and that the only solution is an enhanced package of sanctions, UN resolutions, diplomatic pressures and threats of military action.
Oh, Puleese! Imperial Washington has been doing that for years, but it hasn’t worked yet and a more robust version — ornamented with tweets and bluster from the Donald —won’t work now.
That’s because Washington’s half-century long occupation of South Korea and its current 29,000 lethally armed troops stationed there have not actually kept the peace; they have merely prolonged the political division of the peninsula and provided the external threat that has kept the miserable dictatorship of the Kim family in power since the 1950s.
...
...the South Koreans themselves attempted to normalize the peninsula and pave the way for an end to the American occupation.
As indicated above, between 1998 and 2006 they diligently pursued what they called the “sunshine policy”. And it did begin to thaw the tensions between north and south for the first time in 50 years—including humanitarian aid from the South, family reunifications and the beginnings of cross-DMZ flows of trade and investment.
At length, the policy failed, but there should be no confusion as to why. The bloodthirsty neocons of the George W. Bush administration killed it in the cradle by naming North Korea to the axis of evil, when, in fact, it was an accident of history long past its sell-by date.
Rarely has there be a stupider act of foreign policy than the hideous refrain inserted into Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address by a speechwriting twit named David Frum, who apparently invented the “axis of evil” from whole cloth.
...
Much more: http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2017/july/08/why-imperial-washington-should-cool-it-on-north-korea/