Copyright: Eric S. Margolis, 2001
Feb. 20, 2002
LOS ANGELES - The Bush Administration's response to 9/11 has been to threaten attacks against enemies of Israel.
Last week, on my weekly TVO show, `Diplomatic Immunity,' super-hawk Richard Perle, one of the Bush Administration's most influential and certainly smartest member, confirmed the US plans to attack Iraq `this year' and may also assail Syria.
Meanwhile, an ardently pro-Israel speechwriter who penned Bush's incendiary `axis of evil' speech had reportedly listed three nations: Iraq, Iran, and Syria. But Bush dropped Syria and added North Korea so his speech would not seem uniquely focused on `evil' Muslim nations.
Bush must have regretted this decision last week. His `axis of evil' speech played superbly to yahoos and know-nothings back home, but it ignited a storm of outrage and protest during the president's trip to Asia.
Japan made polite peeps of support for Bush, but behind the scenes quailed in fear that his aggressive policies might trigger war with North Korea. South Koreans were horrified or insulted by Bush's belligerent rhetoric. Bush's axis of evil ran head-on into President Kim Dae Jung's `sunshine policy' of détente with North Korea. China, Bush's next stop, growled with displeasure, accusing the US of `warmongering.' Not exactly a diplomatic triumph.
Ironically, instead of a last-minute afterthought, scary North Korea should have been number one on Bush's Lord High Executioner's list. While Iraq and Iran may one day possess the means to threaten Israel with weapons of mass destruction(WMD's), they have little or no current or medium-term capability today. They certainly have no strategic reason to attack the US, as Pentagon hawks unreasonably claim. Iraq and Iran know they would be vaporized if they staged an attack on North America.
North Korea, however, is a somewhat different story. The North is believed by CIA to possess at least two nuclear warheads and a very large and expanding arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. Its growing missile force can deliver these weapons to the 40,000 US troops based in South Korea, to US bases in Okinawa, Japan, and Guam, and to nearly all of the Japanese home islands. In a few years, North Korea's ICBM missiles, now under development, may be able to hit the continental USA.
North Korea's regime is weird in the extreme, dangerously unpredictable and highly belligerent. The North has repeatedly threatened to send its million-man army to `liberate' South Korea and attack US `occupation' troops stationed there.
If any nation fits Bush's simplistic definition of a `rogue' state and acme of evil, it's Stalinist North Korea, as this column has written for years. The regime of Kim Jong-il has forced North Koreans to suffer mass starvation while continuing to build up its huge armed forces. The nation's military and 2 million Communist Party cadres are well fed and pampered. North Korea has become a key exporter of low-technology, son of Scud missiles, to Israel's Arab foes, Iran, and Pakistan.
Because of the rumpus Bush's warlike remarks caused in South Korea and Japan, the president was forced to embarrassingly proclaim the US has no intention of invading North Korea. But the Bush Administration insists its plans to invade Iraq - and perhaps, later, Iran - are unchanged. In short, the Administration contemplates war against Iraq and Iran - neither of whom threatens US troops or North America - but rejects war against North Korea which really does threaten US soldiers with conventional, chemical, biological, and even nuclear attack. The Pentagon estimates a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula would cause 200,000 US casualties.
South Koreans understand that the best way to deal with North Korea is to remain on high military alert while practicing patience, quiet diplomacy, and bribery designed to buy Dear Leader Kim's good behavior and keep his cellar stocked with the finest Bordeaux wines. This sensible policy could also work quite well with Iraq, which used to be a close US ally only a decade ago. And even more so with Iran, which sought to improve relations with the US until Bush went on the warpath after 9/11.
South Korea's government is currently much more concerned by the threat of `unexpected reunification' than an invasion from the North. Seoul fears economic and political collapse of North Korea - such as occurred in Eastern Europe and the USSR - would send millions of starving refugees across the border and force economically strapped South Korea to sustain its wrecked northern neighbor. Japan harbors similar fears and does not wish to see the Koreas reunified. So `evil' though he may be, North Korea's neighbors are united in the desire to see Kim Jong-il remain in power and keep his nation stable. Bush's crusaders were cordially invited to decamp and go elsewhere.
Elsewhere brings us back to the Mideast, impending military sideshows in Southeast Asia, Africa, and America's newest colony, Afghanistan. But however globally ambitious, the so-called `war on terrorism' keeps coming back to the Arabs and Israel.
As the elusive Osama bin Laden ominously proclaimed, `there will be no peace in America until there is peace in Palestine.'
Solving the Palestine tragedy, not launching new wars, is America's priority.
<--full details.
