Quote:
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1081
Why Bush Can't Solve Nuclear Crisis in North Korea
To cover his lies and mistakes in Iraq, Bush is now hawking “freedom and democracy,” which will fail in North Korea like it is failing in Iraq.
By Gerald Rellick
George Bush’s approach to dealing with the nuclear crisis in North Korea was put on display during the president's recent trip to Russia to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II, a war that cost the Russians a mind-staggering 27 million dead, more than any other country in the war, friend or foe.
No, Bush didn’t mention North Korea, but what he did say allows us to understand his ideology-driven and inept approach to dealing with North Korea. Before flying on to Moscow, Bush stopped in the Baltic country of Latvia, where he proceeded to chastise the Russians for annexing Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia at the end of the WWII, calling Russia’s domination of Eastern Europe “one of the greatest wrongs of history.” He then criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for his “retreat from democracy.” And for closers, Bush took on Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, suggesting that the 1945 Yalta Conference agreements were a form of appeasement that gave the green light to Stalin’s annexations in the Baltics. Bush went so far as to compare the Yalta accords to the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939.
Jacob Heilbrunn, writing in the Los Angeles Times, said that Bush’s words were “a cause for shame” here in the United States:
“The slander against Roosevelt…[and] the claim that Roosevelt betrayed Eastern Europe at Yalta, and set the stage for 40 years of Soviet domination, is an old right-wing canard. By repeating it, and by publicly charging that the Yalta agreement was in the ‘unjust tradition’ of Hitler's deal with Stalin, Bush was simply engaging in cheap historical revisionism. His glib comments belong to the Ann Coulter school of history.”
When we look at the historical record surrounding Latvia, Bush words are even more embarrassing. Latvia is hardly a show piece of respectability as far as WWII is concerned. The Latvians collaborated openly with the Nazis, probably more than any other Eastern European country. According to Mark Ames in an article in the Nation:
“Ninety-six percent of Latvia's Jews were killed in the Holocaust, one of Europe's highest rates and only made possible by enthusiastic local collaboration. Latvia also had one of the highest per capita recruitment rates into special [German] SS legions, whose veterans are revered as freedom fighters.’ Today Latvia is the only country in Europe to host annual SS veteran processions commemorating the day the divisions were formed.”
And a LA Times editorial strongly criticized Bush for “needlessly antagonizing Russia,” noting that “the West needs Russia as a friend, not an enemy,” particularly to gain “Russian assistance in destroying dangerous nuclear stocks and in fighting [nuclear] proliferation.”
So why would Bush do this -- walk into the Russian capital and admonish the Russians over a very old and sore issue when the event was intended to be a somber and respectful commemoration of the defeat of Nazi Germany? What was Bush hoping to gain? And what does this have to do with North Korea and the nuclear crisis there?
Democracy Marches Forward
When it became clear to everyone, including the most diehard Bush supporters, that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no connection between Iraq and 9/11, Bush was stuck with his one obviously phony rationale -- that it was really all about democracy -- democracy in Iraq following the forcible removal of Saddam Hussein. And while we’re at it, let’s have democracy for everyone in the Middle East. And why stop there? Why not democracy for everyone on the planet?
Just like the traveling medicine man in the old West selling his snake oil to cure all ailments -- rheumatism, constipation, dandruff – so George Bush is selling his brand of snake oil, freedom and democracy. It cures all of a country’s needs -- poverty, hunger, disease: you name it and George Bush’s democracy cures it.
So, don’t worry about practical matters like terrorism and nuclear proliferation, for just as a Scripture analogy might tell us, all these good things will come to pass once we have democracy in our hearts and in our lives. Yes, it’s true that North Korea has much plutonium for nuclear bombs and for proliferation to terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, but before we can sit down with the North Koreans in bilateral talks, they must first address their “human rights violations.” And we might even want to throw in some veiled hints at “regime change,” just to keep them on their toes.
The Bush administration conveniently ignores that it was bilateral talks between the Clinton administration and North Korea in 1994 that defused the first Korean nuclear crisis (For a discussion of background on the North Korean crisis, see my previous article in this series.)
This “freedom and democracy” issue lies at the heart of the American proposal to denuclearize North Korea. The other countries involved in the six-party negotiations on the North Korean issue -- South Korea, Japan, China and Russia -- have distanced themselves from the U.S. policy. Following the latest shutdown of North Korea’s nuclear rector at Pyongyang, the Bush administration asked China to intervene and to threaten North Korea with economic sanctions since it is the largest provider to the impoverished country. China bluntly refused, saying, “"We stand for resolving the issue through dialogue. We are not in favor of exerting pressure or imposing sanctions. We believe such measures are not necessarily effective."
And South Korea, the country that has the greatest to lose or gain in a confrontation with the North, has broken a long standing precedent of not openly disagreeing with an American president. In a harsh rebuke of George Bush, the former South Korean president Kim Dae Jung, speaking at a reception for former President Bill Clinton, said, "If Mr. Clinton had had one more year in office, the nuclear and missile issues would have been resolved."
South Korea’s new president, Roh Moo Hyun, has been understandably more cautious in his remarks, but no less revealing. In a speech in Los Angeles in November 2004, Roh stated that there was “some justification” for North Korean claims to a right to develop nuclear weapons and missiles in order to “protect itself.” Roh was not more specific but his remarks were seen by many as referring to the Bush administration’s threats of preemptive war and regime change in North Korea. Bush was said to be personally miffed by Roh’s comments.
In a visit to Berlin in April 2005, as the latest crisis worsened, Roh made clear South Korea’s intentions to walk an independent path if necessary and seek a peaceful resolution of the crisis. Said Roh:
"We have intentions to continue to provide assistance to North Korea without destabilizing North Korea in the process of the [their] pursuit of reform and openness. We think North Korea is striving to seek reform and openness in the way China and Vietnam are pursuing them."
Behind all the Bush administration bluster and bombast lies a rationale: George Bush is trapped in his own lies and is struggling to legitimize the war in Iraq and to save his presidency from the failure and disgrace that history will almost certainly judge it to be. By pushing freedom and democracy at every turn, then maybe -- just maybe -- Bush will convince the world that the invasion of Iraq and the ongoing bloody occupation was really all about spreading democracy.
After four years of accomplishing nothing and doing great harm, Bush is desperate, and democracy is his “Hail Mary” pass. But the bomb he is throwing may, in this case, be nuclear tipped.
Main Entry: er·u·di·tion
Pronunciation: "er-&-'di-sh&n, "er-y&-
Function: noun
: extensive knowledge acquired chiefly from books : profound, recondite, or bookish learning
synonym see KNOWLEDGE
...i really dont know who is the real enemy ...
Its time to fight Fanatical Irrational Religious Extremism with Factual Intelligible Rational Explanation.
