TEHRAN, YJC. -- The best way to understand the seemingly reckless, recurring threat of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula is this: the East Asian region is being run like a Mafia protection racket. And the criminal Mafia is the US.
The conflict emanates from
Washington and is perpetuated by Washington. Why? To justify what would
otherwise be seen as simply outrageous US militarism in the Asia Pacific
hemisphere, and in particular a criminally aggressive agenda towards
the main geopolitical targets of Washington - China and Russia.
Korea’s conflict is not primarily about North and South "enemy
states”. It is, as it has been for the past 68 years since the end of
World War II, about Washington using military force to criminally assert
its hegemony on the global stage.
But you wouldn’t know this from a casual reading of the
Western news media. No, we are told over and over again that the US is
"protecting” South Korea and its other Asian allies. The military
presence of the US is "serving” as a "deterrent” to aggression from a
"sinister” North Korea. In this depiction, the US is the good guy, while
North Korea is the menacing reprobate that is a scourge on everybody’s
well-being and security. Kim Jong-un is the embodiment of the Axis of
Evil.
That so-called "quality” news media such as the BBC, New York Times and Guardian
can get away with seriously presenting this situation in terms
portraying the US as a benevolent force is an astounding feat of reality
inversion and brainwashed mind control. The irony is that such media
implicitly mock North Korea as a Stalinist "Big Brother” state, where
critical thought and expression are forbidden. Yet, these media display
the very same habit of mental conformity that they disparage North Korea
for.
As noted above, the only way of properly interpreting the recent
weeks of threat and counter-threat of all-out war in Korea is to recall
scenes from the classic Mafia movie, The Godfather. You know the
drill. The mobster goes around the neighborhood demanding loyalty,
respect and tributes "for protection”. If the residents don’t conform to
the racket, then the boss arranges self-fulfilling violence to rain
down on those who dare to reject his magnanimous "protection”.
The exact same arrangement applies in Korea under the tutelage of
the US. The Peninsula was unilaterally partitioned in 1945 by Washington
into North and South statelets because the US could not abide the fact
that the Korean population at that time was strongly anti-imperialist
and yearning for socialist democracy. That egalitarian sentiment helped
the Koreans resist the occupying Japanese imperialists prior to and
during World War II.
Tellingly, in order to assert its hegemony over Korea and the Asia
Pacific, the US worked the neighborhood over assiduously in order to
defeat the popular movement for independence and democracy that the
Korean people exhibited so boldly. Washington achieved this by
installing pro-Japanese collaborators as the rulers of newly formed
South Korea. Think about that one. The US fought a war allegedly to
defeat fascism and imperialism, only to immediately collude with the
same political forces to defeat Korean democracy.
The dropping of the atomic bombs by Washington on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki was part and parcel of American efforts to
demarcate a postwar hegemony in the Asia Pacific to the Soviet Union and
China - and this is why Korea was also fractured into two alien states
that were then precipitated into war between 1950-53.
That war - in which a third of the northern Korean population were
exterminated by American indiscriminate carpet-bombing and napalm
incineration - has never officially ended. The armistice signed in 1953
under Washington’s dictate is technically only a ceasefire. For decades,
North Korea’s demand for a full peace treaty has been repeatedly
rejected by Washington and its South Korean client state. In other
words, Washington has retained the implicit prerogative to resume its
aerial bombardment of the North Korean population at any time it
chooses. That constitutes a constant threat, or a policy of state
terrorism by Washington.
The threat from the US towards the Korean population has and
continues to include nuclear annihilation. During the Korean War, the US
air force would regularly fly nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the
Peninsula. People on the ground would recognize the aircraft, but they
did not know what the operational intent was. Can you imagine the
terrorism that this conveyed? - barely five years after the US vaporized
the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and at the same time
that US military were compelling Koreans to live in caves as the only
way of escaping mass destruction from conventional bombing.
This same thuggish behaviour by the US government is consistent with
its authorization during this past week for the flying of
nuclear-capable B-2 and B-52 bombers over the Korean Peninsula. The
dropping of "inert bombs” by these aerial monsters has to be seen as a
heinous calculation in Washington aimed at heightening the terrorism.
Yet, absurdly, the Western propaganda organs, otherwise called news, portray this American state terrorism as "protection”.
The New York Times, for example, quoted one so-called
"expert” as explaining North Korea’s response to the latest American
provocation by saying: "The North Korean populace has to be regularly
reminded that their country is surrounded by scheming enemies.
Otherwise, they might start asking politically dangerous questions.”
The laugh about this brain-washed expert thinking, and the New York
Times promoting it, is that the people of Korea are indeed
surrounded by a scheming enemy - the US - and if the wider international
public and media were to start thinking about that fact then there
would be "politically dangerous questions” such as: what gives the US
the right to conduct annual military "war games” off and on the Korean
Peninsula for the past six decades, including the deployment of nuclear
annihilation?
The people of Korea, North and South, deserve and desire peace.
Despite the antagonism and belligerence highlighted in the Western
propaganda media, the majority of people of North and South Korea have
in fact no wish for war. The consensus among ordinary Koreans is for
peace and a democratic resolution to decades of conflict imposed on
their homeland from outside. But they won’t obtain that reasonable
condition as long as Washington continues to run its "protection
racket”.
And, unfortunately, the American government will not, cannot stop
its criminal behaviour - because domination, aggression and terrorism
are the hallmarks of Washington’s Mafia regime.
PressTV.