Korelin Economics Report

Some American “experts” say bomb North Korea now. Is that really a sane action?

After you read this thought provoking piece, please comment and then I will reply via an audio editorial with perhaps guests says Big Al

Bomb North Korea?

The Banality of Evil

Dear Friends of the Ron Paul Institute:

Dr. Paul and I were pretty happy to be able to do a good news story for our Liberty Report on Tuesday. The North and South Koreans met near the DMZ for some 12 hours and agreed on four very important points: First, the North would send a team to South Korea to participate in the Winter Olympics next month. A high-level delegation from the North would accompany the team and the South would allow them to enter even if the individuals were under sanctions. The two Koreas also agreed to follow up with bilateral talks with the aim of relieving military tensions on the Korean peninsula. Third, the two countries agreed to resolve “national problems on our own,” which sounds like a statement addressed to Washington. Finally, they agreed to resume temporary reunions of families separated by war.

Just days before the meeting, US Defense Secretary James Mattis told the press that the North/South discussions would be about participation in the Olympics and nothing else. “This is the sum total of subjects that are going to be discussed,” he said. He spoke with the South Korean defense minister before the North/South meeting and released a read-out of the call stating that the US and South Korea “recognized the dangers of North Korea’s reckless behavior.”

But by all accounts, Mattis got it wrong. South Korea did not limit its discussion with the North to simply Olympic sport nor did South Korea’s post-meeting statement make mention of “reckless behavior” by the North. In fact, the China People’s Daily newspaper announced today that the North Korean Olympic team intends to march into the Olympics together with the South Korean team — a symbolic yet dramatic development that is hard to ignore for those of us who could never have imagined the two Germanys ever reunifying.

As we remarked on our program, it increasingly appears that Washington’s bullying tone and recalcitrant demands that North Korea concede all the cards it holds before being allowed to sit down at the table has rendered the US strangely irrelevant to the whole process. This is similar to US irrelevance in post-ISIS Syria, as years of blockheaded demands that “Assad must go” have eliminated the US from any meaningful role in the political resolution of what remains of the Syrian crisis. Stomping on the ground making demands turns out to be ineffective when facts on the ground cannot be manipulated by sheer will (and arming of jihadist armies to push the point).

Similarly, the US has become much less relevant in the Israel/Palestinian conflict after President Trump’s decision to infuriate the rest of the world and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

These are all very good things. The more the US becomes irrelevant in conflicts across the globe, the closer we get to a de-facto non-interventionist foreign policy. The State Department can bluster, the President can Tweet insults and demands, the National Security Advisors can threaten to huff and puff and blow their houses down, but the rest of the world is increasingly ignoring these unhelpful threats.

North and South Korea are talking and may soon do more. Syrians have looked to other allies to help fight ISIS and other externally-supported terrorist groups. Though still maintaining illegal bases in Syria, the US is backed into a corner with nothing to add and nowhere to go. The Palestinians and even the Israelis understand that the heavy hand of the US in their dispute looks more like a sign of weakness as the rest of the world just ignores its demands at the UN.

All good news for us — the real patriots — who wish to see the backs of the neocons and those who push anti-American, interventionist foreign policies.

But the neocons are not quite finished yet. That’s where the title of this update comes in.

Writing in Foreign Policy — the flagship publication of the Council on Foreign Relations — just Monday, the warmongering neoconservative Edward Luttwak published an article titled, “It’s Time to Bomb North Korea.”

Because he does not expect that the North/South talks will produce the disarmament of North Korea, he argued in the piece that North Korea must be brought to heel by US bombs. His model for the US attack is Israel’s strike on Iraq in 1981 on Syria in 2007, both of which obliterated nuclear facilities ensuring that only Israel would be a Middle East nuclear weapons power.

One by one the military “expert” Luttwak assures us that such an attack will be a cakewalk. The North Koreans are almost surely bluffing about their capacity to hit the continental United States with a missile, he argues. Besides, he writes, there are probably only about three dozen facilities that would need bombed. “Under no reasonable military plan would destroying those facilities demand thousands of airstrikes,” he assures us.

And the Chinese? Don’t worry about them, writes Luttwak, they’re actually on our side: “Anybody who believes China would act on North Korea’s behalf in the event of an American attack against its nuclear installations has not been paying attention.” (In fact, China explicitly warned Washington that it would back North Korea if the US attacks first).

But what about a post-attack North Korea imploding, with millions of refugees pouring over the borders and untold misery? Not even worth worrying about, Luttwak tells us. Once North Korea has been brought to its knees by US bombs, it can be forcibly reunified with South Korea and the end result won’t be much different than German reunification.

And the millions of South Koreans (and estimated quarter of a million Americans) living in range of North Korea’s formidable retaliatory missile capabilities? Won’t they be decimated in a holocaust not known for decades? No concern to Luttwak. They have it coming. Writes Luttwak:

It’s true that North Korea could retaliate for any attack by using its conventional rocket artillery against the South Korean capital of Seoul and its surroundings, where almost 20 million inhabitants live within 35 miles of the armistice line. U.S. military officers have cited the fear of a “sea of fire” to justify inaction. But this vulnerability should not paralyze U.S. policy for one simple reason: It is very largely self-inflicted.
“Self-inflicted.” The South Koreans have it coming.

Luttwak tells us that many defense experts (including himself) have advised South Korea for years to move its ministries and bureaucrats away from the northern border and to give incentives for the population to do so as well. To no avail. And South Korea has not bothered to invest in Iron Dome anti-missile batteries either.

So they have it coming. Millions will die but it’s just tough luck. “[A]ny damage ultimately done to Seoul cannot be allowed to paralyze the United States in the face of immense danger to its own national interests,” Luttwak says.

And who provides for Luttwak’s comfortable living as he pushes war and misery for others? Washington Beltway think-tankistan of course! Luttwak is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a massive policy center drowning in cash from the military-industrial complex. A glance at their corporate donors tells the tale: Northrup-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Saudi Aramco, General Dynamics, General Electric, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton, etc.

The military-industrial complex makes billions off of pointless wars, they plow millions back into Washington think tanks to purchase “policy papers” and articles such as “It’s Time to Bomb North Korea,” and they get more wars and more billions.

It is evil. It wears a suit and tie. It even goes to church on Sundays. But it robs the future of millions overseas, it robs our future, it robs our children of any hope for security or prosperity as trillions are wasted and enemies multiplied.

Edward Luttwak should be called out for what he is: a monster inciting mass murder. A buttoned-up “intellectual” who sees other people as less human and therefore less deserving of their lives.

Yet there he is, writing in mainstream publications, being treated as an “expert” by the mainstream media. The mainstream-ization of extreme violence by warmongers like Luttwak comes back to us. Violence, mass-shootings, militarized police. It’s all a cancer on our society that leads back to people like Luttwak. People who hide their evil behind the banality of a keyboard.

We are doing our part to fight back against the neocons and we are making progress. We will not allow their lies to go unchallenged. We will not allow their evil to prevail. Please help us amplify our voice with a tax-deductible donation to the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Let’s work together for a better, neocon-free future.
Thank you very much for your continued support for peace and prosperity.

Sincerely yours,
Daniel McAdams
Executive Director
Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

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