North Korea's nukes: A US self fulfilling prophesy

Stopping North Korea's nuclear program is not the top US priority for the North. No.1 on the list is regime change leading to re-unification of Korea under the South. That has been our aim ever since Russia declared war on Japan, August 8, 1945, and rushed down the Korean Peninsula to free the unified nation of Korea from 35 years of Japanese oppression. The neocons of 1945 coerced Truman to stop the inevitable reunification under the Soviets by setting up a puppet government in the South under fanatical anti communist and brutal dictator Syngman Rhee. Future JFK Secretary of State Dean Rusk was dispatched to create South Korea and he arbitrarily picked the 38th parallel which gave Rhee 16 of the 25 million Koreans. Rhee slaughtered many thousands in consolidating his anti communist regime and the Korean civil war was born. Rhee tried to goad the US into supporting his reunification invasion of the North, but Truman balked, preferring to let the North light the fireworks, which they did June 25, 1950. Truman upended 163 years of requiring a Congressional declaration of war, initiating perpetual war at the whim of the president and his masters in the war party.

Three years and a couple of million dead people later, including 36,500 Americans, the US was humiliated into a truce that has festered for 64 years. This, and not North Korea's sensible rush to put up a nuclear shield between themselves and the US, is what prevents America from refusing to pledge not to invade North Korea or even recognize their legitimacy as a separate nation pending the two Koreas themselves exploring re-unification. In 1994, North Korea put all issues on the table in return for ending nuclear development. Clinton made the first on only effort to date to negotiate fairly for detente. Years dragged on till Bush The Younger caved to the neocons and ended any hopes of a stable peace by lumping North Korea into his Axis of Evil mantra along with Iraq and Iran in 2002. By 2003, detente with North Korea was dead. Obama had enough brains and character to keep the war sabers still. Now, an utterly unfit and unstable pretender in the White House is making his North Korean counterpart appear a genius. America's first and only option to deter North Korea is a war of regime change. The option of negotiation involves an end to threatening military exercises with South Korea, a pledge not to invade and substantive economic aid; all in return or a verifiable pullback in nuclear and missile development.

Listen to US Masters of War and realize only the first option is on the table. And until sensible, peace loving adults are in charge, directed by a tide of peace seeking voters, it always will be.

Walt Zlotow

Glen Ellyn