Korea: Don’t Let Trump Normalize Genocide

by Stanley Heller, PEP

At a meeting in early August President Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” He was worse at the U.N. this week. There talking about the U.S. he said, “if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” Totally destroy? A country has a right to defend itself from an actual attack, but not to wipe out the entire nation of the offending government. That’s the immense crime of genocide. Trump threatened genocide and the corporate media just blandly reported it. The politicians were deafeningly silent.

There seems to be no limit to what crimes you can threaten in this brutal world. Talking about North Korean Supreme Leader Kim this month, John McCain said “If he acts in an aggressive fashion, the price will be extinction.”

For its part (if corporate media translators are to be believed) Kim’s government uses similar language to make monstrous threats. In April his Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Han threatened a “pre-emptive” nuclear attack if North Korea felt it was going to be attacked. In July a spokesperson said if there was the “slightest hint” that the U.S. was trying to remove Kim there would be a “merciless blow in the heart of the U.S.” with our “powerful nuclear hammer.”

The difference, of course, is that while North Korea is developing a nuclear force, the U.S. could actually annihilate North Korea right now.

The U.S. public is quiet, either buying Trump’s line or acting as if both side were just blowhards who would never dare to go through with their warnings. Yet even if Trump and Kim don’t really want nuclear war things have a habit of getting out of hand. People get angry, accidents happen, mistakes are made and … The point is not to get hysterical and start a nuclear war.

Read the whole article at peacenews.org.