Deirdre Griswold, editor of Workers World newspaper based in New York City, addressing the National Conference for a New Urgency in the Struggle for World Socialism held on Nov. 13-14, 2010. (Photo: Abayomi Azikiwe), a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
Not another war! Pentagon out of Korea!
By Deirdre Griswold on April 2, 2013
Workers World
For a second month, tens of thousands of U.S. and south Korean troops are carrying out simulated assaults on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — north Korea.
For the first time during these annual “exercises,” designated as Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, nuclear-capable B-2 bombers flew from Missouri to south Korea and back in a simulated bombing of the north.
In February, other war “games” called Iron Fist teamed up U.S. and Japanese troops in a simulated attack on islands claimed by both Japan and China.
The Pentagon has announced it will spend a billion dollars on a “missile defense” system on the West Coast of the United States.
The Pentagon has also moved a Navy missile-defense ship from its home port in Japan to waters off the Korean peninsula.
At the same time, the U.S. propaganda machine declares all this is necessary to counter the “belligerence” of the DPRK.
As more and more U.S. ships, planes and military personnel are deployed to the area around the Korean peninsula, the possibility of yet another war is being floated.
War is something that is very real to the Korean people. They know from bitter experience that war “games” are not something that are just played on a computer — they are the prelude to mayhem and unspeakable destruction and human suffering.
Why DPRK says ‘armistice is dead’
For 60 years, the DPRK attempted to get the U.S. to sign a peace treaty that would end the state of war existing between the two countries since 1950. It also called for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Neither ever happened. Washington refused to even discuss the matter. The DPRK has now declared that the armistice agreement ending the 1950-53 shooting war is dead and that it will respond with strength if attacked.
While all this military activity is going on, massive government cutbacks in the United States speak to the back-breaking cost of this country’s military spending for previous interventions around the world. The trillions of dollars spent on building the world’s most destructive military machine have imposed a colossal debt burden on the people at home.
The only ones to benefit from this unending warfare are the military-industrial complex and the banks. The capitalist ruling class as a whole, which more and more seeks super-profits from abroad, bears the responsibility for turning the U.S. into a garrison state at odds with most of the world.
From ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt to Obama
“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” said Theodore Roosevelt in 1901. He had led the charge in grabbing Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines and Guam away from Spain, first as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and later as a grandstanding lieutenant colonel commanding U.S. troops in Cuba during the War of 1898.
Roosevelt’s role in gaining new territory for U.S. profiteers to exploit won him the presidency (1901-09).
Roosevelt’s prescription for how to camouflage imperialist aggression is still being followed by the public relations departments of the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department.
While pronouncing “caution” and “restraint” and their commitment to building a “peaceful and stable” world, they quietly go about the job of building up the world’s most fearsome arsenal of offensive weapons.
As the Pentagon winds down its military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, after reducing those countries to chaos and ashes, it is increasingly redeploying its troops and arsenal to the Pacific. Its target right now is north Korea, even as the U.S. also attempts to encircle China.
The leaders of the DPRK, however, have prepared for this moment and strengthened their defenses. They have successfully tested nuclear bombs and long-range missiles.
The north Koreans are sending a ringing message to the world that they will not bow down to the pressure of tens of thousands of U.S. troops carrying out a simulated war on their borders. For that, they are being branded in the capitalist media as war mongers.
The imperialist U.S., carrying on in Roosevelt’s footsteps, talks peace while waging war. The socialist DPRK tells the truth — to its own people and to the world.
Workers World Party message
In response to these developments, the Secretariat of Workers World Party in the United States sent the following message to the Workers’ Party of Korea on April 2:
Dear Comrade Kim Jong Un,
While the U.S. war machine carries out threatening maneuvers on your borders, we of Workers World Party extend our hands in friendship and solidarity.
The facts are clear. The DPRK has every right to defend itself against attack from the U.S., which sent millions of troops to Korea during the 1950-53 war and killed millions of Korean people. No country in the world has more right to a nuclear deterrent than the DPRK — certainly not the U.S., which talks peace while carrying out military interventions on every continent.
Our solidarity is also based on appreciation for the great achievements of the Korean Revolution in changing social relations in the north. It unseated the exploiters and agents of imperialism while elevating the workers and farmers to become masters of their own fate.
We will continue to organize opposition to Washington’s belligerence, which is bankrupting the people of this country, and condemn all acts of aggression against the DPRK, be they military or diplomatic in character.
No war, no sanctions! U.S. out of Korea!
North Korea: ‘U.S. should ponder grave situation’
By Editor on April 4, 2013
Editor’s note: Workers World reprints below an official statement from the Korean People’s Army on the dangerous situation created by U.S. military moves close to the boundaries of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — north Korea. We think it’s important that people in the U.S. hear directly from the Koreans themselves, especially since the U.S. media are unanimous in blaming People’s Korea for the war danger that exists.
A fact never mentioned in the corporate media in the U.S. is that the NATO powers, and specifically the U.S. government, have never pledged “no first use” of their nuclear weapons. They keep open the “first-strike” option as a threat to the world. Only three countries have pledged “no first use” — the DPRK, China and India. The Soviet Union also made such a pledge, but the Russian government that took over after the fall of the USSR revoked that pledge in 1993.
The spokesperson for the General Staff of the KPA issued the following statement on April 4:
A [touch]-and-go situation is prevailing on the Korean Peninsula.
U.S. formation of B-52s based on Guam flew into the sky above south Korea all of a sudden to stage a drill under the simulated conditions of a nuclear strike at the DPRK and formations of F-22s took off from Japan proper and Okinawa and were deployed in the Osan air force base in south Korea to watch for a chance to make a surprise strike.
B-2s flew into the air over waters of the West Sea of Korea from the U.S. mainland and nuclear-powered guided missile submarines and guided missile destroyers of the U.S. Navy which had been operating in waters of the Western Pacific are busy sailing in the West and East Seas of Korea.
It was reported that [a] super-large nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and its group will enter the waters off the Korean Peninsula soon after leaving waters of the Indian Ocean or the western coast of the U.S. mainland.
South Korea and waters around it are turning into places for display of various types of nuclear strike means of the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces and a dangerous hotbed of a nuclear war in the true sense of the word.
The U.S. high-handed hostile policy toward the DPRK aimed to encroach upon its sovereignty and the dignity of its supreme leadership and bring down its social system is being implemented through actual military actions without hesitation. Days and months have passed on this land amid the constant danger of war but never had the whole Korean Peninsula been exposed to such danger of a nuclear war as today.
Under this situation the towering resentment of the DPRK’s army and people has reached an irrepressible phase as they are all out in the all-out action to defend the sovereignty and prevent a nuclear war of the U.S.
In view of the prevailing situation the world’s people who love justice and value conscience are unanimously becoming critical of the U.S. and its followers for their disgraceful behavior of prodding the UN Security Council into adopting “resolutions on sanctions” against the DPRK and vocal expressing concern over the situation on the peninsula.
The moment of explosion is approaching fast. No one can say a war will break out in Korea or not and whether it will break out today or tomorrow.
The responsibility for this grave situation entirely rests with the U.S. administration and military warmongers keen to encroach upon the DPRK’s sovereignty and bring down its dignified social system with brigandish logic.
In view of this situation, the KPA General Staff in charge of all operations will take powerful practical military counteractions in succession as the KPA Supreme Command had already solemnly declared internally and externally.
We have already sent a strong message to the present puppet authorities and military of south Korea following in the footsteps of traitor [former south Korean President] Lee Myung Bak so that they may understand our position.
As a matter of fact, puppet military gangsters such as [south Korean Minister of Defense] Kim Kwan Jin are human rejects not worth becoming targets of the DPRK’s revolutionary armed forces.
We formally inform the White House and Pentagon that the ever-escalating U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK and its reckless nuclear threat will be smashed by the strong will of all the united service personnel and people and cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means of the DPRK and that the merciless operation of its revolutionary armed forces in this regard has been finally examined and ratified.
The U.S. had better ponder over the prevailing grave situation.
Rodong Sinmun
WW forum says ‘U.S. hands off Korea!’
By Workers World New York bureau on April 1, 2013
A forum sponsored by Workers World Party in New York on March 29 took up the serious danger of another war on the Korean peninsula. Guest speaker Juyeon “JC” Rhee, of the Korean-American group Nodutdol, and Deirdre Griswold, Secretariat member of Workers World Party and editor of Workers World newspaper, have both been to north and south Korea. Below are excerpts from their talks.
Juyeon Rhee: War exercises, sanctions raise war threat
The situation is very, very urgent. We are very worried that this time a war may happen. A lot of media are portraying the increased tension as if north Korea is making belligerent, unprovoked statements. But actually they are in response to the threat that they are receiving. As of this moment, the Key Resolve [U.S.-south Korea military exercises] just ended, and the Foal Eagle joint training begins, which involves 25,000 U.S. soldiers plus 53,000 south Korean soldiers, right around the [demilitarized zone]. So the entire country goes on an alert for two months.
On the KCNA website [the news agency of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], the banner used to read, “Word for word, action for action.” That they would not back off from the threat that they were feeling or perceiving. Now the banner reads, “We are ready for a great war of national reunification.” Those kinds of statements have been made before — every time they did a satellite launch, every time they did a nuclear test. However, this time we think the situation has changed a lot. The military tension is higher than in the past.
On March 28, the New York Times reported that two U.S. nuclear-armed Stealth bombers went over south Korea and did simulated bombing exercises [against the north]. This is the first time. They never did this in south Korea before.
Also, the toughest U.N. sanctions have been imposed. They include especially a financial freeze. No money can be sent into north Korea, and they cannot send any money out — to their diplomats or students, for instance. Everyone is in a frozen state at this point. That creates a serious health crisis, because no medicines are going in. But all [the media] talk about is a freeze on “luxury goods.”
In the media the north Korean leaders are always portrayed as the menace, the evil, and the people as very helpless — suffering, starving. You see these images of goose-stepping soldiers only, and not of a people who are determined — as workers, as mothers, as soldiers — to build this strong nation. This portrayal of an evil, powerful leadership and a helpless people, with no self-will, invites what? It invites third-party intervention. The powerful U.S. then comes in as a rescuer. This kind of juxtaposition justifies and invites an intervention.
This is really racism, no? The north Korean people for the last 60 years of sanctions have been standing firm. There is a very strong will on the north Korean people’s side — not only the party, not only the leaders.
Deirdre Griswold: What makes the DPRK strong
Korea has never invaded the U.S. But the U.S. sent 5.7 million troops to Korea during the war, and for three years the U.S. Air Force destroyed everything it could in the north, dropping more bombs than were dropped in Europe in all of World War II.
Ever since, the U.S. has occupied the south and kept the north in the crosshairs of its planes and ships stationed in the Pacific, many of which are armed with nuclear weapons.
So it is ludicrous to say, as all the corporate media here do, that the DPRK is irrational when it strengthens its defenses and warns against a U.S. attack. No country in the world is more justified in having a nuclear deterrent and a strong defense than the DPRK.
Just think of how many countries have been laid waste by U.S. imperialist intervention in the last 10 years alone. After seeing what has happened to Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia, Somalia — haven’t the Koreans drawn the lesson from this that you don’t give up your weapons?
Ever since the Korean war ended in 1953, the U.S. has tried to strangle the DPRK economically. Nevertheless, it was able to rebuild very quickly — the standard of living in the north surpassed that in the south by the 1970s. It has only been since the destruction of the USSR and the rightward turn in People’s China that U.S. efforts to cripple the economy through sanctions and military pressures have cut deep.
Washington’s strategy is clear: Make life so difficult for the north Korean people that their will to resist will weaken. But that has not happened. On the contrary, they have supported strengthening their armed defense at the same time that they make even greater efforts to modernize their economy.
How are they able to do all this?
It’s because of the respect and confidence that the Workers’ Party of Korea has won over decades of struggle.
It is truly a workers’ party, based in the masses of people. I saw this on a trip to the DPRK in 1988, on the 40th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK. The great leader of the Korean Revolution, Kim Il Sung, spoke at a national meeting of the party cadre. Thousands of workers and war veterans, women and men of all ages, packed a large convention hall. They had the strong hands and weathered faces of people who know what work is. One million people marched the next day.
No suburbs or dachas ring Pyongyang. It’s the only city I know of that has no slums and no private mansions. The planned streets, beautiful public buildings and modern apartments are surrounded by fields of collective farms.
The wealth of the DPRK is in the public sector — libraries, schools, museums, hospitals. A recent article in the New York Times described how — miraculously! — a dairy farm in Indiana is able to supply all its energy needs from methane gas derived from animal droppings. I saw that more than 20 years ago on a collective farm in the DPRK, where trucks, tractors and cooking stoves were run on methane “cooked” from manure.
The DPRK has one of the best educational systems in the world. Every farm has a library and classrooms for continued adult education in science, agronomy, etc.
The Cubans have a saying: “Se puede mucho juntos.” We can do a lot — together. That’s the spirit in the DPRK, too, where the solidarity of the people through their party makes it possible to resist the world’s most aggressive imperialist power.
Migrant groups in South Korea: ‘No to war of aggression in the Korean Peninsula’
By Workers World staff on April 5, 2013
The following statement was jointly signed by the Federation of Filipino Workers Association in Korea, the Southern Tagalog Organization, the Association of Filipino Workers and the Osan Migrant Center on April 1st. The groups say that they are responding to “the intensifying tremors of war of aggression in the Korean Peninsula between the United States of America, Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).” The International Migrant Alliance helped release the statement.
We are individuals and migrant workers’ organizations in South Korea who are greatly alarmed and concerned on the possibility of eruption of war of aggression in the Korean Peninsula. We, in the strongest terms, oppose and resist any attempt from the contending countries and states to start a direct armed confrontation and the use of both conventional and high tech war armaments including nuclear weapons to achieve their political-military and economic ends.
The provocations through the Joint US-ROK military exercises should be stopped now. The DPRK responses to the provocations, as we understand them, are all on the defensive, for since the Armistice of 1953, the US-ROK joint military exercises have always intended to overthrow the government of the DPRK.
We recall that on March 11, 2013, the Joint U.S.-ROK began its annual “Key Resolve” and “Foal Eagle” war games. These, and the “Ulchi” games that took place in August 2012, rehearse invasions of North Korea for several months each year. Far from creating security in the region as those governments claim they do, these games deliberately provoke and stir up animosity towards the DPRK, extend the state of civil war, and promote war as a solution to a conflict instigated and perpetuated by U.S. imperialism with the support of other imperialist countries.
This heightened tension has reached an alarming level and people are anticipating at any time war will break out, but it seems that the ROK and the diplomatic communities in Seoul are just waiting to evacuate their nationals and remain silent over the critical situation in the Korean Peninsula.
Very recently, on the first day of April, the advanced, radar-evading F-22 Raptors were deployed to Osan Air Base — the main U.S. Air Force base in the ROK — from Japan to support ongoing bilateral exercises, the U.S. military command in the ROK said in a statement that [urged] the DPRK to restrain itself.
On March 28, the U.S. flew two radar-evading B-2 Spirit bombers on practice runs over the ROK. They flew from the U.S. and back in what appeared to be the first exercise of its kind, designed to show America’s ability to conduct long-range, precision strikes “quickly and at will,” the U.S. military said. Upon knowing of this, Kim Jung Un, leader of the DPRK, responded swiftly by signing the plan on technical preparations of strategic rockets of the Korean People’s Army, ordering them to be on standby for fire so that they may at any time strike the U.S. mainland, its military bases in the operational theatres in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in the ROK, media sources have disclosed.
Since coming into power in 2009, the ruling Senuri/Grand National Party, U.S.- subservient government of the ROK has been undoing all the progress to reunify the peninsula and bring about peace worked out by the previous liberal governments, by churches, NGOs and communities.
Continuous war games in recent years have caused an escalation of tensions. They have caused the DPRK to hold underground nuclear tests. This year, in fact, the persistent engagement in war exercises has prompted the DPRK to renounce the July 1953 Armistice Agreement and stand ready to make a counterattack at any time as of March 11. The situation today is therefore extremely volatile.
THEREFORE:
We call on the governments of the sending migrant workers and the Republic of Korea as sovereign states to make a resolute resolve and appropriate actions to stop the war games and de-escalate the tensions in the Korean Peninsula.
We call on the government of the United States of America (USA), President Barack Obama, the Congress and Senate to act upon new foreign policies that are based on lasting justice and peace and prevent the U.S. political-military institutions in pursuing military solutions to problems around the world, but rather put the basic humanity of peoples and nations as the top priority.
We support a just and peaceful resolution of the present crisis in the Korean Peninsula by ending the Korean War once and for all with a peace treaty, removing of the United States military from the region, and reunification through dialogue and political process.
We call on all justice- and peace-loving members of the global community to raise their voices against the war of aggression of the United States and other imperialist countries and to support all efforts and actions to evolve a new, just and peaceful world.
One Response to Not another war! Pentagon out of Korea
Stan Smith says:
April 4, 2013 at 11:21 am
I just returned from a trip to North Korea with Koryo Tours.
It seems requisite among corporate media writers to reduce North Korea to the Kim leaders and preface their names with the terms madman, evil, brutal, crazy, etc. As we know, such vilifying terms are used here in reference to foreign leaders to signify they are target for a US overthrow. It serves to intimidate peace activists as beyond the pale for ever wanting to oppose a war against the peoples of these countries led by “madmen” – be they Saddam, Fidel, Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad, etc.
Yet to a sensible person, it is insane that the US, with nuclear weapons thousands of miles from home, in South Korea, denies North Korea has a right to have its own nuclear weapons on its own land – particularly when the North says it is developing nuclear weapons only as a deterrent because the US won’t take its own weapons out of the Korean peninsula.
Lost in the typical US corporate media “discussion” on the DPRK is that the US was conducting month-long war maneuvers in March in Korea, using stealth bombers, undetectable by radar, capable of carrying nuclear weapons. And this year these are not “deterrent” war maneuvers, but “pre-emptive war” maneuvers.
Would the US government and people get a little “crazy” if a foreign country that previously had killed millions of our people, sent nuclear capable stealth bombers 50 miles off the coasts of NYC, Wash DC, Houston, Miami, LA and San Fran, there to fly around for a month in preparation for a possible attack on us? For what is called, in the sick US language, “war games”?
The US may have killed 20% of the population of Korea, said General Curtis Lemay, who was involved in the US air war on Korea. That is a higher rate of genocidal slaughter than what the Nazis inflicted on Poland or the Soviet Union.
North Korea knows that history, and it is warning the US they know what to expect and are arming themselves to prevent it. Are the North Korean leaders “paranoid” or are they taking sensible precautions?
What kind of crazy people call war preparation a “war game”? North Korea doesn’t think it’s a “game.” Over 4 million died in the last war to reunify their country that the US divided. Suppose men had an annual event called “group rape games” wouldn’t that be considered some kind of criminal misogynist mental disease, and wouldn’t women be justified in being outraged and arm themselves as much as possible? (And the violence the US has done to the Korean people is not much different than the violence done to women by men.)
An accurate reading of the events leading up to the present situation shows that North Korea is responding to US military escalation, and in particular to US refusal to negotiate at all, about anything.
We may recall that North Korea was hit with US/UN Security Council sanctions for sending off a missile last year. South Korea sent off a missile this year, and were there any sanctions? No. Not even any noise. In fact, the sanctions on North Korea were the only time any country has ever been hit with sanctions for sending a satellite into space. (Last year the DPRK sent a weather satellite into space – only missiles can send satellites into space.)
If I could go back to the time of my ancestors in the 1600-1800s I would devote my life to warning the First Nation peoples here or peoples of Africa of the devastating holocaust the white man had in store for them. I would tell them to unite under a strong military leadership and arm themselves to the teeth because the slaughters and miseries my ancestors were preparing for them would be outside of their comprehension.
Few of us know that in the space of 3 years 4-5 million Koreans were killed. That is near two 9-11s every day for 3 years. One 9-11 left a scar on this country. What does 1100 in a row do?
We should remember that Korea is divided because our country invaded it and divided it after the Japanese surrender. The leaders of North Korea had been fighting the Japanese since the early 1930s, and 200,000 had lost their lives.
The US was supposed to leave in 1948, as the Soviet Union did, but because Kim Il Sung would have won planned nation-wide elections, the US made the division permanent and denied elections, just as it did later in Vietnam. That was the cause of the Korean War, and that is the cause of the present militarization: A foreign country divided and occupied their country against their will.
The US people were pretty silent during the first US slaughter of Koreans. Let us not do that again.
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